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.

Painting the bridge

Painting the bridge started with priming it in red oxide with an aerosol. You can paint directly onto plastic card but priming a model gives the paint something to key onto and facilitates the application of an even coat of paint. A heavy dry brush of my chosen brick base colour was follow by a thick wash of mortar colour. This is then followed by another dry brush of the brick colour to leave just the mortar colour between the bricks.

Very little brickwork is just one colour and bricks even from the same batch can vary quite considerably, especially with older bricks. To replicate this I use three different colours, one lighter than the base colour and two darker.  Painting each colour in a scatter pattern, soon starts to break up the base colour without having to paint every brick. Sometimes this can look a little stark or pixely, so to reduce this effect I give the brickwork one final, very light dry brush of the base colour again, which tends to blend everything together.

Having passed under a local railway bridge I became aware that most have water seepage and damp stains running down them so added these in with some life colour acrylics. You can't see it in the photos as it was added later but another finishing touch was to add smoke blasts from the trains

, however I did this later as I wanted to locate the bridge in situ to ensure the soot marks lined up with the tracks. 

Road bridge

I decided the first structure to be built for the railway would be the road bridge, which in the real world carries the Purley Way. After looking at a number of LBSCR bridge designs, I decided to build a generic bridge based on common features rather than a specific one. There are no photos of the original bridge at Waddon just a blurry glimpse in the background of a station shot. As what could be seen was the typical southern region abutment I decided to use that as a starter and to flank them with curved supporting curtain walls which were quite common. For the centre section I opted for the Wills riveted bridge panels as the blurry photo showed a similar iron centre section.

Construction started with the four abutments as I needed these to be as indetical as possible to avoid any sloping or twisting of the bridge. Doing this first allowed me to cut all the panels at the same time, ensuring they were the same shape and size. Once the carcasses were completed I clad them with Slaters brick card and connected them with a centre section and the iron panels.

Next came the supporting curtain walls. These were quite tricky as they not only slope downwards but are curved horizontally as well. I started with the vertical shape of the wall and initially cut this as a straight line, however I soon realised this needed to be a downward curve. Once the vertical shape of the wall was sorted I then had to deal with the horizontal curve. After various experiments with cardboard I cut four formers from plastic and glued them to the base of the walls. However, after gluing the former to the base of the walls it became apparent this was causing them to twist. The remedy was to add vertical formers to the back of the walls to keep them upright and square. 

This left just the detail of the capping stones and pavements. The abutment stones were a straight forward square of plastic with the edges chamfered but the curved walls caused yet another problem. I rounded the edges of a plastic strip to represent the black engineering bricks but when it came to glueing it in place it just wouldn't sit on the wall because of the downward and outward curves of the wall. This meant cutting the strip in a chopper and applying the resulting bricks one by one over a couple of very tedious hours.

No not a tank engine, a tank with an engine!

Being a Wargamer I wanted to add something military to the layout. Something interesting that would catch the eye rather than just a lorry or staff car. As Waddon is very near the old Croydon Airport and after the 30's rebuild of the station the running in boards actually said "Waddon for Croydon Airport", I thought the TA or army might have conducted defensive manoeuvres in and around the aerodrome as an exercise. Therefore I decided one of the little cameo scenes I was going to have was a broken down military vehicle.

Attending the Reading Wargames show I spoke to the owner and former club member of SHQ Miniatures and explained that I wanted a pre-war looking vehicle for my railway layout, such as an armoured car or Vickers light tank. Peter's first offering was a nice Lanchester or Rolls Royce armoured car, which was very reminiscent of WW1 and was still in service during the early part of the war. I then explained I wanted it broken down and cutting the solid bonnet to put in a raised engine cover was going to be difficult. Peter then showed me a very nice model of a Vickers Mk2 Medium Tank. These were in service from 1925 to 1939 and in 1941 still served as training tanks in Egypt, with some being  dug in as pill boxes as a last line of defense. Therefore this fitted my background fluff as they old and outdated by the late 30's and just the sort of hand me down a TA unit might receive. It also had that post WW1 look to it. Yes it had a turret, but it also has big square high profile, riveted construction, machine guns sticking out the sides and a door in the back! "Ideal" I said, "all I need now is a crew having a smoke and a cuppa while waiting for the tank to be repaired." Unfortunately I knew this would be a case of scouring miniatures for suitable poses, trimming off guns and trying to add something that looked like a tin cup. "I've just the thing" says Peter and hands me a packet of crew sitting and standing with cigarettes and cups of tea! One I couldn't use as he had shorts and an Arabic headscarf but the othe two were spot on. 

Googling images of the tank I found how the engine cowlings opened and cut these out by drilling, gouging and filing the very thick white metal hull. I then made up new covers from plastic card and fixed then in place with super glue. I also stuck inside the hull a small piece of scrap plastic sprue with lugs on to give the general impression of an engine and manifold. Next I filed off the closed outline of rear door and added a new one slightly open, also in plastic card.

Pleased with my efforts I painted the tank dark green based on the one still running at Bovington Tank Museum and added spare transfers and weathering powders. The large letters and numbers were tricky but I found some on a left over sheet from a landing craft. The 'A' was a stencilled letter though so the gaps were carefully painted in. Next I painted the crew, which were the two SHQ miniatures, a Dart Castings figure and a plastic Faller aircraft maintenance figure, which following a little limb bending sits nicely on the hull with his head in the engine compartment. The figures in the pictures have had some further highlights and details added but other than that it is ready to go on the layout.

Alexandra Palace Model Railway Show

A visit to the Alexandra Palace Model Railway show is always a good day out and invariably quite expensive. I went along with the vague hope that I could pick up a C class, 2 Hal or even a E4 but the only sign of any of these was the C class in the Bachmann display cabinet. In fact all the trade stands were extremely low on Hornby stock and I didn't see a Hornby stand either.  Therefore it was mainly scenic purchases for the layout rather than rolling stock. 

 

The low rise buildings to the left of my station will be like those at East Croydon, which also happen to be almost identicle to the Wills kits, which I managed to pick up at Warley. Originally I was going to scratch build these based on the shops near the Reigate level crossing but when I saw how close the Croydon shops were to the Wills kit, why reinvent the wheel? Therefore I found myself heading to Langley Models to peruse their shop detailing kits. I subsequently purchased the ironmongers, the mangle with tin bath and the bakers sets. 

I also bought some additional gas lamps for the station and some lamps with a twist for the previously mentioned street. Generally I'm not keen on the Langley's figures of people but the ironmongers are good enough to put outside the shop watching the broken down tank (post to follow). Others may get put inside doorways or find themselves cut down and used as passengers.

My final purchase from Langley was a fret of man hole covers and drains. I think this is often overlooked on layout roads and adds just a little extra detail and realism.

Another purchase was a packet of the Wills bill poster hoardings to use as gap fillers and I will use the workman figure as a painter and decorator repainting one of the shop fronts rather than obligatory pasting up of the bill board.

The next items were several packets of Wills paving stones with curbs, which the larger sheets of paving stones do not have. I didn't know Wills did these when I built my bridge and consequently cut all my own curb stones. The sprues were a little deceptive in the packet as they looked like single strips of straights with an undercut to slid under buildings and two corner sections. When you open the packet you see this is in fact two straight sections folded back to back but offset due to the moulding lugs.

I then bought a few card buildings from Freestone Model Accessories to fill up the empty areas where some of the later scratch built buildings will go. These are hopefully quick build models which will add 3D structures and colour to otherwise blank areas of the layout. If you have read my other articles you will know that I like the Scalescenes kits and I still think these look excellent but with the additional detail comes additional build time, which I am not prepared to invest on temporary buildings.

Finally I have been wanting to get hold of the Cambrian SR Borail Bogie Rail Wagon kits for some time and managed to purchase two at the show. These will go nicely with the ballast hoppers, plank wagons, Dance Hall brake van and a Wills E6, to give me a permanent way train which is entirely kit built. These have now been built and will be the subject of a later post once I have painted them.

O Gauge on a budget

A good friend of mine at the railway club had some old O gauge stock given to him some time ago. He recently told me he had 'done a bit of weathering' and what did I think? This 'bit of weathering' was so good I took the following pictures during our running evening and asked him for an article to accompany them. 

It didn't end there though he also inherited a couple of white metal bogies and a chassis frame which we identified  as parts of an old Queen Mary brake van kit. This came back to the club as 'a basic scratch build', which took the drawings for me to spot descrepancies the prototype. This is his article:

"The GW open wagon is scratchbuilt on a Webster chassis. The Queen Mary is scratchbuilt using commercial bogies – make unknown. The vans are kits and the mineral wagons a mix of kits and Triang Big-Big train. The Triangs had the W irons drilled and filed out and the tie bar between the axle boxes removed. Metal wheels were also added.

The scratchbuilt wagon and the Queen Mary were built using 1mm ply (from Mick Charles Models) and card for the open wagon metalwork. These two were sprayed with grey undercoat aerosol and brush painted with Fox transfers added.

The mineral wagons were also sprayed with a grey primer then brush painted all over with a rust colour. This was followed by stippling on Railmatch frame dirt mixed with talcum powder to give a rust texture in random areas but where corrosion is likely to occur. The rust colour was not totally dry so some mixing of the colours occurred. This treatment was also applied to the interior with the darker colour (and plenty of talc) used more at the bottom of the panels, blending to a lighter colour at the top. The top edge is mostly a dark colour, again with plenty of talc. Next I applied Maskol in random areas on the outside and top edge where the rust was to show through. I found it better to apply the Maskol thickly, as although it took longer to dry it was easier to remove. Once dry the model was brush  painted with BR freight grey, all the markings added and the chassis painted with Railmatch weathered black.  When dry the Maskol was peeled away and a final weathering applied to tone down the grey and reduce the contrast between the two areas. This was achieved dry brushing with various paints  and weathering powders. The loads are builders sand and limestone roof chippings on a piece of shaped softboard fixed with PVA."

I hope you were as impressed with my friends rolling stock as I was. To me it clearly shows what can be done with basic materials and old rolling stock. Some would say it doesn't have the fine detail, or the under frame might not be quite right but to me they are far more realistic than a perfectly accurate set of immaculate wagons. And certainly a lot cheaper than £100+ O Guage Queen Mary kit. 

Cardboard City

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 very well, primarily the road running around the inside of the layout. Where the road turned the corner following the inside of the track onto the end of the layout it used all the available space and left no room for buildings. Not very interesting. After some thought I decided to put in a sharp left turn towards the scenic break and place a builders yard in the corner plot. This also had the added advantage of giving me more room on end board for the semidetatched houses I wanted.

I then decided that building simple 3D models of the major scenic elements would give an even better visualisation of the layout, how the various elements would look in place and if they would blended together well. I could have built a reduced scale model of the layout but as it 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 cardboard boxes. These boxes are held together with very little glue, relying on nylon straps to take the bulk of the weight. So whenever an empty or nearly empty box appeared I would separate the glued ends and flat pack it for transport home. 

The first item I built was the station and platforms, which quickly made me realise just how close the station was going to be the the edge of the layout but did confirm there was just enough room.  

Next was the bridge. I had decided to put this diagonally across the left hand corner of the layout to give  more interest than one directly across the track at right angles. However, the cardboard model presented me with a dilemma. It totally bisected the usable scenic space in two, greatly reducing my options of what to place there. 

Also the road by the station climbs up to the level of the road bridge (the Purley Way) and I was intending to build this, placing some single storely shops on the road for interest. That didn't work either, as the slope and shops almost completely hid the trains from the viewing public for a quarter of the layout. So what was the solution?

My mother suggested moving the bridge towards the station but not quite 90 degrees to the track, this retained a more natural look while giving the corner space back for modelling. The road will remain flat joining the Purley Way slightly off scene so as to not hide the trains but I'm going to keep the single storey shops for interest. Finally I had to admit defeat and do away with the waiting room on the platform opposite the station, as there was just not enough room between the platform and the track in the goods yard behind it. However, it will still have a long canopy similar to the original and other LBSCR stations.

 

Metcalfe kits were used for the engine and goods sheds and I added a foot bridge, terraced housing, and fencing from cardboard. Everything was built very quickly and held toether with no more than Sellotape, pva glue or Pritt Stick. All this effort was well worth it and I now appreciate the advantages when people build scale models of their layouts at the design stage,  just to see how it looks.