Remembering the Black Cat

It is one year since I wrote A Black Cat Crossed my Path, so on the anniversary of Mr Sooty's passing it seems appropriate to reveal something dedicated to his memory...

The nameplate is from Narrow Planet/Light Railway Stores and has been mounted in the fashion of 'Gwril' at Fairbourne, the spare plate is safely stored away.

Colin

To The End

I think I'm now at a point where I can say that 'To The End...' is now as complete as it can be. The lower edges of the board have all now been painted with grey primer/undercoat, three coats with some light sanding in-between coats and the final coat applied with a sponge roller. 

I've also fixed the backscene board in place. This is a piece of hardboard, not the most ideal of materials as it has a tendency to warp when un-framed. Unusually this piece is actually double-faced, having been salvaged from an old wardrobe, and had already been primed both sides and painted sky blue on one as part of another project. Newly cut edges were touched in with primer and everything was going well until I dropped the board and damaged a corner! Argh!! 

Luckily the damage was repaired with liquid superglue to bind the corner, then Milliput to smooth away the damage. Paint was then touched up, luckily I found the remains of the exact blue used on the front of the board. A white car primer aerosol was then used to lightly coat the front of the board as the blue was both a little too bright and a little too satin in finish. The board was then screwed in position.

The board's main function is really to protect the tree, both in storage and when on display. Of course I have nowhere to stand this on a regular basis but it will hopefully appear in public alongside 'Odsock Corner' later in the year. It isn't really much use for photography as the tree casts internal shadows on the backscene, ironically it works better without the backscene and with my white reflective sheet behind at a slight distance. The shadows on the sky can just be seen to the top left of this (cropped) trial shot.

Having said I am about finished, there may be one more addition, possibly as a removable feature. It would need a couple of blocks of wood to raise it off the rails, but would pick up on the "abandoned miniatures" theme that this scene started out with as a micro diorama...

Colin

A Scenic Sprint (To The End)

Confession time... I have not really been taking many photos of progress of the expansion of my 'To The End' diorama. I've fallen out with my bridge camera and my phone camera doesn't always get the result I'm after. Therefore there is a jump from the last post to the next image, and then we'll find that this is really the last proper "work in progress" shot... 

By this time I had added two more layers to the basic groundwork, one a layer (in some places two) of Amazon packing paper used with dilute PVA in a sort of papier mache to add a consistent surface over the card and DAS clay, then a layer of my usual paint/PVA/tile grout mix, with Woodland Scenics fine turf sieved over whilst wet. In between these layers the track was ballasted and whilst looking for materials to match the original mixture, I actually found that very mixture, result!

The concrete area was extended from the small area on the micro-diorama. I had the original Green Scene tub with this material in, but opened it to find that it had dried out. Originally this paint had some sort of powder in it, with a liquid carrier, and the dried out lumps were still powdery... could I grind it back down to a powder in a pestle and mortar, and reactivate it? Adding the powder to Hobbycraft Matt Medium I soon had a paste that resembled the original product and I could use it on the new area to extend the scene. Despite the plan being to use static grass for the new grass work, I then opted to further blend old and new by adding some hanging basket liner in around the edges of the trackwork and concrete areas to help everything blend in. 

At this early stage I was experimenting with groupings of scenic items, in an attempt to add interest to the scene, and hopefully use up some items that have been awaiting their day for a while, such as these Ravenglass & Eskdale inspired fencing panels. These were actually glued in place during the static grass work and from that point on, things just grew organically, or so it seems...

I cannot possibly describe everything in detail, but to summarise, I have:

• added further leaf litter around the track to match that on the micro diorama,
• added static grass in a mixture of colours, aiming for variation but keeping it subtle,
• created bushes/hedges from teased rubberised horsehair, with static grass fibres added a la Gravett, then foliage, and avoiding foliage matts to get a better effect,
• reinstated the fence, with a new section running into the hedge that was originally created for Odsock Corner,
• added detail/texture to the grass using MiniNatur flowers, Martin Welberg weeds and some recently acquired products.

The tree is the half-relief one completed in 2022 when attempting the Avalon Brickworks style layout. I had to remove about 2cm from it's height so it will fit in the Really Useful Box, and re-create the flare/roots at the base (then hide them in the undergrowth!)

On the micro diorama the front corner was occupied by a wheelset and a crate with a lamp inside. For the expanded scene they are joined by a bucket, keg, pallet, paving slabs and a saddletank that was originally for a model of 'Badger' but has again been painted up for some time and waiting in the wings for use in a scene. It has just been explored by a rabbit, who is looking over towards a bush from Green Stuff World from a pack I bought in a wargames shop in Bridlington on holiday last year.

More soon...

Colin

 

To The End (Revisited)

 A couple of months ago I mocked-up of a concept to expand one of my micro-dioramas 'To the End'. There is some background to this scene in Diorama Developments - To The End back in 2021, but to summarise it started life in 2016 as a 140 x 70mm scene, later expanded to 220 x 70mm. With it's home in the display cabinet no longer available I have started work to develop a larger scene. 

My initial though had been to go up to the 15" x 6" (375 x 150mm) format of 'The Headshunt' and 'Beck Bridge', but it has actually ended up a little smaller in order that it can fit into a 9 litre 'Really Useful Box', with an available height of 210mm. 

The new base is largely recycled and offcut materials, very much in the style of my 'Up-cycle' projects of a few years ago. On the underside of the board the constructional style can be seen, the corner pieces came from a pre-cut set of parts cut for a diorama board some time ago, but had to be slimmed down to suit the new board size. The extra block of timber along the top edge corresponds with a block on the surface and together are intended to provide a solid area of timber to drill to accept a wire-framed low-relief tree. 

The original diorama had not been fixed in place in the first picture and as can be seen below was shifted in location a little before the final fixing, just to give things a little more room to "breathe". Landscaping is now under way with corrugated card (cat food box) doing most of the work at this stage to create the layers. The track has been extended off the original scene and to ensure there was continuity between old and new I actually replaced the rails up to the existing cosmetic fishplates. The new track required packing to level it using some thin card.

DAS clay was used to smooth out the levels in the landscape and where possible start the blend between the old and new. I accepted that I would lose some of the existing ground cover as part of the process of blending in the new, indeed a lot of the hanging basket liner grass was trimmed right down to accept new materials on top. Having gone to great levels to create new levels in the ground, a lot of it isn't hugely apparent in the end but I am happy in the knowledge that it isn't flat! At the top of this image the area for the tree to sit in is the flat patch where the plywood is showing through.

More soon...

Colin

Trailing Behind

I haven't done a lot of modelling of late, but I have completed this Gubbin Box Models Heywood open that I bought last year. I have now put to use as a new luggage trailer for the tramcar/railcar. I had previously used a Black Dog Mining style wagon for this, but it looked wrong against the railcar on the 5" curve of 'Odsock Corner. The Heywood wagon is a little narrower and should sit a little better on the curve. 

There isn't a lot to do to these 3D prints to prepare them, other than drill out and add the handrails at either end. I did however add a pair of the Owen Ryder Heywood couplings that I acquired recently, one with the hook fixed in place and the other without hook. That end actually has a split pin hiding in the coupler casting to allow a simple wire connection to the split pin on the railcar.

The wire coupling actually bends at 90 degrees away from the camera underneath the Heywood coupler to help stop it falling out, or at least that is the theory! The print was primed and then painted in Vallejo 'Leather Brown' with the metalwork in black-grey. Washes of black-grey and brown toned the colouring down and once varnished the boltheads, couplers etc were lightly drybrushed with 'Gunmetal' to pick them out. The luggage from the old wagon was transferred over and held in place with tacky wax. Being a little smaller there wasn't room for the bicycle but I think that may turn up somewhere else soon...

Colin

'Up-cycle' Revisited?

Probably the last doodle for the wrapping paper box board for now, covering the last of the considered track arrangements. This time the evolution of my 'Upcycle' scheme from many years ago, but on a brand new board, not upcycled! Nothing too specific, a yard with assorted junk, a siding with an oil drum for fuelling locos and a nondescript hut...

Incidentally, I dry-assembled the board at the weekend, really just to check the mechanics of whether it could actually desk-sit. It can, just, but might raise more questions than answers about the ideal location of electrical connections and switches.

Colin

High Tide at Humberston

This photo appeared in my cloud storage 'memories' feed this morning, taken on Bank Holiday Monday, 5th May 2008. We were staying at the Haven site at Cleethorpes and I had caught the last CCLR train of the day to Humberston North Sea Lane to return to the caravan. To my surprise on heading through the flood gates at the top of the bank the tide was fully in and the far side of the Humber estuary was invisible, giving a surreal effect of being somewhere else completely.

(Click on the image for a larger version)

This has remained one of my favourite Cleethorpes images, in fact in 2020 a version appeared over my desk as a reminder of better days. It is still there now, a reminder of a stretch of railway that is currently out of use and the hope that it will see trains again one day.

Colin