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It's about that time of year when we start doing
the big countdown until the REALLY fresh venison lands on our roof
and I spend a few weeks running from my darling wife for fear of
being forced to endure more endless conversations regarding Christmas
Lights. |
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So whilst on my yearly hiding pilgrimage, I have
managed to find sanctuary in the layout room, you'd think that
Jade would have learnt to look there first but thus far my luck
has held out. Lets all hope that Jade doesn't read this whilst
she is uploading it, lest I am forced to change my little rant
to Adam's Christmas Corner!
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Whilst getting some work done on the layout I
(as usual) had a train running around to keep me entertained. This
time it was our semi-complete Beyer Garrett with its heritage train.
After not having seen it for about 20 minutes or so, I was getting
concerned as to whether it had derailed on one of the many hidden
sections of the layout. |
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Eventually, I found it and discovered that the
motor had had a minor dispute with the life and death police…
it had not won. So after having sworn for a short while (Jade-
3½ hours to be exact), I decided to change the motor. After having
done this I then proceeded to burn the sound unit out.
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This obviously required some serious swearing
to be done (Jade- That was Saturday gone). After some time and considerable
strain to my vocal cords I decided to put replacing the sound unit
down on my "to do" list… So that's only 7,384 things to go and then
it's straight into replacing the sound unit. |
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It would appear that this year the vast majority
of the presents being delivered from the obese one with the red
pajama and reindeer fetish seem to have a Wuiske Models label attached
to them. That being said, there has been very little time to do
much other than take fleeting looks at the layout.
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I have been building a custom 1720 loco for a
bloke down in Canberra. The model requested was a late 1970's version
of 1770 (James Cook). After organizing the decals for this it was
decided that we should make a model for ourselves of the same loco
in corporate livery. |
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The small amounts of progress made on the layout
recently are centered around the future road bridge at the Summiton
end of the yard. I've used a few spare Woodland Scenics retaining
walls to form the abutments, I chose these because they are made
from Hydrocal (basically plaster).
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| I like to use plaster castings where possible
as they take paint rather well. |
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Particularly if you are trying to simulate concrete,
the paint will just "stain" the plaster rather than cover it evenly.
So far as the painting process, I have used the el-cheapo $2.00
paint from Crazy Clark's and then heavily diluted it with water.
I've then used the same method to "paint" the plaster work around
these. |
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I used an off cut of one inch timber to form
a straight road base for the future bridge approaches and created
a small embankment on either side of it. The idea is that when completed,
a large shopping centre will occupy the land adjacent to the road
way. I am intending to style this from any number of boring and
bland prefabricated concrete
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| buildings that litter our landscape. |
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A small amount of decaling and weathering and
it should (in theory) look the part and provide a modern background
building. If we then place a walkway along the edge of the yard,
complete with a decrepit old fence with some weeds then we should
have a nice scene that is nearly a metre long. |
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As it is the 21st of December as I am bashing
this out on the computer it is about that time when I start to think
about Christmas (Jade has been thinking, planning and plotting about
this since February). We should be getting a visit in the morning
from a mate I have not seen since the Toowoomba Show.
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| For those of you that may know him, it's
Graham Shimmin. Grey Ham is a member of the British Railway Modelers Association.
That is the group that forces their model figures to adopt cockney accents
and drink warm beer. |
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Despite all of these obvious faults, he still
manages to be a great bloke so with a couple of days of non stop
Queensland modeling there may in deed be hope yet for him. Most
of you out there who have attended the Brisbane Miniature Train
Show would have seen his layout "Cable Warf" and its impressive
urban scenes. |
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So with the imminent arrival of Grey Ham, we should
be able to spend a solid 48 hours playing trains.
We shall see how we go.
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