Review Of The Year - Part 3

July

The early part of the summer was taken up with work on the housing estate scene.

The conservatory which I had to build for the back of the latest house was one of the more challenging bits of the estate I've had to make.

Himself had been doing some work on the gardens of the houses which are already in place on Bron Hebog.

He'd also been busy creating the cemetery above the crossing on the far left hand side of the layout.

August

I decided to take a break from house building and put together the castings for Superbarn 118 which I'd cast the previous year but kept stored.

Himself was also giving some attention to the scenery on the top of Goat Tunnel, planting a copse of trees.

We also made a start on the last major scenic challenge on Bron Hebog which is lining the Cutting Mawr at the back of the layout with rock.

Instead of using slabs of real rock, which is what we did on Dduallt, we've decided to try casting copies of sections in resin which will be lighter and make the layout slightly less heavy.

September

By this time I'd started work on the last two houses to complete the Oberon Woods estate scene, both of them are detached (mostly) bungalows.

Himself had a few models which needed priming and decided it was time to give our Welsh Pony a coat.

The photo was taken in black and white - if it was in colour you would see that the primer is actually red oxide.

We did use grey primer as the base coat of the new Superbarn 118 which was ready to start being painted.

It's seen here on the shelf in front of some of the Superbarn fleet including the service car 125 and the observation car 150.

Oberon Gets Its Wood

Himself has spent the week on a tree-building binge.

(I've no idea what's come over him because it's a job he hates.)

Anyway, he's made enough to plant the hillside on top of Goat Tunnel.

Here's a view which you very rarely see, as if you were standing on the famous PB&SSR 'Bridge to Nowhere'.

Bored!

Himself has been working on some more trees and tells me he's already bored after only half a dozen of them!

That's something he's going to have to learn to live with because there are an awful lot of them still to make to go around he layout.

A good number of them will need to be planted on the top of the tunnel to represent the small wood there.

He's also joined the two boards either side of Goat Tunnel together to blend the gardens behind the houses into the rest of the scene.

Please forgive the slightly blurred picture, Himself's phone is clearly not as smart as it thinks it is.

Tunnel North

A couple of days ago I showed you some snaps of the rock work forming the northern end of Goat Tunnel. Himself has not wasted any time in filling the gaps with foliage.



That makes all those individual fragments of rock look a lot more convincing, don't you think?



What really gives it away as a model is the virgin ballast and the shiny rails, but don't worry, that'll be sorted out soon enough.

Sticks Of Rock

A reader, Frank, asked a question yesterday about what we used to stick the pieces of rock onto the layout to form Goat Tunnel and the cutting.

I have asked Himself and he tells me he used a hot glue gun to secure the larger bits and oridinary PVA for the smaller pieces.

(I would normally have posted a reply to Frank in the comments section but Blogger appears to be having some functionalty issues in that department tonight....)

Tunnel Vision

I have another scenic update for you today.

Himself has been working on the other end of Goat Tunnel. This is the northern entrance, hidden out of view around the corner in the cutting at the bottom of Beddgelert station.



You can't really call it a tunnel portal in the traditional sense because the four tunnels on the WHR were left as raw holes through Mother Wales.

And if you're wondering what we use to model them the answer is genuine Welsh rock. No, not the minty, pink and white sticks tourists buy in the gift shops in Beddgelert, but thin bits of shale we collected from the Rhinogs behind the village where my Grandmother lived.

It's a repeat of the technique we used on Dduallt. It does, of course, add considerably to the weight of the layout boards, but as we built those out of 2 x 1 and are covering them with wire and plaster you are entitled to assume (correctly) that lightweight construction isn't a priority for us.

When this section of the railway was being relayed they had to take care with the alignment to ensure the larger modern rolling stock fitted through safely and Himself reports that he has done likewise on Bron Hebog, checking that the carriages with the biggest overhangs (the 2 Pullman carrs) can squeeze through OK.

At the moment it still does look rather like a collection of small lumps of rock but we will be adding lots of scenic material into the gaps to represent the foliage which is a feature of this cutting and that will help blend the pieces together to look more like one rockface

And anyway the tunnel mouth will be hidden out of sight of most people viewing the layout.

There's a picture of what the other end looks like in these previous posts here and here.