Trees

Scenically, progress is coming along in leaps and bounds now with the Cartel Challenge layout, a lot of this stemming from having gotten the first stages of ballasting down. 

Posting the above quick photo update over on the Facebook group resulted in a couple of queries as to how I had created low relief trees for the backscene, so as a handy source to redirect people to in the future, what follows is a 'how to' as to the method I use.

You will need:

• A few dried out old twigs
• Black (Or dark green) thin card
• Woodland Scenics dark and light course foliage
• A razor saw
• A hot glue gun (or PVA alternative)

Start out with the twigs, most importantly making sure that they have been left for a few days (Preferably a week) to dry out. How big these twigs need to be is very much dependent on what scale you're modelling in, in this case each on being roughly between a quarter and a third of an inch diameter to give a nicely sized trunk for a OO scale tree. The above cutting mat is A4 sized if that helps with getting a sense of scale. An effort was also made to obtain twigs with varying amounts of knots in them to add some variety.

Next, take one of the 'trunks' and cut it to the desired length for your tree, in my case I only show the main trunk as far as the lower branches so anywhere from 1-1.5inch is enough. Do make sure to make the length slightly longer than needed to help with the next step. Then use the razor saw to cut the trunk in half lengthwise. Hey presto! Two trunks!

Moving onto the foliage (Excuse the mucky fingernail!) Start by making a rough guide out of thin card to the shape of the topography you want. Have a look at photographs of trees to get some suggestions, but if you're still struggling to get something that looks 'right' a not quite figure eight shape like the one above is a pretty safe bet. Cutting the trunk slightly longer than needed helps with attaching it to the card base, this will end up being covered.

Handy tip: Make the card shape slightly smaller overall than the intended finished size, this will very quickly be bulked out.

And finally, some greenery! Nothing too special here as it's simply Woodland Scenics light and dark coarse foliage scraps stuck down with a hot glue gun. Something PVA based would probably be preferable to many I suppose, but speed was certainly of the essence here! As a rough guide, from the bottom up to the top quarter of the base was given a layer of the darker green, lighter green being added on smaller clumps on top till it looked right. This is definitely a good time to go looking at old episodes of Bob Ross's "The Joy of Painting" when it comes to use of light and dark.

And hopefully, if you've been following along, you should have a tree like the one above that looks quite passable for a tree in the height of summer! Of course this is only really a basic attempt, scatter products could easily be used to model a tree in the seasonal change from summer to autumn. Certainly something that could be fun to play around with.

And as a child of the 90s I can only sign off this post in the manner of Neil Buchanan's 'Art Attack'.

"Try it yourself! Low relief model railway trees, and I'll see you next time! Ta-ra!"

Station Structures

Another job that needed doing with the Cartel layout before the ever so wanted ballasting was creating a couple more low relief structures for the 'platform' side of the fork. One of these being a simple weighbridge/yard office.

I'd started scratchbuilding with Wills brick sheet but I just couldn't get the look I was after, even at this early stage it felt 'off' somehow. I was also getting a little frustrated with the material itself, compared to normal, the plastic itself felt tougher to cut through, yet was snapping in a brittle way with not too much pressure from the knife. All three walls of the box above needed remaking a couple of times due to this.

For the sake of balance though, I genuinely can't remember when I picked up this particular batch of the brick sheet, it could be a case of it having been stored improperly at some point. Certainly it's the first time I've ever encountered this with the Wills stuff.

And so, it was a case of 'kitbash to the rescue' in the form of the Wills Weighbridge Hut kit. Very much taking the Chris Ford approach here to detailing to hide the origins a bit: extra bars on the window, a suggested floor on the inside of the door, a door handle from a track pin head, and finally modifying the door into a slightly open position to imply some sort of life.

The rear wall piece of the original kit was fashioned into two new end walls, wanting a different roof profile to that of the supplied gable ends from the kit.

And for comparison, the new bash with the abandoned scratchbuild, already looking much better dimensionally!

The roof proved a little tricky, wanting all the sides to meet up at a central apex, but cutting the angles on the longest side first and then using this as a guide for the two smaller pieces made the task much easier. Strips of ordinary printer paper soaked in solvent help disguise any dodgy roof joins nicely.

From there it was a case of raiding the Wills building details pack for extra brickwork, gutters and bargeboards to help alter the rather flat faces of the structure. I've got to that stage where I now find it far easier to make downpipes out of 1mm plastic rod than bash pre-made ones. Granted, the above isn't the best example, but painting/weathering does a lot to hide the imperfections.

And once again, as a fun comparison, the heavily bashed low relief version next to the lightly bashed version of the same kit seen back in September of last year.

And finally, after painting and weathering and sitting in situ.

A very pleasing result, especially after the false starts. Sometimes, the simpler solution is the correct one.

The Old Retainer

My statistics page tells me that this is the 100th post to this blog! Hooray!

We're slowly getting there with the scenics for the Cartel Challenge layout, though at times it is a bit of puzzle. Logically, I need to work from the back to the front, but there are certain items I can't start on without finishing others first. Case in point, a retaining wall needed along the front of the layout.

I really want to try getting the ballast down amongst the track soon before the really cold weather arrives and slows down drying times drastically, but I can't until I had this 'edge' added to stop the glue and stones escaping.

This wasn't what I was originally planning for this wall though. A couple of months back Micro Model Railway Dispatch editor Ian Holmes talked about how they were using a Chooch Enterprises embossed sheeting to infill the rails on their challenge layout...

It got me interested as a means of speeding up the process of layout building, and a quick search showed that not only were their products available in the UK, but that they produced a wooden retaining wall in the style that I wanted for this scene.

A sheet was duly ordered, but upon arrival it seemed to me as if the planking was a little too small, certainly one of those cases were a product being labelled OO/HO can come back to bite you! So instead a pleasant afternoon was spent making my own.

Nothing particularly remarkable here: Two sheets of 40thou plasticard glued back to back, scribed at 4mm intervals to represent foot wide planks, scratched multiple times lengthways with the tip of a sharp knife to get a wood grain effect.

Installed on the layout, a few offcuts of 80x188thou strip were similarly scratched and added to create upright stanchions. Perhaps I've gone too far in the other direction and made the planking a little too wide. Certainly when it next appears there'll be a few more stanchions added, but of course it was far easier to add to few and more later than try to remove them at a later date.

And after all that work I quickly decided to check a photograph of the prototype this is based on.

The memory cheats.

The real thing had upright planking on the wall with horizontal bracing!

I've put too much work into this to want to change it, and in all honesty, this is very much a caricature, so it does work in this context. It's hardly a make or brake detail.

A German Interlude...

It's been a while since we've had any real railways on the blog, and a trip to Germany a couple of weeks back saw the chance to rectify that, very much out of my comfort zone railway wise. Apologise that the follow images aren't the sharpest, but in the interests of space saving for thee plane trip only the camera phone was to hand!

There were planned to be at least three rail journeys on this trip, but the majority overruled on two occasions meaning that the first train encounter was rather an unexpected one in Phantasialand's 'Rookburgh' area. Don't let the above photo fool you, this was a full size replica!

From what I can gather of the theme, this steampunk society has essentially created a suspended railway system (The area's flying rollercoaster) with little traces of regular railway equipment scattered here and there, the centre piece being the life size locomotive plinthed high above. Perhaps this is more the thematic route that Hornby's recent 'Bassett Lowke Steampunk' range should have taken?

A mock poster hanging in the shadows.

Following on from a couple of (Far to hot!) days at the park an overnight stop in Cologne was on the cards. Certainly this has to be the best view from an Premier Inn I've ever had! This is the station throat at Hansaring, probably comparable with the likes of Manchester Oxford Road geography wise being just outside of Cologne's main station. A cup of... passable... hotel tea and an hour just watching the trains go by was the perfect antidote to the effects of the heat.

Just out of shot to the left was a large MPD and junction, proof that there is indeed a prototype for having a large locomotive works so close to a station, modellers rejoice!

From there a very short train hop into Cologne centre itself. One thing I've never heard mentioned before and that came as a bit of a shock was not only the size of the gap between the platform edge and the train, but also that the carriage floor was a step down from platform height!

Normal tourists would probably take a picture of the cathedral outside of the station, I decided to be different. It also gives a good sense of just how close the railway is to the building.

Interesting to see how the trains appear in the destination board here, with train allocation numbers being listed alongside the destinations and times. I can certainly think of a few situations where this would be useful in the UK, I've lost count of the amount of times I've seen passengers board the wrong train as they didn't read 'front train only'.

Up on the platform level allowed for a first encounter with a double decker train, I've always wanted to try one of these. The chance to ride on the lower level appeals to me being that much closer to the ground than normal must create an even greater impression of speed.

I was rather surprised to see that wooden sleepers are still being used in the station. There's certainly nothing wrong with it, but it's a bit of a culture shock compared to the UK's concrete sleepers in stations policy.

Quite the contrast is the station at Cologne Airport - Essentially a big concrete cutting! 

Normal model railway content continues next time!

Public Order

The first of the physical buildings for the challenge layout has reached a stage of 'almost' complete. The obligatory English pub:

You'll have to forgive the black censor bars. As mentioned before, there's a bit of a joke with the theme for this layout, and name for the pub is probably the biggest part of the punchline.

This is at its core a simple bash (Read as 'butting up against each other') of two Petite Properties kits, in this case No.12 Station Road & Crimple Cottage. I'd wanted to have a try at these kits since seeing Michael Campbell use them to great effect on his Loctern Quay layout. Both have been clad in 'garden wall' embossed plastic sheet from Expo Tools, and the roofs have been replaced with Wills slate sheet. Wanting something slightly older than the supplied shop frontage, a replacement was sourced from Scale Model Scenery, with only the minimal amount of bodging required to open out the window aperture on the body of the building.

An 'in progress' image perhaps gives a better idea of how this hodgepodge of parts went together:

It's as I'm writing this that it's suddenly dawned on me that there's only two and a half months to go till the deadline. To slightly misquote the tagline for Starlight Expresss: Better get my skates on!