The farmyard at "Long Hollow Station"

the blacksmith

This year I wanted to take a diorama to the Narrow Gauge convention in Melbourne. I have wanted to include a model of a farm on my layout and so decided to build the collection of buildings that make up the farm yard.  All the  four buildings are models of actual structures that still exist (some only just). The era I model, the late 1940's was a time of transition when the horse was being replaced with tractors and cars.

 

When I was growing up in the 1970's most farms still had stables, blacksmith/workshops and milking sheds. Today most of them are gone, victims of progress and termites. I built this diorama as a tribute to my grandparents who farmed back then and worked very hard to give my parents and I opportunities they never had.

 

When the area I live was first settled it was made up of very large stations covering tens of thousands of acres. Before wire fencing was invented these properties were cut into few but very large paddocks. Long Hollow was the name of a paddock that covers much of our farm, so I thought that was a fitting name for the farm on my layout. 

 

It has taken most of my modelling time this year to get this built. I didn't win any prizes in Melbourne, but I think entering competitions are more about pushing yourself to try new things and to be a better modeller. If nothing else a deadline guarantees I will get something finished

the diorama with the blacksmith and stables at the front



the cat and cow are waiting at the milking shed. The gate is a Sunshine brand once seen on most farms but rare today, scratch built from brass wire

the kids have arrived home from school and are keen to see what their father is up to. It looks like he has the seed drill hooked up to do a spot of sowing

11th Australian Narrow Gauge Convention

If its Easter on an odd numbered year it means that its the Australian Narrow gauge convention. This years convention was the 11th and it was held in Melbourne and what a cracking weekend it was. I have been to nine conventions now and it was great to catch up with friends, make new friendships, be inspired and just have a good time.

I began the weekend with some rail-fanning on Puffing Billy,

 

 

and visited Bill Blacks beautiful Sn3 D&RGW layout that is featured in the current edition of Narrow Gauge Downunder magazine 

 

 

I had the opportunity to photograph the railway yard at Emerald. This was once a busy station on the Victorian narrow gauge branch from Ferntree Gully to Gembrook. Today Puffing Billy runs through.

 

 

At the convention the contest room was full of models of an exceptionally high standard

 

John Hunters O scale diorama

 

Richard Gryner's O scale diorama, winner of the diorama contest and voted best in show

 

Dan Pickard's mantel piece challenge entry and winner.

 

There was also layouts on display,

 

 

Smugglers Cove built by Geoff Nott and Michael Flack (On30)

 

 

Lomu Lomu by Steve Petitt. A beautiful layout that Steve only started in January.

 

There was numerous more models and layouts as well as traders to help spend the hobby budget. Like I said it was a great weekend and I have come home inspired and keen to work on the layout. The next convention will be held at Bowral Easter 2015 and I already have it in my diary.

 

An addition to the toolbox

I recently purchased from Australian Jewellers Supplies a new jewellers saw made by Knew Concepts. What makes this saw different to my old saw is that it has a tensioning nut that keeps the blade at the perfect tension.

It is very easy to swap blades and then get the tension right. The big advantages of having your saw blade tensioned right, are that it's easier & quicker to cut, easier to cut straight and you don't break near as many blades.
It wasn't a cheap investment but it should last me a lifetime. I have started converting another Bachmann loco ( see more modifying locos from last year) and I am currently cutting the cab from brass sheet. With the new saw I cut the entire front cab wall out in about a quarter of the time that it took last cab and never broke a blade. Less hassles cutting makes working with brass much more fun.

Cheers, Murray

To stage or not to stage?

Things have been slow on the layout at the moment. School holidays, extremely hot weather and a post harvest slump have conspired together to keep me from the shed. I have also been working on a diorama to take to the 11th Australian narrow gauge convention . A couple of weeks ago I realised how little time there is until Easter and how much work I have to yet to do, so that will be my priority for the next month or so.

While I may not have been doing much physical work on the layout I have been thinking about making some major changes. I had always planned to have some hidden staging that would allow for continuous running, but to achieve this I needed a duckunder or lift out bridge at the door into the shed. I have never been keen on the idea, but haven't been able to work out how to live with out it.

I recently listened to a podcast interview of Doug Gurin on the The Model Railway show (episode 45) were he talked about your layout telling a story. That interview set me thinking about my layout and I realised that most Australian narrow gauge railways are simple affairs with their main yards at the interchange point and at the terminus at the other end. This is how the Victorian narrow gauge lines are as well as the North East Dundas tramway and Mapleton tramway. If I was to put an interchange on my layout, I would no longer need staging or a duck under to get to it.

The layout plan with changes marked in red

 

The advantages of going down this road would be no duck-under, no hidden staging and the ability to have a few standard gauge pieces of rollingstock to demonstrate the size difference. I am keen to show the difference between standard gauge and narrow gauge as many people have trouble understanding how much smaller narrow gauge trains are.

 

I also realise there are some negatives. With no staging there is a good possibility of the layout being crowded with too much rolling stock. I think if I make the changes I will need discipline. The Victorian lines usually only had 2 or 3 locos on a branch at any one time so the logical conclusion is that if I have more  locos than that they shouldn't all be on the layout.

 

  There is also no ability to have continuous run. I have had continuous run as a must have on my list of layout requirements for a very long time. I realised a few weeks ago that I haven't had a layout with continuous run for nearly 7 years now so I think if I have survived this long I can survive a bit longer without it.

 

A friend raised the point that without staging operations could be quite limited. I do have to agree with him, but it is a narrow gauge railway. Operations on the Victorian lines traditionally operated from the interchange station to the end of the line and then back. Depending on the line they did this daily until the end of World War II and then quickly cut back to as little as weekly on all bar the Gembrook line. If I lived in an area that had lots of modellers for an operating session I think I wouldn't be considering these changes. The reality is that most of the time it will only be me operating so that should work ok. I do have concerns that I may get bored with only one or two trains a session.

 

  Another concern I have is that I may be making the layout too crowded and could loose the open empty country look that has been my goal. I am a great believer in less is more and  have tried to have reasonably large areas that have little detail between small towns.

 

 

To choose a track plan for the interchange yard I have again looked at the Victorian lines. The two that appeal are Wangaratta and Colac. Wangaratta is a compact yard but isn't as interesting as the one at Colac.  The Colac yard does fit in the space I have, but if I flip it top to bottom it fits a lot better. That would mean the standard gauge yard would be in the aisle. This would mean very little of the wider gauge tracks need to be modeled and I wouldn't need any engines.

 

 The one feature of Wangaratta I want is the narrow gauge spur in the forecourt of the broad gauge station. If I flip the broad gauge yard but leave the narrow gauge yard as it is I can achieve that. I want to put the large station I built a few years ago as the interchange station building.I know that all sounds complicated and it took me an afternoon of laying out points and flextrack to see what would work.

 

I am keen to have feedback on this idea before I commit to it. So if you have an opinion either positive or negative feel free to comment.

 

Cheers Murray

Scenery at last

I hope everyone had a great Christmas and that the New Year will be a great one.

 

There hasn't been a lot happening on the Bogong & Geehi for the last 6 weeks as we have been busy harvesting on the farm. It was a successful harvest and we finished on the Friday before Christmas. It is always good to be finished before the festive season and after a few days catching up on some sleep I decided to venture out into the shed and do some modelling.

I have been busting to do some scenic work to try and remove the snowstorm look that most of the layout has. The first thing I do is cover the foam with several layers of chux wipes soaked in white glue diluted with water.

 

 

Once that has dried I have been using "mud" which is something that American modeller Mike Confalone uses on his layout showcased in model-railroad-hobbyist magazine. He has a multi part article about building his layout starting in the April 2012 issue which can be downloaded from the website.

 

 

Mike makes his mud mixing Celluclay ( a dried paper mache product) mixed with acrylic house paint and a little water. Mud is a very appropriate name as that is what it looks like. It is very good for filling holes and generally looking like soil. It is surprising how far a small mix will cover and it dries to a very hard and strong surface. While it's still wet I sift on a light coat of dry grout to make the surface look even more like soil.

 



 

 

After all that had dried I just had to get out my Noch grass master and apply some static grass. I use fibres from both Heki and Silhouette. I only did a small area as I wanted to check that my technique still worked. I used white glue which has left a shiny sheen when it dried, so I will be trying matte medium next time. On my first patch I put down the static grass first and then tried adding silhouette flowers to represent Paterson's curse and grass tufts. With the static grass already down the tufts had trouble touching the ground so I tried putting the tufts and flowers on first and then adding the static grass which I think is more successful. Looking at the photos I think I need to add something like a little ground foam to represent broadleaved plants

Building Hills

I have been building some scenery and trialing different methods to build the land form on the Bogong & Geehi. I had planned to use wire netting as it is cheap, and easy to shape. It has the advantage that you can quickly see the finished contours with out making much of a mess. I then cover the mesh with no brand dish clothes soaked in white glue. The disadvantage is when one wants to cover the hills with trees to simulate a forest. The mesh hill doesn't really provide much support  so I have tried wiring sheets of Styrofoam to the underside to give me something to poke the trees in with mixed success.

 

 

I have seen layouts that have used white Styrofoam for their landforms and I have used it in the past but finding it our here in the country at a reasonable price  has been a challenge. A recent visit to Bunnings found that I could buy sheets of Styrofoam sold in packs for insulation. I brought a pack home and have been experimenting. It is certainly messier and slower to build, but....it does make a more stable and more versatile land form. The train shed has its own vacuum cleaner which makes dealing with the mess as I shape the foam a lot easier. I have also covered the foam with the dish cloths soaked in glue.

 

I think the foam option will be the way I will go. Even though the cost is higher, for me the positives outweigh the negatives.

 

 

It is nice to finally see trains running through some scenery even if the hills are bare and lacking vegetation. I need to put a layer of soil to cover the blue. I tried just painting with a brown paint and sifting my usual brown grout but I can still see the edges of the cloth so I will need to add something to hide them.

 

Cheers

 

Murray

 

Backdrops

 

Since my last post the main activity on the layout has been painting. I have given the fascia a coat of black, which really help to define the edge of the layout and frames the scenery nicely. I have also decided it was time to make a decision about which way to go with backdrops. I gave serious consideration to a photo backdrop. I think a very well done photo looks great, but if it hasn't been done well it can draw attention away from the modelling and not look so good. I discovered getting a good photo isn't as quick and simple as taking a few quick snaps with the digital camera. You also need good software to merge them all together, and what I had would only let me make a panorama 3 metres long.

 

So I decided to get some brushes and paint and have a go at painting my backdrops. My reasoning was that if it didn't work out I could still cover them up with a photo.



 

 

You can see my efforts in the photo above. My aim is to have a simple scene that doesn't have a lot of detail, but still leaves no doubt that you are in the hills of southern NSW. I have used artists acrylics in previous attempts at a backdrop with mixed results. I found it hard to mix colours accurately especially if I wanted to come back and touch up previous work.

The Modelling the Railways of NSW convention this year had a presentation by Ray Pilgrim about how he paints his backdrops on his layout Bylong. I was unable to attend but I was able to buy a copy of the notes. Ray recommends using Jo Sonja background colours. They are designed to cover large areas and I can recommend them as well. I have found them easy to work with and they give excellent results. They can be a bit hard to find (especially here in the country) so I mail ordered mine from Art Materials who also sell useful stuff like Celluclay, sculptamold and Copic markers. I used some of the artist acrylics I had to add highlights and shadows and I am pleased with the results. I won't win any art prizes but I am happy with how much depth they add to the scene.

 

 

This vista shows that scenery should soon be happening and I am currently trialing different techniques for the hardshell. I look forward to reporting the results in a future blog post.

 

Cheers, Murray