The Beck Bridge - Difference in a Day

Easter Sunday morning saw a major step forward in the Beck Bridge project. I'd like to say it was a carefully planned and choreographed event, but in the end I'm just glad that I manged to get everything in place in the right order! The aim was to get the track in place, but obviously that needs the bridge to be glued in place, which in turn needed the scenery underneath to be infilled, which needed the water to be satisfactory. You get the idea...

The evening before I had glued some sections of hanging basket liner grass in place along the abutments under the bridge and pulled this back to give some basic ground coverage. First job on Easter morning was to give this a trim, after that I could start to use the Peco Scene 10mm tufts and strips I had purchased for the purpose of creating long grass by the water. Using short lengths of two strips ('water meadow' and 'marshland') mixed with 'patch' tufts, I was able to get a good mix of colours along the waters edge. I also added in some Silfor tufts within the hanging basket liner area to get more colour variation.

The photo also highlights the modifications made to the Peco track prior to laying, adding in KB scale dummy rail joiners around fake joints in the rail, and painting and weathering. I sprayed everything with Halfords matt brown aerosol, then cleaned the rail heads, then sprayed towards the tops of the sleepers with Humbrol 29 spray (called dark brown but not that dark). Rail heads were cleaned again before the paint dried. Once glued in place with PVA I weathered the sleepers to represent worn timber and added a wash of Humbrol 160 red/brown over the rail sides.

Easter weekend being something of a warm one it was then too hot in the workshop to do any more, but the next morning I was able to add ballast to the track, a blend of Woodland Scenics fine buff and grey material. This was laid on dry, wetted with water and then fixed with Johnson's 'Kleer'. It is amazing how doing this suddenly brought the two halves of the scene together as one, I suppose it has hidden the last obvious join?

The bridge deck is un-ballasted, based on the treatment of the bridges on the now closed Markeaton Park railway in Derby. Getting the ballast to taper down took some care but I made sure there were a few stray lumps to make it look realistic!

Colin