Master Of Disguise

Efforts to continue fettling the board joints have been thwarted by the freak heatwave on the Costa del Clyde this week.

To make sure that everything's correct at the Porthmadog end Himself ideally needs to erect the whole layout, but the garage is not big enough.

He reckons it might be possible by poking the southern end out beyond the garage doors but the heat has been so intense that were he to try doing so we'd probably end up with buckled rails, just like those which have been stopping the full sized trains running at times this week.

So instead he's been getting on with another little task, to try and disguise the board joint which runs the length of the layout and across the fields above the station.

One way of doing this is with a strategically placed wall.

For our stone walls we use the plaster castings by Ten Commandments, and the one here is in the condition them come in the packet before they are painted.

We're also having to do some spot re-turfing after a little bit of damagae was sustained dismantling the layout at Bressingham last month.

Three Walls

So I've made a little progress with scribing the stone walls on the old barn, as you can see.

These are the walls for the smaller section at the front.

There will be a taller, four-sided structure that this attaches to in due course.

Each side was about and hour and a half's work so there's a chance I may get the basic shell completed by next week sometime.

Describing The Barn

After my last post about starting work on the model of the old barn a few people got in touch to ask about how I scribe stonework into the styrene?

(And a few others wanted to question my sanity...)

One of the questions was about what kind of tool I used.

I don't know exactly what it's called but this picture may help.

I've read some suggestions that it's some kind of dental tool - which rather puts me off ever going back to the dentist, if you ask me - but all I know is that I picked it up on a tool stand at an exhibition more years ago than I can remember.

I use the tool a the left hand end - the sort of pointy-spoon-shaped piece.

I hold the shaft very close to the bottom in the same way as you would a pen. The point is very sharp and it doesn't that that much pressure and a couple of passes to gouge out a convincing amount of styrene.

There are different types of plasticard, I know, but the stuff I use is probably a lot softer than you might think it is if you've never seen this done before.

The effect, I think, is rather good, especially at a distance.

The only problem is that the surface is much too smooth very rough or lumpy stones, but it's quite acceptable (to me anyway) for walls built out of Welsh slate blocks which can be quite flat.

Besides which, once it's six feet away from the viewer, as this will be, who is ever really going to notice?

Walls & Ballast

Some mundane but nevertheless important progress to record as Himself continues to get the layout into something approaching a state fit to be shown to the public next month.

Over the summer he has prioritised getting all the boards and trackbed complete so that the full extent of the layout can be shown.

Now it's a process of going back and completing the basic scenic details such as spreading and fixing the ballast on the newly laid track and painting the plaster cast walls - in this case on one of the boards at the right hand side of the layout, as the public sees it.

To help you orientate, the square in the middle of the walls is where Cwm Cloch farmhouse will sit (that will be an empty building plot at the show at Woking) and track curving away to the top left is heading off into the forest and towards Rhyd Ddu, or in this case the fiddle yard.

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!

Plaster Last

Plaster has now been applied onto the last board, showing the stretch of the line along by Cemetery Crossing and Himself has started sticking on the stone walls which are from the Ten Commandments range.

Supplies have run out (again) so the positions of the remaining sections of wall have been marked out in blue.

You can also see a culvert which has been built towards the bottom left of the picture.

The basics of the level crossings are in place but he has still to make up the cattle grids to go on either side of the cemetery road.

Once the plaster has fully cured it will be given a coat of mud brown emulsion all over and then the track can be ballasted.

Now thoughts are turning to the fiddle yard design.

The complicating factor here is that the tracks enter at different heights at each end - the Rhyd Ddu end is 6.5cm higher than the Aberglaslyn end - so Himself is going to consult with the fourth member of the team, the Structural Engineer, to get some ideas together.

This brainstorming session will probably happen in the top left hand corner of Wales and may well involve the consumption of ale.

More Stone Walls

There is work going on at more than one location on Bron Hebog at the moment.

As well as the progress landscaping the latest house in the Oberon Wood estate, which I posted about a couple of days ago, Himself has also been adding some of the stone walls at the back of the layout around Cutting Mawr.

The product we use for stone walls is these plaster units produced by Ten Commandments which we've found to be very adaptable even on a very uneven landscape such as the one we're modelling.

Himself spent some of his spare time on his recent volunteering trip to Wales doing some final research in this area to try to ensure we have these walls in roughly the correct position relative to the embankment and the cutting.

He's now waiting for the plaster to harden fully around the big rocks in the cutting before finishing painting the basic scenery, and then adding the small scenic rocks and rubbish, then finally ballasting the track.