Packing up the layout

I will soon be posting an article on the blog about adding the third rail to the layout and mocking up the scenery from corrugated card but thought I would quickly show you it all crated up ready to go home. Quite understandably my mother didn't fancy sliding around on the drive de-icing the car now the cold weather has set in, which meant taking the layout home.

The layout arrived at my mothers as individual boards, which unless great care was taken could easily be damaged. On top of that I have now added a delicate 3rd rail as well. Therefore to protect the boards I opted for the age old method of crating them together in pairs, face to face. This was always my intention and another reason I used the metal locating pieces for the bolts. As you can see from the photos, the end boards are just thin ply left over from the build with batons of wood to strengthen them. The batons are glued and screwed in placed in line with the captive locking pieces of each board. Some additional captive fixings had to be added where the boards join on the side instead of the ends.

The track exits the side of these boards as well, so additional protectors were also formed from scrap wood. You can see this on the side of board with 'start' written on it and the one behind. Some of the end pieces will become redundant once the scenery has been added as they currently hold the boards very close together to save space. The pairing of the boards may also change if buildings conflict with each other.

The intention is to now work on the boards one at a time or in pairs until May, when it will get a test run at our club open day. This will still be as a work in progress though but after that I have permission to put it back up in my Mum's garage again, thanks Mum! (She reads the blog by the way). However, the pressure is on as the layout is booked in for its first proper show in November 2013. Still, only the scratch built buildings to do, all the figures to paint, rolling stock to weather, kits to finish and couplings to add to the freight stock. Hmmm think I'm going to be busy.

Concrete

I've been helping a friend at my railway club, who is putting a French layout together for exhibiting. While modern French railways are certainly not high on my list of interests, I have done a couple of minor modelling projects for him, giving me the opportunity to try out a few new techniques and materials.

He wanted a large concrete paved area for a loco stabling. The basic concrete pieces were cut from a plastic display board material used for signs and presentations, several sheets of which I managed to rescue from the bin at work. It's quite thick to cut and shape but it also meant I was able to score in casting lines of the concrete where it would have been poured in sections. I also added some breaks and cracks with a sculpting tool.

Once cut to shape the peices were painted with a grey spray primer and left to harden. The intention was to paint the entire area with a lighter concreate colour but as the primer matches the ballast so well, this was shelved in favour of just washing and highlighting. The wash in the photos was a mixture of various black and brown oil paints, diluted with turpentine substitute. This was painted into the lines and cracks but doing this standing up and against the clock inevitably resulted in a little going over the edges. As I wiped this away it gave a very subtle shading effect, so I continued this across the board. What's nice about oil paints is that you can work them for several hours, so where I ended up with too much wash this was easily removed with a tissue dampened with the turpentine substitute. Like many washes the effect started to fade slightly as it dried, so I,m looking forward to going back to the club this week and see how it looks. Then it will be time to add the ballast and highlights.