A bit of work down 'The Headshunt'

Those with long memories may recall that last summer I had intended to give my larger O9 diorama 'The Headshunt' a scenic makeover, but in the end carried out a similar exercise on my 009 layout 'The Old Quarry Line'. Fast forward to March this year, and frustrated with my lack of success with a new photographic diorama to fit in a small lightbox, I decided to revisit my planned work on 'The Headshunt'. Firstly, a reminder of how it looked...

 

As well as needing some new scenic work, the other thing that was really troubling me was the heavy black surround in 5mm ply. This particularly looked awful at the left hand end where it crossed the track and platform. So I carefully (with a mallet and heavy-duty scraper!) removed it. Nothing fell apart so the front strip had similar treatment, leaving everything a little vulnerable until they were replaced. The replacements are from 3mm ply, gently rounded on the front upper edges to reduce their impact, and are also about 1mm lower. Painted grey rather than black they no longer dominate the diorama.

The two holes in the new front trim are an indication of another long-envisaged aspect of the rebuild project, as they are securing holes for a ply/hardboard cover to protect the scene in storage. 

Within the scene itself the new areas of foliage can be seen left and right. As with work on 'Beck Bridge' and 'The Old Quarry Line' these use teased-out coir hanging basket liner, sprayed in two shades of brown, and various foliage mats, stems and other items to create a varied effect. I have also added Martin Welberg tufts and some MiniNature flowers in moderation.

The pile junk behind the headshunt has grown a little, as all piles of junk do... The wagon is a KB Scale Hudson frame with Black Dog adaptor piece, with wooden deck. This was completed some time ago and saved for a use such as this. Adding this led to a rearrangement of the oil drums, which sounds easy but they were very well stuck down! The green one was moved elsewhere and the red/yellow one moved into it's place, it just looked better that way... The more subtle addition is a cab frontspiece on the right, part of an old A1 Models etch carefully painted and weathered.

Overall I am very happy with these long-awaited changes, one advantage of the delay has certainly been the use of the grey surround in place of black, in part inspired by seeing James Hilton's work recently. Working on 'The Headshunt' has certainly kept things going on the modelling front for the last few weeks too. Thoughts have now returned to the new photographic scene but nothing concrete has happened... yet.

Colin