Droning On

This is a post purely to share a photograph rather than to update you on any particular progress.

While taking some snaps of how far he's reached with the fencing Himself took a shot from directly overhead the area of the farm which looks like the kind of image you'd get from a camera on a drone.

Or possibly one of those satellite pictures on Google Earth of maximum magnification - without the pixellation, of course.

What it does show up, more clearly than a normal viewing angle I think, is the way we have used different shades and textures of scenic material to represent the vegetation - from the mowed lawn of the farm garden, to the grazed fields around the barn to the long, tufty grass elsewhere.

I reckon it looks very effective - what do you think?

In The Night Garden

While I was away last week Himself was getting started on landscaping the garden around the farmhouse.

It's a mix of our usual underlay for long grass technique and fancy-pants static grass using the electric sieve.

He also added a pathway leading to the front door.

Perhaps it's the blue colour of the render, or perhaps it's a sign I've spent too long in front of the telly with the kids when they're watching CBeebies, but the first thing that came to mind was this...

All aboard the Ninky Nonk!

One Week To Go

My personal and professional lives are currently dominated by the countdowns to some momentous events.

Here in Scotland we're all going to be taking a rather fundamental constitutional decision in the referendum on Thursday and my job is to tell the nation all about it on the wireless.

Then on Saturday we'll be unveiling the completed Bron Hebog at the exhibition in Woking - full details are on the Exhibition Diary page if you haven't already seen then.

The layout will complete in terms of the track layout and the full extent of it but it's by no means finished.

However I'm very pleased that Himself has put in a lot of hard work over the last few days to complete the basic scenic layer of wild grass on all the new boards so at least the layout won't have any big, glaring sections of brown painted plaster.

This is the view of the Rhyd Ddu end taken from the operators position behind the layout. The big brown expanse you see in the foreground is part of the fiddle yard which has yet to be hidden behind a backscene.

I only wish I could be there in Woking myself to see it, but duty - and democracy - calls! I'm going to have to wait a few weeks more until our second show of the year in Hull.

Chlorophyll Conundrum

When Himself emails me with a message saying there's an issue with a colour, I worry! Especially when the colour in question is green.

Himself, you see, doesn't do greens. Or at least the message gets lost in translation somewhere between his eyes and his brain and they all become various shades of brown. (This rather scuppered any dreams of being an engine driver...)

With the Artistic Director being blessed with the same special talent and me (who is not colour blind) being 400 miles away from where the action is happening you can perhaps begin to understand my unease.

It would appear - in fact you can judge for yourself below that it is most definitely so - that the latest batch of dyed carpet underlay grass is a different shade to the stuff we were using a couple of years ago.

This is not really Himself's fault. The technique of dunking the underlay in a cold dye bath is a very hit and miss affair and it's perfectly possible that the earlier stuff has faded a little as well since it was laid.

This close up shot gives you a better idea of what's happened here.

Fortunately this carpet underlay is only the base layer of foliage and we'll be putting much more scatter materiel on top which means we should be able to disguise the change quite well.

In all of this chat about genetic blessings and colour tones I've almost overlooked that the left hand corner of the layout is now completely covered and looks a great deal more presentable, and quite impressive too if I may say so myself.

I would like to think that Himself will be able to get most of the layout to this state for the show in Woking in September. I do know that he is certainly doing all he can to make it look the best it can be for the exhibition.

Two Months To Go

Time is racing towards the next exhibition appearance for Bron Hebog and the question is how much will Himself manage to get done before we roll up in Woking?

All the scenic boards have been built now but a fair number of them are still in a state of bare track and painted plaster.

In the last couple of days he's begun to stick some of the base coat of long grass (dyed carpet underlay) on the first board (at the Porthmadog end).

As time is now against us we can't really wait for the Artistic Director to put in an appearance to paint the walls so his apprentice has had a go...

There are a lot of stone walls on this layout. This is a particularly long stretch running across the hill.

They've built up from the Ten Commandments plaster range it may not be  unreasonable to presume that the owner of the business is presently browsing through holiday brochures for Mustique!

Grass Cutting

I showed you a picture last week of some of the carpet underlay freshly glued in place on one of the new boards.

When it first goes down there's far too much of it and it's too long and tufty.

Now this section has received a good haircut and if you click back and compare with the previous shot a few days ago you'll notice a big difference.

You've probably also noticed how much we still have to do. Himself won't get a lot of time to laze about in his deckchair this summer.....

Time For A Trim

Some of that new carpet underlay I showed you a few days ago being dried after a dunk in a bath of green dye is now being fixed in place on the layout as the first layer of long grass.

It looks pretty long and tufty at this stage but a lot of it will be pulled off and other bits given a short back & sides in due court to leave a much thinner covering.

This board is the first of the new ones we have been working on this year.

To help you orientate, what you're looking at is the middle section of the S bend. The camera is at the Porthmadog end. Beddgelert station would be over to the right of the picture and the track coming towards is about to take a big sweep to the left and enter the big U bend.

Do you know where you are now?

The Green Green Grass Of Home

We've fielded a lot of questions over the years about what we use for the long grass on our layouts. (Fielded - geddit?)

The answer is we use old hairy carpet underlay, teased out and treated to a bath of cold fabric dye.

Here is the latest batch of grass out to dry on the real grass at Bron Hebog HQ.

It seems this type of underlay is getting harder to track down. We have been kept supplied by a very kind fellow modeller who gave us some from his personal stockpile.

Himself tells me this new batch has come out slightly darker than previous lots - how long to leave it in a bucket of dye is not really an exact science - but we should be able to blend it in with some of the lighter stuff.

With static grass applied on top it shouldn't really show.

Rear View

With just over 50 days to go until Bron Hebog gets presented to the paying public again Himself has been stepping up the grass planting around Beddgelert station.

A couple of weeks ago I showed you pictures of the base layer of dyed carpet underlay being applied to this board.

Now, not only is that complete, Himself has also added a second layer of foliage including a lot of static grass in the field behind the station. (On the right of the picture)



The view you're seeing here is the one the operators get from behind the layout - although eventually there will be another two rows of scenic boards behind this which will show the first of the S bends on the climb towards Rhyd Ddu.

Getting the trackwork right on this section is going to be critical because if a train were to derail in the middle of the layout it will be out of reach from any direction!

Watching The Grass Grow

I've been writing a lot on the blog in recent weeks about using dyed carpet underlay to represent long grass on Bron Hebog and so I thought there was no harm in showing you some pictures of how we do it.

The stuff is coloured in bulk using a cold water fabric dye until it turns a yellowy-green sort of colour.

When we come to use it we tease it out into thin clumps in much the same way as you would do with a big pad of cotton wool.

As you can see in these pictures below we spread an area with PVA glue and press the teased out clumps down into it.




At this stage the effect is still rather 'shagpile' so once the glue has fully set we go back over the area pulling off the top layer which leaves a much more realistic, thinner, covering.

This, then, is our grass base to which to which we may add other flocks, static grass or even crushed rock and ballast to complete the effect.

Any questions class?

Green Kink

Himself has been undertaking more underlaying and a lot of Bron Hebog is turning green.

Here's a shot of the kink immediately south of Goat Tunnel as the line heads towards Cemetery Crossing.



You can compare this picture with previous views of this spot in this post which explains how this section of the layout had to the re-engineered following a surveying error.