Hanging basket liner grass

A few weeks ago I decided to experiment with using hanging basket liner to represent rough grass. While I think the results are reasonable - the colour in particular is quite convincing as is, there are a couple of things I'm not too happy with - one is that there are quite a few dark green wiry bits in amongst the fibres which don't look very good (I should probably 'shop around' a bit for other liners), and the other is the rather unrealistic way the fibres seem to go in every direction no matter how much you work at teasing them into a more convincing upwards direction - maybe this is just par for the course with this technique. I might try to get hold of some traditional carpet underlay and experiment with that (I think Green Scenes supply it in small pieces - or does anyone know of a cheaper source?).

BR crimson

"Halfords 'British Leyland Carmine' ... is quite a good ringer for 1950's crimson (well, once weathered anyway!)" (Chris Nevard)

Painting brickwork

A useful tip just picked up while reading Chris Nevard's website is to use ordinary DIY emulsion paint (B&Q 'pebble' is the colour Chris used on the crossing keepers cottage on Catcott Burtle), thinned down with water and a little washing up liquid, as a wash over the top of enamel-painted brickwork (and then gently wiped off the brick surfaces) to recreate the pointing. When I painted my goods yard office I used thinned down enamel paint over the brick colour and then wiped off with a thinners soaked rag, which caused a real headache in that it was very difficult to remove from the brick surfaces before it dried and without leaving small fibres from the rag stuck to the paintwork, leading to what I feel is a less than completely satisfactory appearance close-up - and it took a heck of a long time for such a small building! The obvious advantage of emulsion is of course that it can be removed relatively easily with water even when touch-dry (or completely dry if given a real good scrub!). Something to remember on the next building I do.

Another ideal use for emulsion is colouring exposed ground surfaces such as bare earth, around sidings, platform and road surfaces etc.

Making it a bit more interesting

Maybe I was being a bit too minimalist with my previous plan. I was thinking about what I said about adding an extra track running from end to end allowing for a locomotive to run round its train before shunting the sidings, and decided that this would make quite a significant difference to the operational potential. Bringing the loop crossover into the modelled area would further increase the interest.

I've made some rough adjustments to the Templot plan above to show the idea, with the dotted lines at either end representing the tracks that extend 'off stage'.

Rough plan

OK, here's the first draft - the track plan has been done in Templot, then a bit of colour added in Photoshop. The grid lines are every 3 inches. The whole diorama is just 4'x2'. The track enters from stage right under a brick-built overbridge (cliché yes but still the best form of scenic break, especially in such a small space). The 3 tracks would be fed from free-standing cassettes, positioned as required. The tracks fan out into 4 sidings - the rear siding passes into the works building itself. The siding in front of this passes between two buildings and off stage left. I might add an extra siding alongside this one, also running off stage left, so as to allow a loco to run around its train (making use of off-stage facilities at both ends in the process). The front two sidings would be quite overgrown - the tracks almost hidden in long grass. All around the perimeter of the yard there will be tall, mature trees, giving quite an enclosed, almost wooded feel (and providing an effective scenic break). There's possibly space for something at front right - maybe a small building and vehicle access?

The whole scene would be set up to give the impression of general neglect and disrepair while still being an active industrial facility (though in terminal decline). There would be various odds and ends of junk lying around in corners and between the tracks - rusting, rotting, crumbling away. Rolling stock would consist of open wagons (coal, possibly other raw materials - these would be loaded and unloaded off stage left, allowing full wagons to be drawn in and empties taken away later) and vans (goods outward, probably loaded inside the building itself). Motive power? Well, whatever is available really. Given that there need not be too many clues to location, this could be quite flexible, allowing me to indulge whatever takes my fancy - the theory being that the facility is served by the railway rather than being a privately operated affair.

Track and wheel standards will of course be P4, given that I have nailed my colours to the mast already! Mind you, I will have to try to recreate the appalling track conditions found in these sort of locations so that'll be interesting with the P4 wheels!

A new direction

Over the past few months - as you've probably noticed if you're a regular reader - posts about modelling have tailed off rather. As I observed previously, a lot of this has been down to the development of the MRJ Index taking precedent, but it's also partly the realisation that my grand designs (ok, fairly modest designs) were just not going to happen in the near future because of a lack of the necessary space and time. My plans relied on converting our garage into a workshop/railway room, but this has had to go on the back burner. Also, the amount of time necessary to complete such a project would be fairly considerable. Consequently, I'd lost a bit of direction and drive.

So this past weekend I decided it was time to start investigating the possibility of something a lot smaller, in fact something small enough that it could live permanently on the worktop in our spare room. This would not preclude the other ideas from one day coming to fruition but would likely stand a better chance of getting built, at least in the short-to-medium term.

The scenic part of the layout (or maybe 'working diorama' would be a more suitable description) would need to fit on a single 4'x2' baseboard with simple detachable cassettes for 'off-stage' storage. The challenge, then, is to find a suitable concept/prototype that would work in such a small space, with enough potential scenically and operationally to satisfy me.

I have some interesting ideas brewing, but I'll save these for another post!