The Water gets Closer

Today at the club I got onto the left hand river bank of the river.

It took quite a while to add in the missing bits on the skyboard, but once done I was able to hack into a pile of foam to star layering up the left hand river bank. So over about 4 hours of goofing around at it here is what I ended up with.

Fellow carver John B kept at the hill he is building tot he left of the station and marking out some trackwork to cater for the small cattle yard down there as well.

That's all - more after Saturday I expect.

Wish there was water in the River

Today saw an early start due to the expected heat. I got down to the club at 07:30 and found I wasn't the first - Doug was there already having a run! The heat was already climbing hot, and of course...not a whiff of a breeze. Swimming in a mountain stream was looking pretty damned tempting!

Since what I planned on doing really wouldn't need the layout offline, he was free to run his train and I could easily work around him. Not much longer after, in came some others and the day began in earnest.

My goal was to get a good start on the river scene and maybe also kick off some work on the hill/mountain on the river side of the peninsula. While I was making a great mess with the beaded blue foam, John B came in and started on the hill etc at the far left of the station - ie the part that will mate onto the hill/mountain. So this is good as we'll now get a big move on with some scenery and on Wednesday Barry P will help on the hill/mountain as well.

So I concentrated on the right hand side of the river with cutting up and shaping some foam and also added in a bit more skyboard to hide the gap below ground level which was there from when we dropped the deck for the river a long time back. By about 2'ish I had a rough shape in place and glued down with the Liquid Nails.

Geez the foam sure eats into a box cutter blade - went through 2 and really needed a 3rd! During the day it was that hot that the steel rule I left out in the sun on a sheet of foam burnt my fingers it was that damned hot. I was sure looking forward to the evening and some air-con and a beer or two.

So hopefully on Wednesday I can get the left hand part of the river or maybe some mountain done, or maybe that wye we want in, or maybe that point in the fiddle yard to a small loco or such facility....

Above is a bit of an overview shot of the river and the beginning of the scenery. After looking at the photos provided by Darryl D of the bridge up in Bundaberg and some talks with John B, I decided on a nice wide floodplain as the first step of the river bank and then it will slowly climb up to the rolling hills on the right. Once the left side is also foamed up, we can unbolt the bridge piers and remove it in total so as to get in and do the final shaping of the foam. Much less damage can be done that way :o)

You can see in this picture, that the river bank under the bridge has multiple slopes.

Photo above shows the foam at the back is now also roughly carved. Once the full shaping is done with the bridge not in situ, I will also fill all holes and gaps with the usual concoction of foam beads, sawdust and No More Gaps.

For most of the slopes, I was able to use my hot wire foam cutter, which is so much less messy and seals the foam nicely so no beads flying everywhere.

Above we see the corner John B is working on. First step was to make a template of thin ply to see what contour the hill should take. Here we see that it will fill the back of the trackage and also some of the middle track and then drop down to the front deck section.

And here we see John B gluing in some of the foam. I reckon Wed and Sat coming should see a whirlwind of foam beads flying in all directions as it gets sculpted!

Side Tracked Again - Damn that HO Layout

I keep finding myself drawn to working on it at the club. So over the Christmas break I got approval from the head layout coordinator and got out there and painted all of the track. I even roped in John Bushell at the club to paint the large fiddle yard as well. It took almost a whole day to clean the railheads afterwards!

This is the left hand end between what will be the silo sidings on the left and the small fuel depot sidings on the right.

Also on the working list has been to add some more 3 dimensionality to the area I have been working on. So the other day I got out the saw and cut out some bench surface, dropped in some support beams lower, and screwed the plywood back at this lower height - 68 mm lower in fact. On Saturday morning I added in some polystyrene foam (the beaded type) to allow me to carve in a creek or two and maybe the edge of a river. I also added some height above the deck. I think I'll start doing this on some other parts of the layout as well, as it is coming along well and give a bit of nice variety in height to the scenery.

Here we see a hill I have added and the beginning of the dropped deck area. Centre of picture you can make out a drainage ditch coming from the mainlines and heading to the edge where it meets the bend in the river.

Today was spent with my trusty Surform tools carving the foam up and giving it some shape. It sure makes a heck of a mess with little beads flying every which way. After the mess was vacumed up it was time for the trains to run being noon at the club - but it didn't stop me getting out three caulking guns worth of No More Gaps and some brown acrylic paint to mix in it so as to coat the foam to stop it beading and to give it a good rubberised coating for strength. I find this a bit better than using plaster and chux cloth, as I can easily modify the scenery with a sharp knife and planting trees is a breeze.

Full view of the work, with some temporary building in place and a tree on each hill.

I also filled in the gaps between layers of foam and holes I had, with the same mix, but with a pile of foam beads. These beads are the result of putting in scrap bits of foam into the Black & Decker Blender. A handful of sawdust as well and I have what I call my special filler/putty for working on foam scenery. This I have smeared on and in all holes and joins that didn't look too natural. It also gives a good rough natural look once spread around on the foam.

Bit of a view back down the other direction and a train sneaking past in into the view.

So at least I left the foam looking like it is meant to be there and we can now see better where we are heading with this scenery on this peninsula. I have a few more ideas for it and will add a few drainage ditches around the place to give little scenes of 3 dimensions here and there.

Full view, this time without a train.

Oh I should mention that one of the newer members, but not new to the game, is a fellow Tuesday Nighter and now RMCQ'er - Barry Petersen. Well Barry has become part of the crew and is helping me out with the scenery from now on. I gave him the ugly job of getting down under the layout today to open up the hole at the base of the peninsula so that a bit more than just a hand will be able to be put up inside the mountain for if ever a train derails in the mountain. With this almost complete, Barry and I will be able to add in the mountain face on the other side of the peninsula where we already working on. We can then continue and add in some scenery at the back of the layout from the peninsula through to the beginning of the yard at the station. John Bushell will also give we two a hand along this section as well.

We are also thinking of what to put in at the river to get that started and contoured to give some shape in that region of the layout.

Bin Doin HO

Yup - not N. Still slow that way. So here is some HO I am doing down the club.

We got in a couple of hundred various trees from an eBay shop called "WeHonest". They are wire wound armatures that have a real toy like green coloured ground foam foliage on them.

The trees themselves are great, just the colour is wrong and they are bit light on in weight.

So out with the hair spray and give them a good coat of it and immediately then sprinkle on some Woodland Scenics fine Turf colours. I used a selection of 4 different colours, therefore making the trees all slightly different and therefore more like what you see in nature.

I'l use the trees on the mountains and hills I am building down one end of the new HO layout at the club. One of the hills is in the background here.

The other day I did a bit of a test spray with a trusty airbrush gadget and mixed up some various colours and sprayed some small offcuts of old track to see what the ties come up like.

The six test sprays on the old track all came up fairly close to each other in overall colour - in strong light you can differentiate them, but under the current general lighting in the clubrooms, they are all fairly close to each other. The test sprays were just to show the fellas some colours and to get them thinking about it for the layout.

I used Tamiya Acrylic paints (flat not gloss) for my testing, as they are water based and hence easier to cleanup afterwards. These paints are also very readily available at just about any toy and hobby store in Brisbane. I picked some up at the Mr Toys in the city for about 5 bucks a bottle (23 ml). A bottle should go quite some way I reckon.

So I did these following mixes:

Tamiya XF53 - Neutral Grey

Tamiya XF64 - Red Brown

Tamiya XF53 - Neutral Grey

Tamiya XF68 - Nato Brown

Tamiya XF53 - Neutral Grey

Tamiya XF10 - Flat Brown

Tamiya XF51 - Khaki Drab

Tamiya XF10 - Flat Brown

Tamiya XF51 - Khaki Drab

Tamiya XF68 - Nato Brown

Tamiya XF51 - Khaki Drab

Tamiya XF64 - Red Brown

Each mix was made up for spraying, by using equal amounts of each paint as well as X20 Thinners. So I ended up with 1/3 Paint + 1/3 Paint + 1/3 Thinner. This sprayed on well and seemed to cover the black ties reasonably well.

The flash on the camera tended to really pale up the paint to what it looks like under the ambient lighting - but even with the super powerful light, it is still a good colour for the sidings.

Now today what I did was to spray up the yard and freight tracks in the area I've been working on the layout. I used the Neutral Grey and Red Brown mix. Bruce and I reckon it's not bad. Maybe for the mainline I'll use the Khaki Drab and Nato Brown mix - Bruce and I reckon that'll work well.

So that's what I did today. Maybe Saturday, beside it being the club Xmas party and Modelling Competition, in the morning I might put a coat of paint on some mainlines in the area I am working on.

Costly Door

Since the shed will eventually contain all my railway rolling stock and layout and modelling tools, I decided it really needed a proper door to keep the possible perpetrators out, rather than the current sliding glass door. So I found a place via word of mouth that are good, Taplin Security Products, and got them round for a quote and they got the order.

Geez that door on the shed ended up costing me!  It wasn't the company, as they were very reasonably priced - it was because they were reasonably priced that I also got some other doors and windows protected !!

So I ended up getting the large front sliding doors done, the front door, the front windows, the kitchen and bathroom windows, the bedroom windows and the back door done, as well as of course the train shed door. The chappy came out on Friday and got them all in on the one day and just managed to pack his truck just as the first spits of rain came down of the storm.

Nice job he did too. All nice and clean afterwards too. So now I am safer and a bonus is that all the mozzie screens are now new - the last ones all got shredded in the big hail storm a week ago, So that was great timing. Even the shed has mozzie screens now.

So now I can leave the back door open at night in summer for the breeze and the mozzies and miscreants are held at bay.

 

Less Dirt Under Foot

When the old brick shed came down in February and was carted away, it left a good area of blank dirt behind. It wasn't very level, but that wasn't going to matter as more work would be needed later for the pergola.

Then in May the Titan boys came round again and this time erected my Carport out front and the Pergola out back. This of course required more earthworks for the slab out back. The bloke on the bobcat did a nice job of burying the rubble and non-wanted materials and leveling out the dirt on top - lots of blank dirt now.

So once the erection was complete, it was time for some grass. Had had thoughts of getting in some turf, but being slack those thoughts remained just that - thoughts. Over time I saw the blue couch start shooting out a few runners over winter and so I helped it along by going out every week or so and pulling all the weeds and bad grasses out so that the couch had free rein or the dirt.

With the dry spell over winter and running into summer I had of course to help the grass along with some watering - usually 2 stubbies would be the right amount of time for a good watering. This mixed with a few good showers and the odd storm or two has now given me what I can call a lawn. I can happily walk out there and not get dirt on my feet - no more shoes required when venturing out into the my yard!

I am trying to keep it mainly blue couch, but some carpet grass is there and that's acceptable - but all others go. Now if I can just get rid of the nut grass that has gone berserk...

So above we see a shot of what the density of most of the yard is and below a shot with foot (as a reference to size - honest) to show the one or two small areas not quite at lawn level - give them another few weeks I recon.

The grass is now growing fast enough that it need fortnightly haircuts. Just watch - I'll be whinging about having to mow the lawn very soon indeed!

Oh, and that bleedin' hail storm on Thursday saw no real damage at the house - just the car looks a bit like a golf ball now and a few dents on the shed roof. All glass survived - very happy about that.

I Actually did some Modelling

It might not be N scale, but it was modelling none the less.

What great weather we are having - hot it might be, but there is a nice breeze to help keep temperatures on the old bod down.

So after reading all the news and drinking lots of coffee and such, I decided to do some modelling. No, I did not do any work on getting the shed ready to use - remember, I am very slack in that department.

Yesterday at the club meeting, I saw that in our little shop we had some packets of Kadee #58 couplers in stock, so I grabbed all ten packets! These metal scale couplers are just the shot to replace the large plastic couplers that come on the Austrains S wagons I bought from Brendan a large handful of months ago - they are much more scale looking than the plastic #5 equivalents.

You can see the metal #58's in front of the plastic imitation #5's

So I dragged my table in my pergola (not a real one yet, just a 4 foot [1.2m] one I have in temporary use) out into the shade so I had plenty of light but no direct heat. Then out with my tray of wagons and packets of couplers and of course my toolbox. Simple job I know, but it was enjoyable being able to sit down undisturbed in the fresh air and do something productive on my railway kit.

While I was at it, I had just enough couplers left to replace the large plastic ones in the 4 RU Wheat PTC wagons I bought at the clubs Buy & Sell held last weekend. I'd spotted a set of four in their original packaging with a tad of weathering on them sitting on someones table and went "grab!" The speed of the grab made a sound that would have gone well in the old Batman TV series where we got all those Biffs and Kapows! 

So that used all my couplers up, so it was time pack up the wagons and such, as I'll need to buy some more to do the same on some others I have yet to do.

Next I got out my new little logging loco I recently purchased. I now have a Rivarossi 3 Truck Heisler. It will go nicely with some logging wagons I have collected. I'll be able to run on a logging line on the new HO layout at the club with Peter A and others once we design and built it of course. I wanted to look at it now that I have the lid off to see what room I have for a DCC decoder. I reckon one of my spare Digitrax decoders will fit the job - either the DZ123 or DN121 I have found buried in one of my boxes - old as the hills, but should do the job.

I reckon there is plenty of room here to play with for a decoder.

On the theme of logging, a while back I bought a couple of Walthers Pulpwood Flatcars with Missouri Pacific numbers on them so I could run them at President Plods' place (Mr Kennedy, the president of the club - ex copper you see). I've been on the lookout for some loads to plonk on them and recently got my hands on a couple of "JWD" brand pulpwood loads for them. Now that was a hard installation to get these loads to marry up with the wagons, I can tell you! It took forever to get them out of the packaging - all of those 8 staples - anyone would have thought they wanted safe transit of the loads from factory to me. So no sooner than the 1 minute and 15 seconds had passed, that I snuggly placed the loads on the Walthers cars - nice snug fit is was - no glue will be needed I reckon. Nice loads and now the wagons really look the part.

Design/build... I sorta slipped. Somehow I have found 31 lengths of HO code 83 Shinohara unused track in my hands that has appeared out of nowhere - I swear! I'll blame Mr Mackie though, as he is the source of all evil in HO for me (well most of it). He was the cause of me getting HO in the first place - all my NSW  stuff in fact. Bad inflence is all I can say!  Now he has forced, absolutely forced me to buy the rail from him and he frog marched me down to the hobby shop in town the other week and made my go buy a pile of HO code 83 Peco points as well! And there I was planning away for a purely N scale train shed....

Looks like I'll probably put in a 30 foot long wall mounted narrow section for HO. It will go from a wye at one end to a loop at the other. About 60 foot or so of track. This will give me somewhere to test all this HO stuff that Craig MAKES me buy!