When I say rank, I mean taxi rank.

Just a quick update to show the new paving outside the station.  The station was placed over the pavement sheets and the outline  pencilled on. Once everything was cut out it was carefully tweaked and adjusted to get a good fit around the station. 

I started by painting the paving with a concrete coloured acrylic, which I thought too light and added Lifecolour dirty black. This seemed a better colour so I brushed it with charcoal coloured weathering powders to bring out the paving stones. This almost turned out to be a disaster though, as contrary to previous experiences with weathering powders it stuck to the pavement like you know what to a shovel. Perhaps the paint was still slightly tacky. I wiped most of the powder from the flat surfaces with a damp tissue and dry brushed with the original concrete paint to highlight everything. Finally a coat of Testors matt varnish was added to seal everything in. Testors is the best matt varnish you can use but rumour has it that it is no longer available either here or in the States where it is manufactured.

So to recap, I started with a colour I didn't think looked right, then after repainting added powders that made it way too dark, which then turned out great after wiping down and dry brushing. Moral of the story is; persevere. We often read magazines where the experts seem to know exactly what colours to use and they probably do but that's only after years of experience getting it wrong and experimenting. Don't be frightened of having a go. 

Semi Detached Houses for Wadden

With the terraced housing underway the side of the layout where the three bed semi's will go was looking rather bare. I therefore decided to add a couple of temporary houses using the Metcalfe kit by splitting it in two. The side wall was made from thick card I had and Mecalfe brick paper. The garages and walls came from the kit and the long hedge is cheap pan scourer with a little paint added. Due to its abrasive nature only use a very old or cheap brush. The picket fence is Wills (again half a packet was of a different fence type am unlikely to use, it's like only being able to buy a DVD of the latest film in a twin pack with a film you have no interest in)  The lawns  are static grass flock and the flowers a mix of different scenic foam flocks.

The whole thing was built on a section of foam board at home and then glued sparing to the layout so it can be removed when the final buildings are scratch built.

I think it fills the space nicely and I have acquired a pre war Reilly for the drive. I will also try to get a couple of people painted for them as well.

And another thing

Yet another frustration with Wills plastic I just had to blog. This time it's the Wills York paving SSMP208.

I'm just paving the area in front of my station and not only do you have to file off those frustrating little lugs at the end of the sheet but when I come to add a little strip to the edge with Wills Period York Paving SS77, not only is it a completely different thickness but the paving stones are different sizes and don't line up!! 

Why produce two forms of paving, both in York stone and yet not make them compatible? 

Railway Figures

Being a wargamer the thing that always catches my eye are the figures. If done correctly I feel they really set the scene and period of the layout. Now while there is nothing wrong with prepainted figures, there are some that are so dreadfull they make me wince, especially if stuck on thick peices of clear plastic. I was also surprised when I recently went to the finescale show in Stoke Mandeville where there were two superb layouts not a living sole on them. 

The majority of figures used on my railway are from Dart Castings. These are unpainted white metal figures which are very well proportioned anatomically and although they do a some modern era figures a large part of the range is suitable for the 1920's to 60's, which includes the period that I am modelling. 

All the figures are painted in acrylics as are most war games figures. Why acrylics? Two reasons, firstly acrylics are water based and generally odourless. I use Vallejo, Inscribe, Life Colour, Games Workshop and others. Secondly they dry quickly. You can paint a colour on a figure and generally by the time you have washed your brush out open your next colour you can paint over the top. This means you can mix a base colour with a lighter colour and highlight almost straight away. I have the excellent DVD by Geoff Taylor on how to scratch build buildings but when he tells you to paint the motar colour in enamels and set it aside for 24 hours I find myself asking why would you want to use such a slow drying medium for this purpose when it has no particular advantages over acrylics. I can paint the mortar colour and be dry brushing on the brick colour within an half an hour. Enamels do have their place though, they give a hard and smooth finish and will always be my first choice for a loco if the colour is available.

I hope you like the photos of my figures. More will be added in time for the layouts next outing, which will be the Tolworth Showtrain exhibition in November. This will be the layouts last outing for a while as I want to concentrate on scratch building the goods shed and other structures before it goes out on display again.

Back scene for the railway

The last missing essential for almost every exhibition layout is a back scene.  As with the rest of the layout I wanted to keep this simple and light. The disadvantage of course is the loss of robustness, however even the thinnest ply starts to get heavy quite quickly and you still need to protect the surface if it is painted or papered although permanently fixing them to the layout is one possible solution, however this can also the increase the width between the boards when they are bolted together.

I decided to use a plastic sheeting put under laminate flooring. This is a square section plastic corrugate like that used for estate agents 'For Sale' signs. I chose the thicker of the two thicknesses available, which was about 3mm and full size 2400mm sheet was relatively inexpensive at under a tenner. This was sufficient  to put a 30mm curtain around the front and sides with some to spare. 

The plastic is held against the edge of the layout with 6mm bolts but having set the layout up at a couple of shows these will be changes to 13mm bolts, the same as the rest of the layout. this is not for strength but simplicity, so whatever bolt you pick up it will be the right size.Strangely when I looked at a packet of ten washers in B&Q they were almost the same price as a packet of ten bolts with washers and nuts!?!

The ribbing does show slightly but the idea is to cover with card that can be painted with sky blue and clouds initially, then further detail can be added to complement the scenery once its in place. Velcro strips across the joins have also been employed to keep the panels together.

It's a Cardboard World

When I started to consider the scenery I initially painted areas of the board where 

I wanted the various major elements to go, brown for platforms, grey for biuildings and green for fields. To my surprise this immediately highlighted a couple of areas where my vision was not going to work, primarily the road running around the inside of the layout. The road followed the track and used all the available space leaving no room for buildings or scenery. Not very interesting. After some thought I decided to put in a sharp left turn towards the scenic break and place a builders yard on the inside corner. This also had the added advantage of giving me the room on end board for the semidetatched houses I wanted.

I then decided that simple 3D models of the major scenic elements would give an even better visualisation of the layout, how the various elements would look and if they blended together well. I could have built a reduced scale model of the layout but the real thing was set up for several months in my mum's garage I decided to build them full size. I had an excellent source of raw material for this as my office uses a lot of photocopy paper and the reams come in thin but sturdy corrugated boxes. Even better the boxes are hardly glued together and could easily be flat packed for the journey home.

The first thing I built was the station and the platforms, which quickly made me realise just how close the station was going to be the the edge of the board but at least it confirmed it would fit, just.  

Next was the bridge. I initially decided to put this diagonally across the left hand corner of the layout,  so there was more interest than a bridge at right angles across the track. However, the cardboard model presented me with a dilemma as it cut the scenic space in two, really limiting how the remaining space could be used. 

In real life the road to the left of the station climbs up to the bridge and I was also intending to build this, adding some single storey shops for interest. This didn't work however as the shops and slope almost completely hid the trains from the viewing public. The solution was suggested by my mum, which was to move the bridge towards the station but still keeping it slightly oblique to the track. This retained a more natural look while giving the corner space back for scenery. I also decided to keep the road flat so as to not hide the trains but still allowing me to include the single storey shops. Finally I had to discard the waiting room as there was just not enough space between the platform and the track in the goods yard behind it. A little frustrating but one of the constraints of the narrow boards but I will still be keeping the platform canopy though. 

Metcalfe kits were used for the engine and goods sheds but the foot bridge, terraced housing, and fencing were all made of cardboard. Everything was built very quickly and held together with no more than Sellotape, pva glue and Pritt Stick. All the effort was well worth it though and will hopefully mean the scenery is much more pleasing and interesting for the public.

Waddon on tour

If you would like to see Waddon it is currently booked to attend both the Croydon and Tolworth Shows.

Croydon Show - Saturday 4th and Sunday 5th October 2014 at Warlingham School, Tithepit Shaw Lane, Warlingham CR6 9YB.

Tolworth Showtrain - November 8th & 9th, Tolworth Recreation Centre, Fullers Way North, Tolworth, Surrey, KT6 7LQ.

The layout was displayed at my clubs exhibition last November as both a work in progress and a DCC layout. Although just a work in progress the layout got a lot of positive comments and attention being a local station. I'm pleased to say it performed very well with just a single point failure in the fiddle yard, which was over 30 years old from a childhood loft layout my father built. Being on the stage directly opposite the wonderful people at Invicta Models, a replacement set of points was quickly obtained and installed before the show opened.

The layout also attended our club room open day in May and I again spent most of the time talking to people about the layout or it's location, while fellow club members did sterling work keeping things moving. The old saying it's not what you know it's who you know also proved true. One of our visitors was not only extremely knowledgable about the London, Brighton lines and stations but very kindly provided me with some scans of plans for the goods shed I am intending to build. While I had taken a number of photographs of the existing goods shed at Burgess Hill the drawings will save me another visit with a tape measure.

Once the layout was set up at our open day, a club member brought down the Metcalfe terraced houses intended for a club layout. He placed these where the Victorian terrace houses are going to be, just to fill out the empty space awaiting scenery. The change was quite startling and really added to the layout, even though they were just dropped in. Therefore there has been a change of tack regarding layout progress and I am currently building card Kits of Victorian terraced houses for the road behind the head shunt and a couple of 1930's three bed houses for the right hand side of the board. These are only intended to be temporary until scratch built buildings have been completed. Once the card buildings are done there are a number of things that need completing including, building platform seats, fixing the station in place, repairing the line side fencing, finishing the corn field, lighting the canopy to see the figures and putting the pavement around the station. Only then can I start to consider starting the goods shed.

Hope to see you at one of the shows. Come and say hello.