No major projects have been worked on since the last post, possibly because it is cold in the shed. With no pot belly stove and electricity prices sky high. If I go down there too early you must dress like an Eskimo which rather restricts movement with the gloves. As the day progresses, and with sun up you can feel it getting a little warmer. No it is not really that bad, and with only another few weeks of winter and spring approaching it will be more conducive to work days. We have been blessed with a few mid twenty degree days. Up the afternoon end of the shed is a metal roller door where you can feel the suns heat radiating on the inside of the shed. I like to call this natures heater but it is still not enough or early enough to be of any use in heating.
So the concentration is on the right hand side of the layout as you go in the door. As probably explained the 'right hand' side is made up of modules that can be readily evacuated when the need arises and being on the 'Stairway to Heaven' (or is it the Highway to Hell?) I want to see at least one section finished.
Layout building is made up of many elements, all enjoyable and while there is a certain order in construction the finishing of a layout is flexible. Of course the baseboards need to be made and then the track can be laid. Once it is wired up the the scenery work can take place, that's basically how it goes.
Another part in the layouts progress is coming back to a scene and adding the extra detail bits that finish a scene. One of the things I have been doing around the layout is adding signs and notice boards, these are what we expect in real life and rightly so should be included. The plus side is that it gives scenes some completeness.
A simple warning sign 'Beware of Trains' would be expected in real life and so is recreated to this scene. It only required a piece of stripwood for the post, some styrene for the sign and a computer generated sign readily stuck on. The whole sign was hit with a diluted Tamiya khaki drab colour to weather it up.
Another sign is a level crossing warning which was made with some styrene glued to a timber post and painted in accordance with the standards. This is the approach 'X' is white and the rear is painted black. A simple quick sign that adds to a scene.
Again in similar fashion the larger warning signs for road traffic are made with styrene arms fitted to a timber post.
So apart from making some signs I have started work on the station building for Broadwater. The building is an Ian Lindsay station, purchased a while ago luckily when they were still being made. It is fairly straight forward and I will do a future post on it when completed.
Another thing I wanted to try out is to take some photos of the bridge and try to replicate sunrise/ early morning with it just getting light. I needed to use my 35mm camera for these shots for time exposure. I used some multi colour lights I got from Aldi some time ago and after many discarded shots some of the better ones are shown below.
I'll finish off with a selection of other photos taken around the layout and include a few with the late afternoon sun shining into the shed.
