4mm Morfa - The race is run.

[Neil]

Are you going for the sunny look or the damp look with the clouds and lighting?

It'll be the highly improbable cloudless blue sky.

and hello to you,or at least the back of your head(by the way who took the picture spooky!!!!!!) you remember the old saying about paint drying, less painting more train running please.

So you won't be interested in photos of me painting the fascia grey.

Glad to see I'm not the only one who rolled their sky. I also added some blobs of a grey/blue and white and rolled them in for my clouds rather than trying to hand paint them it worked reasonably well I think.

As you'll have inferred from my first reply I'm planning to dodge the issue of painting clouds. I have an idea that clouds on the backscene tend to visually pull it forwards, where I want it to recede as much as possible. I'll be aiming for the gradation from a deep tone at the zenith to something paler on the horizon. The current plan is to work with a thinner, wetter mix than the base coat of emulsion. I've been trying the various blues that I have to hand, to tint the white with. All are too cold, I may have to go shopping.

 

[28ten]

Shame, I was hoping for a dramatic sunshine and showers sky
Have you decided how to represent the water?

 

[Neil]

Shame, I was hoping for a dramatic sunshine and showers sky
Have you decided how to represent the water?

Tackling the last bit first; yes I have. it's going to be my old favourite of paint and varnish. It's always served me well in the past as long as I manage to get the underlying surface smooth. All did not go quite to plan on Outwell Basin as the grain of the plywood tops grinned through. It was the one bit that that constantly bugged me. Actually when I said smooth it doesn't have to be mirror flat, just rid of grain, flakes, board joints and the indentations where the fgiller in screw holes has sunk. Shell Island had a coat of PVA applied before the paint which gave a pleasing gentle ripple effect. As there's lots of water I'm hoping that it'll come together fairly fast.

The sky, I have an idea you might have seen the work of Troels Kirk who undoubtedly can paint, and while I like what he's created it's not for me. I want a model railway that allows me to drift away for a short while to another time (if not place these days). To do this it's got to have the sort of feeling of reality that good books and films, the ones that draw you in, have. That's not to say it has to be the most finely detailed model I can possibly manage, but it has to have the bits that say 'it's a model' dialled out somehow. This means for instance that I can't have any structures that are instantly recognisable as they'll give the game away in the same way that the black five pretending to be a PLM loco jarred in a recent repeat of Poirot. Having a backscene that says 'look at me' buggers things up for me in the same way, so plain it is. Sorry.

 

[28ten]

I just think of the coast with dramatic weather, but you are probably right, it would be very hard to pull off, and ultimately you are the one who has to live with it

 

[Neil]

One for the guv; Wales at its best ...



.... and one for iploffy; a train in snazzy new surroundings ....

 

[Simon]

There's proper tidy like

Simon

(just about to bolt his bogies back together)

 

[Alan]

Could almost be in the Greek islands.

 

[Neil]

I'm not sure what's happening but another day and more progress to report. I've had two goes at applying blue to the backscene. Rather than the in your face blue of the Barmouth harbour scene I fancied something with a bit more tonal variation like my avatar on the left, but without the wispy clouds. The second attempt has been successful, or at least good enough to press on some more.



The join and the filled in screw hole stand out in the photo; you'll have to trust me that on the model they're less apparent. However the colour is right. The Triang building and card cut out of a small copse in the background are there to test my idea of disguising the branch line snaking off through the backscene.



I think the concept is sound, just need to press on with the real 3-D trees and undergrowth. I think it's also time I cut out the platforms for the coast line and the disused branch face. Moving on to the Abertafol curve ....



I'm slowly coming round to the idea of using flexitrack here. It's about a 2' - 2'3" radius curve here and I'm not too sure if my ply and separate chair track will be up to the job here. On top of that I'm not sure I'll be able to lay it accurately enough to avoid threepenny-bit joins. As there will be some visual separation between the scenes I think the difference in the styles won't show, but I'd be grateful for opinions on this.

 

[Simon]

Neil that looks good, a nice open feeling to it and noticeably more subtle than a single colour.

Trackwise, I'd have no hesitation in flextracking that section myself, scene sparation apart, by the time it is all ballasted and painted etc I don't think it will look too different anyway.

Actually, I've just realised that that is probably the wrong thing to say, the ply and separate chair track is obviously vastly superior and worth all the extra effort , its just that the difference won't notice much over this small section

Great to see more progress on your line too.

Simon

 

[Geoff]

Tis all looking rather good Neil, a large expanse of sky with low horizon like you have will give a feeling of depth and space to the scene but I would go very easy on the blue.
As for the change to flexi track once it is laid, painted and ballasted I doubt you will notice the difference especially if you cut away the web once all is held in place. CK drew my attention to this dodge many years ago and I have used it ever since.

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I have also been experimenting with a small copse and have had some success with carefully selected seamoss and twigs. The idea is to drill holes in the twigs and superglue pieces of seamoss into them to form branches, then to build up the trunk etc with plaster or modelling clay. Once painted foliage can be added to suit, simpler trees from plain seamoss can be added in the background to give depth and a canopy.

Geoff

 

[Neil]

Just found some rather splendid mono photographs of the Cambrian in the mid sixties here and the next two pages. Lots of other locations as there's over 400 pages on the site. Usefully there's a location search facility too for followers of less splendid lines.

 

[iploffy]

Just seem the great railway walks with Julia Bradbury (thinking mans crumpet sorry not intended to upset anyone) showing Barmouth bridge it looks impressive and what you are doing looks equally impressive, some time in the near future I am going to walk the bridge.

 

[Neil]

It's been a bit of a fraught afternoon, the last stage of the backscene painting went horribly wrong at first, then worse as my initial attempts to correct it failed but in the end I've managed to snatch some sort of victory from the jaws of defeat. Here are a couple of images.





Here's a bit of a cobbled together scene that hopefully illustrates the concept of borrowing the backscene that I hope to use for the open sections of the layout.



I'm hoping that I'm not going to be tempted to revisit, tweak or faff. Most of the near line of hills will be covered or partially obscured by scenery. The dark green splodgy bits on the middle photo indicates the tree line where woods back onto the tidal pool. It's there purely to deepen the shadows and should be all but invisible.

 

[Geoff]

That all looks rather good Neil and I would have been very happy with myself had I painted it.
Have you seen this site..........http://plumbloco.smugmug.com/ ? Ignore the steam and enjoy the scenery.

 

[Simon Dunkley]

I'm hoping that I'm not going to be tempted to revisit, tweak or faff.

I hope you won't, either: that is looking really good, Neil: setting a scene but without distracting detail, so that one is not really aware that it is there - just like the background in real life when focussed on the trains passing by.

 

[Neil]

Geoff:- Thank you and yes I stumbled on the plumb loco site in its fotopic days, and was vaguely aware that it had made it back onto the web after the collapse. Nothing wrong with the steamy stuff either, I have a long list of kettles mentally filed under 'ooo, that'd be nice one day'.

Simon:- Fear not, Mrs R will have her acrylics back in the morning and I've run out of white emulsion. I'm sure I can find other stuff to occupy my time.

 

[Neil]

Never one to learn from the mistakes of others I'm continuing campaigning on two fronts. First off there's the ongoing saga of the bridge. I've worked out a cunning plan that will allow the temporary flexitrack to remain right up to the point where it's replaced by the individually chaired baulk road, so having built all the piers it's time to cut them all to the same height. Another jig has been conjured up from small bits of wood.



... and here it is in use ...



Worryingly my hands appear to have the same pink hue as cheap sausages. I can assure you all that I look a little more normal in real life.

I'm also easing forward at the site of Morfa station. Lots of fiddling at the weekend with lining paper has given me a platform template, I just need a couple of sheets of mount board now.



With the positions worked out I also wanted to test out the view block trees and bushes. I've shortened this a little so that I can make better use of the space. Having the backscene painted gives a better impression of how it will all blend in.

 

[Simon]

Ah Shadwell, the utter genius of your spatial lunacy is becoming clearer

Blodwyn

 

[Dog Star]

...the utter genius of your spatial lunacy is becoming clearer

I think you mean me...?!?! Thankyou!!!!

Or "the utter lunacy of your spacial genius".... either phrase is an apt description of your ability to find a word or a phrase for every situation.

 

[Neil]

I've been a bit tired this afternoon as we went to the pictures last night (Aberystwyth - 50 mile round trip - Marigold Hotel - well worth it) and didn't get back till late. Anyhow I didn't feel like doing anything complex this afternoon so I stuck the bridge piers to the deck while running a few trains round.



Here's the bridge doing its best dead ant impression while waiting for the pva to dry; but it's not the bridge I want to talk about but the trains.

You'll have seen the back half of the first one up in the photos of the platform template. It's the up coast pick up on the way back from Porthmadog. It sports minerals both empty (from Porthmadog) and full (from Machynlleth) that have been tripped up the coast and will be shunted out at Tywyn on this the return journey. I have a variety of coal loads on Parkside and Airfix bases that can be added or removed at will. I find that just this simple act of correctly loading the relevant wagons hugely increases my immersion in the layout and makes things more believable and purposeful. The pick up also had a pair of GPVs in its consist. One of these was shunted out into the loop on the Dolgellau chord to wait its onward journey to the quarry at Abergwynant when the empties arrive.



The waiting GPV can be seen in the background as the Pwllheli portion of the York Aberystwyth mails coasts slowly into Morfa. Fifteen minutes earlier a Ford Anglia van from the Dolgellau postal sorting office drew onto the platform in position to load up.



We leave Morfa with the mails drawn up at the platform, unloading bags full of letters and parcels for the hinterland of this part of Cardigan Bay.



In many senses this tale of events is utter cobblers, a delusional ramble by a bloke only part connected to the real world, a daydreamer, a fantasist. The serious end of the hobby very often concentrates on the real virtues of the model itself, the skill and craftsmanship embodied in the finished piece, the patience and diligence of the builder even the scholarly approach to the research. I'd like to make a case for taking the same care and according the same importance to the back story and ongoing rationale that underpin the way in which we deploy the individual finished artefacts in the creation of a believable whole.