Odsock Od-Jobs

Whilst dithering in the workshop with all the "what next?" ideas I opted to get 'odsock Corner out of the box for a play and ended up doing a few odd-jobs. Firstly the Lister having a stretch on the circuit. This needs a little odd job of it's own when I have the patience, the pedal beneath the driver's right foot is absent, at least it is still in the box! 

Apologies for the iPhone photos by the way, they seem to have come out rather oddly in the background. My proper camera wasn't really playing either... 

The first job on the layout was to upgrade the light circuit for the office building to use a 9v battery and have a proper on/off switch added to the back of the layout, having previously relied on 2x AA batteries with a switch on the battery compartment, under the layout...

The light is now a little brighter with the more powerful battery, hopefully it will last a while in practice... You can now clearly see the Titfield Thunderbolt poster on the rear wall if you look closely.

A pure act of whimsey has seen the station cat part-repainted to try and match our 8-month old kitten Pebbles, who is a mix of black/white/ginger. Doing this in-situ was an interesting exercise but I think I've got it about as right as I can for now.

Finally the Black Dog Mining open wagon has received it's long intended log load, using dried garden cuttings. These were carefully superglued together to fit inside, having lined the body with baking paper first as a precaution to avoid sticking them in permanently. As it happens they are a tight enough fit to not need gluing in place.

The mine tub still needs a load of garden/forestry waste, that's a job for another day...

Colin

Parking up the Mini

Perusing Phil Parker's blog I spotted that he had recently completed a 7mm scale Mini from the Airfix/Heller kit. It is a later model than my Mk1 but interesting to see an alternative approach to modelling one. It did prompt me to carry out one more job on my model, to secure it in place on 'Odsock Corner. But before that I did a little extra painting and scenic work to add a moss effect to the top of the wall, having realised it still looked far too clean! 

So last weekend Saturday morning started with the Mini on it's roof with 1mm brass wire poking out of two of it's tyres... Before going any further, you may notice that I have added some body colour paint to the chassis piece under the front and rear bumpers. This was a result of a review of some more prototype photos and by Phil's model. It looks a different shade here under the light but in place on the layout it is not noticeably different.

I had been wondering for some time how to fix the Mini in place without actually sticking it down. For the Vauxhall Astra on 'Shifting Sands' I used the screw hole that previously held it into the packaging and a suitable bolt through the baseboard. No such luck here... and my original idea to use long 12 BA bolts into the tyres failed when I realised I had nothing long enough. I calculated the thickness of the baseboard and other layers to be getting for 20mm! Using a template I drilled into the tyres and fixed the rod with epoxy resin. It is seen below checking all is well prior to the next stage.

The template was then used to locate and drill the holes in the layout, initially at 1mm but then to 1.5mm to allow a little leeway and for the differences in materials (the wires tended to get stuck having gone on a wander through the foamcore layer over the main ply baseboard top). Here I have held the template using a cocktail stick in the first hole and I am drilling the second hole.

With the holes drilled I positioned the car and then undertook one of those jobs that needs three hands... I held the board on it's side, pushed the car down to the road surface and underneath, slid the inside of a small chocolate block connector over the wire and screwed it on tightly. Did I say three hands? make that four... This actually the system used on 'Shifting Sands' to hold the lamp-posts in place and allows for the Mini to be removed if required at a later date.

Whilst carrying out this work I decided that at some point soon I'll paint up my two remaining Pigeon castings to add to the wall ready to take aim at the car having no doubt added more mess to the wall!

Colin

Sign of the Time

The office at 'odsock Corner now has a sign to indicate to all lost souls where they have ended up. However, it may not assist their confusion...

Whilst I could have created this sign and the ghost letter effect entirely on the computer I actually went down a more convoluted, yet practical route by starting with an actual sign. This uses a wooden sign blank purchased from The Works (cut-down to three planks from four) and self-adhesive cardboard letters from Boyes. 

The sign blank was sprayed with grey primer and sanded to a weathered effect, whilst the letters were temporarily fixed to a scrap of cardboard and sprayed black. The letters were then stuck to the sign and because the adhesive wasn't that great, the whole thing was then sealed with diluted matt medium. The letters were then dry-brushed with grey emulsion from a match-pot to give them a worn effect.

The intention is that the bottom plank will eventually have some extra info added such as scale/gauge info. However I needed to leave it blank to create the model sign... 

The next stage was to photograph the sign square-on on the back step of the house in daylight (but not bright sunlight), adding in an unpainted 'H' on the bottom plank in order to create the ghost letter on the final sign. This photo was then manipulated in my editing software to create the signs for the model, moving the ghost letter to join the top plank and carefully blending the join.

Three sizes of sign were printed on glossy photo paper, which was given a coat of spray matt varnish and left to dry overnight. The middle size was chosen and cut out with the raw edges touched in with a pencil. The resultant signs were then fixed in position and matt varnish run around the edges to kill the shine from the pencil.

As part of the same exercise I also created some small 'Private Keep Out' signs for the gateway, these were created entirely in my image software but treated in the same way as the nameboards.

I'm not sure if the rabbit will pay any attention... 

Colin

Tyred

I realised that a feature of the Mini was not really apparent in the pictures posted recently. As a fairly cheap model the tyres left a little to be desired, moulded in hard plastic with no representation of tread around the circumference. Realising I could not easily and reliably scribe this detail on to the model I opted to create the effect by weathering.  

So I found myself cutting very thin strips of masking tape and wrapping them around the wheels, one centred and one either side. In fact I did this twice as during the first attempt I realised the strips were not thin or consistent enough. I then dry-brushed the effect of driving on a dusty roadway onto the treads of the wheels, and once dry removed the masking...

To my surprise the effect, although subtle, works! Not bad for an idea sparked by looking at my car tyres after a trip down the lane to the Sherwood Forest Railway...

Colin

Three Pound Mini

There is a new arrival at 'odsock Corner in the form of a Mk1 Mini tucked to one side of the lane. It's very unlikely anything will be able to get past!

The original sketch from many years ago that was eventually brough to life as 'odsock Corner did indicate a vehicle could fit here, and I teased an ice cream van in the space last year. However to be as practical as possible in the daft space a smaller vehicle was going to give a better balance to the scene so I sought out a Mini. After some research into the various options in 1:43 scale I opted to go with the Lledo Vanguards model as I felt the shape looked about right. A trip to a local toy fair before Christmas found one in the original packaging for just £3.00.

It is quite a basic model, I think later versions were probably improved a little but the basis was there for some modelling work to create something unique. Creating a reasonable "layout" model from a cheap diecast is the sort of thing the late Chris Ellis, editor of Sale Trains and Model Trains International, would have encouraged. The model required old-school dismantling using a power drill to drill out the rivetted joint underneath the bonnet and then unclip the rear registration plate.

I failed to take any work in progress shots but the notable work included:

• Fixing the front wheels with a slight steer to the right and sanding a flat into the base of the tyres so the model sits better on the road,
• T-cutting the paintwork on the body to remove imperfections in the surface (I picked this tip up in one of Gordon Gravett's books) and carefully removing paint from handles and trim reveal the metal surface,
• Spraying the body, chassis and interior with Humbrol matt varnish, subsequently re-coating the body in Halfords matt lacquer as it looked too matt (!),
• Weathering, including the wheels (more about them another time...) and a few bird deposits to hide lumps in the paint on the roof,
• Adding (HO scale) windscreen wipers over the moulded originals and weathering the screen.

Finally everything was re-assembled and the drilled out rivet filled with Araldite and clamped together whilst drying. 

A few other additions of note are the usual Araldite on the headlights and some printed items in the form of a newspaper and crisp packet in the front window and a Tesco carrier bag on the parcel shelf, These came from a Scale Model Scenery print-at-home sheet printed on matte photo paper. The registration plates were created using an online generator for real plates, screenshot and manipulated to size and printed on glossy photo paper. In all these cases I have peeled back the layers at the back of the paper to make it thinner with less of an "edge". The registration plates had the edges touched in with a pencil to hide the whiteness.

All in all this has been a very pleasing project. Whilst the result may not pass really close scrutiny (especially the windscreen wipers) it is really at home on the layout.

Colin 

 

Watching the World

A new addition to 'odsock Corner is a lone figure sat on the bench outside the office watching the world go by... I've decided to be very careful and not over-populate the tiny scene so apart from train drivers and passengers, this is likely to be the only figure actually on the ground, so to speak.

In a new direction for me this is a resin 3D print, sourced very economically from Eddie King's 3D Printing For Charity who attend many shows in Lincolnshire, the East Midlands and surrounding area and raise money for the Lincs and Notts Air Ambulance. I've seen the air ambulance land in our village twice in the last year, so this is a very deserving cause.

Whether he is pondering the options for an Ikea Mosslanda shelf or has been distracted by the O9 possibilities of the Peco Rail 200 Competition Baseboard we shall have to see...

What I can say is that he was cleaned up, sprayed with grey plastic primer, washed with a black-wash and then carefully painted with acrylics, using dry-brushing techniques to leave shadows in the creases of the clothing and head/hands. The trousers used an initial darker shade and subsequent lighter shade to further enhance the creases. A waft of matt varnish completed the finish and I think he's turned out rather well.

Colin

Saturday Snapshot VI - One Year On

This popped up in my memories feed this week, a year ago I was playing with the cardboard mock-up for what would become 'odsock Corner'. I suppose I really shouldn't share this as it highlights that it has taken a year to get to the point of a scenically complete scene in a very small space...

I'm not sure I've used this particular shot on the blog before, demonstrating that there was room to park a vehicle between the crossings... Whilst the ice cream van is may be a bit too much, work is underway on a vehicle for that spot. More soon...

Colin

Batteries not Included

One of our local exhibitions takes the form of a joint event with the Model Bus Federation and attracts an interesting range of traders. One of my fellow NGRM Online members described them as some of the best rummage boxes around... At the most recent show my eye was drawn to what looked like a large tramcar controller, the sticker said it was Tomytec, needed batteries and better still was just a pound! I've experimented with battery control on the Christmas pizza and I thought it would make a novel controller for the O9 battery railcar on 'odsock Corner.

Opening up the back I was surprised to see it used 4x AA batteries, and a quick test confirmed that was more than enough as the railcar was at an acceptable speed just opening up the controller with top speeds more suited to HS2. A comment on the NGRM online forum confirmed what I thought from a quick look at the inner workings, that you could bypass two of the battery slots and it would work at half-power. The retained batteries are at the base of the unit for better weight distribution.

With a suitable DIN plug added to the wire it has proved successful, the layout currently residing on the lit shelf in the shed that was intended to be home to so much more layout...

Another battery related project is one that provision was made for earlier in the build, adding an LED light to the office building. I'm not a huge fan of overly-lit layouts and feel that light does not scale easily, so the intention here is not over-bright illumination to use in the dark, just enough to see what is inside when scene depicts day time. Before Christmas I found a trader on eBay selling pre-wired LED units and bought a single-LED unit to try.

The two wires pre-soldered to the single  LED were sprayed grey to disguise them within the building, they drop through the hole in the floor and under the board. At present they lead through a hole in the framing that I had to drill by hand, to a switched battery pack for 2x AAA batteries hidden under the baseboard. I found that a unit for 2x AA was just a little oversize to fit. If the 3v provided by these batteries proves not to be enough in the long term I can possibly fit a 9v battery in the space. 

Photographing a very dimly-lit light in daylight is rather tricky, so I resorted to turning the room lights out after all. In reality that street lamp would be lit as well, but the railway at 'odsock Corner probably sleeps at night!

Colin

'odsock Corner - Flora and Fauna

'odsock Corner is reaching a point where you might say that it is nearly complete (on the basis a model railway layout is never actually complete!) Since it's last appearance here there have been several enhancements to both the natural scenery and the man-made junk. The overall view below shows the current state of work, with the third tree in place back-left and lots of new smaller details.

Seen before they became lost in the undergrowth are some of the "animals of 'odsock Corner". From left to right, we start with a minor celebrity, "the Brookford Pheasant", obtained from the fabled Brookford layout some time ago; two rabbits from Northumbrian Painting Service, bought at the 7mm NGA event at Mickleover along with some pigeons who we will meet later! The cat is an Omen casting, and the duck from Duncan Castings. All apart from the pheasant were painted by myself.

The pheasant is lurking under the new tree, where I also added in some variety to the undergrowth with some Mininatur flowers and a raspberry bush. On the junk pile you can just see a child's trike in the bushes to the right. There are other new additions behind the tarpaulin and they are actually posed in such a away that you really cannot get the camera in to photograph them! I did try, as you will see later... 

Those pesky pigeons have taken up residence on the roof of the office building, and have left their mark using a stippled mixture of green-grey and yellow paints. I've also added a fair bit of moss growing on the lower rear edge of the roof under the tree. Other additions to this area are the bucket and the bin to the left of the hut, both West Hill Wagon Works 3D prints, and in-between these one of the rabbits is minding their own business. The ex-Shifting Sands bench, the cat and the lamp post all add more interest to this scene.

More Mininatur flowers can be seen around the layout and around near the gateway the other rabbit is seen. This area is also the home of the 'lost' duck. There is a puddle there which he has obviously mistaken for a much bigger expanse of water!

And finally... an attempt to see the extra junk in the centre of the scene. I suppose it is quite atmospheric! The carriage door is an Avalon Line left-over from the railcar conversion, but in front of that are some redundant bench ends lying flat on the floor, you'll have to take my word for that...

Colin

Through the Gateway

Heading through the gateway featured last week finds further scenic finishing in place. In the area between the tracks and trees I added brambles using both coir hanging basket liner and a small offcut of rubberised horsehair as the basis. Both were teased to shape and sprayed with Humbrol matt brown before being glued in place with PVA, sprinkling some fine turf ground foam over any exposed glue.  Once dry hairspray was used to fix Woodland Scenics foliage mat in place with a sprinkling of loose material to complete.

The triangle to the right of the felled log will soon be host to a little extra junk and more growth around it. Across the line I added more hanging basket liner based undergrowth/brambles to the area around the location of the third tree. I had originally intended to add higher hedgerows here using rubberised horsehair but found that it looked out of balance visually and put the pieces to one side for another day. 

When adding further material to the bramble patches, over-spray of the hairspray into the static grass caught some of the loose foliage material and gave a pleasing effect of growth within the grass. Having used similar techniques within hanging basket liner grass before I had intended to experiment on the static grass anyway, so rather than put it off for another day, I opted to add some growth around the tree stump.

Darker green material was used on the longer grass around the stump itself, whilst in front some lighter green and yellow material from Green Scene gives us the look of daisies in the grass. I find that adding effects like this can really enhance the grass areas so I went on to add more in several places around the layout.

More soon...

Colin

Saturday Snapshot V - Growth

Although there are still some areas to revisit and enhance, I'm pleased to report that 'odsock Corner has finally reached the stage where all the scenic ground cover is in place and there are no (unintentional) patches of bare earth. The previously turf-only narrow strip along the back edge of the layout can be glimpsed here through the gateway sporting a mixture of wild grass and brambles. 

A recent purchase of Green Scene 4mm straw grass, mixed with other longer grasses I already had to hand, has allowed me to create a pleasing colour and texture different to the other grassed areas on the layout. The brambles added along this edge and in the centre of the layout, use coir hanging basket liner material as a base and Woodland Scenics foliage material, with some added effects. Foliage creeps over the wall to effectively disguise the point it cuts off at the baseboard edge.

Colin

That tree in the corner...

In best railway tradition, this post is running late, at least a fortnight and possibly a month! It has got close to being published a couple of times but I really wanted to get the heading photo right and for various reasons it has taken a few attempts. 

We last featured this tree back in December in Twigging On when it looked suitably wintery and bare. it has now progressed scenically by about six months to be in full bloom. This is a task that was taken steadily and whilst usually a workshop task, the cold weather actually saw it completed in the house with a lot of cleaning up after each session.

Over the course of about a week the tree was fully foliaged using Woodland Scenics material, matt medium and hairspray, getting to the halfway point on the Sunday evening and completed on the weeknights.

The base layers of teased-out foliage material were secured to the branches using matt medium, working around the tree from the lower levels upwards. After the matt medium was dry on a level,  hairspray was used to secure additional material over the first layer to build up the effect of bushiness. 

Being indoors allowed the matt medium to dry fairly quickly so I could go away, do something else and return to take the next steps, then repeat... Working up the tree this way makes for pleasant, short working sessions before the task becomes too repetitive or the mind wanders... Once each layer was complete more hairspray secured the foliage in place and some lose material from the packet was sieved over to tree to further add to the layered effect.

Although nominally complete in the picture above a few extra layers of foliage were added to the top of the tree before I was satisfied enough to call the process to a halt, with the final result as shown in the heading photo.

Those paying attention and taking notes may notice from the heading photo that despite my careful planning to get items in place below the trees, there has been a re-arrangement of the various elements, hopefully giving a more coherent look. The broken Hudson wagon frame has been turned around and propped up on offcuts of timber, with the intention of having the other wheelset in front of it once modified and weathered. The cement bags have been placed on the floor near the slabs and just in case you needed to know they were cement bags, the top one has a clue added... 

A few extra items of junk are being produced to add a little more to this scene, hopefully to break up the linear feel everything has to the present time.

More soon...

Colin

'odsock Corner - Trees, Leaves and Junk

We left 'odsock Corner' with the office building and walls in place and the next stage was to start to infill the central section of the scene. There needed to be a certain order to this to avoid having to fiddle around adding items under the trees once they were fixed in place. The eagle-eyed will notice that since they were last featured some of the items being used have changed, such is the nature of layout development.

The first notable change is that the post and rail fence that I created to go alongside the office building has been replaced by something a little more makeshift in the form of a wattle fence panel supported by three weathered offcuts of cocktail stick. 

The fence panel itself was one of a couple of items I acquired in the sell off of bits and pieces from the well-known 7mm standard/narrow gauge layout 'Brookford' a few years ago, I think it suits the location well as a makeshift but elegant solution in an estate setting.

Behind the fence another change in plan sees the wagon in the siding changed to the Hudson skip frame with broken axleboxes that I created a few years ago. Until very recently it had been in place on 'The Headshunt' but it actually looks better in context here. In the photo below I was trialling the arrangement of various bits and pieces that needed to be fixed underneath the tree.

The sheeted object is a Ten Commandments casting, the pallet and oil drum Knightwing and the oil can from a Cararama set. The wooden crate and sacks piled on the wagon are Black Dog Mining castings. The paving slabs propped up against the wall are home-made from mounting card. As part of the process of placing these items I wanted to add in a layer of leaf litter around several areas under the trees, This mix of brown scatter, dried tea leaves, crushed Green Scene leaves and various other materials was applied over a layer of WWS basing glue and additionally secured from above with dilute matt medium.

With hindsight I perhaps have some over-sized material in there, the Green Scene leaves did not break down too well in a pestle and mortar, I don't run to a coffee grinder ala Mr Gravett but it would probably be better. I may revisit/refine this mixture before too long. A similar mix was applied on the road side of the wall but I actually think I got the balance about right here in terms of material size. I really must add some vegetation climbing over the wall itself at some point...

Work is now underway to add foliage to the remaining tree and after a bit of a saga I have the spray paint required to add a little colour variation to my base material for bushes and brambles so hopefully if the weather isn't too cold and the workshop not too inhospitable, some more progress will be made soon.

Colin

Saturday Snapshot IV - Progress

After all my grass-growing woes of the last month it is very satisfying to bring you this image of how far things have come in recent weeks. The walls and office building are now fixed in place and hopefully it won't be too long before the trees are too...

The weather forecast for the weekend ahead is probably telling me not to spend too much time out in the workshop but we shall see what is possible, I think hairspray dries better in cold weather than PVA, right?

There are a few new developments to come in the next few weeks and maybe one or two changes of mind, watch this space...

Colin

Hanging Basket Liner Blues

Regular readers will know I've been an advocate of using hanging basket liner to represent grass for about 20 years now, resisting the more popular methods of grass application that have become available... until now. 

Having got the basic ground cover in place I was ready to start the application of hanging basket grass in my usual fashion by laying down neat PVA and applying the brushed hanging basket, letting it dry and pulling the backing off before manicuring it as desired. It failed, twice over. After several sessions I had a very patchy effect and several areas had no effective grass "growth".

I had used my usual PVA, twice. Some of the PVA was absorbed into the material and not bonding to the ground surface. This current PVA is a just post-Covid purchase and I'm not convinced it is as good as the old stuff. I then tried Gorilla PVA and had better results but not perfect, still ending up with some areas entirely not stuck down. I then tried a coat of Matt Medium on the next area to seal the surface first, but it made little difference. The photo above was the result - it may not look too bad in the photo but there should really be grass everywhere...

This is a closer view, PVA was applied across the whole area in front of the rocks!

I have put some of the issues down to the coldness of the workshop during the week I was laying down the grass, hovering a few degrees over freezing most of the time. I have had a few fails before but never to this level and frankly not to this level of disappointment. I have now stripped back a lot of the current grass, sealed the surface with Matt Medium and added a thin layer of ground foam to start again. At around the same time I fixed down the resin tree stump and blended in the ground surfacing around the base.

Whilst I am still a big proponent of this method of creating grass I decided that I could do without the hassle and I therefore bought myself an early Christmas present in the form of a small static grass applicator. Experimentation has begun...

Colin 

'odsock Corner - Bits and Pieces

Where does time go? Work started on these items back in September and has proceeded embarrassingly slowly...

Over time the lamp and the wagon with the missing planks were joined by a few other pieces as ideas developed, the tree stump making an appearance during layout planning and is a Steve Bennett casting. All finally received a coat of primer and were painted over a few weeks and were matt varnished on the weekend just before the weather turned a lot colder. 

The fence is cobbled together from Slaters left-overs from a childhood project and would have been easier to start from scratch but I like to recycle... Also recycled is the bench, another S&D kit, one of a few bits assembled and painted by my Dad for Shifting Sands. It was later removed in favour of a Peco telephone box and I have restored the paintwork on the planking where a figure had been removed leaving the brass strip exposed. It has hidden itself rather well with just some careful colour matching and then dry brushing to match the shade of the lamp post.

Colin