Painting the backscene

I now have a backscene.

I have come to the conclusion it would be better to plaster over the hills before laying the track in those sections, and that, in turn, it would be better to put the backscene before that, so that was today's job.

I have quite a bit of depth to the baseboards, and decided all I really wanted on the backscene was sky to hide the brickwork behind. I wanted a continuous run, working out to nearly 10 m long, and the best thing to do that on that I found was lining paper, pinned to sections of wood on the garage wall. Once in place, I painted it blue with very dilute poster paint, applied with a piece of sponge, with more dilute paint in the lower half.

Some sections were better than others, with the above being one of the better, but I think it looks okay. Not sure if it looks blue in the photo...

An Engine Shed!

Nearly finished the first custom buildng for the layout, and my first scratch-built building. It still needs some vents of the roof, but it does look finished to the casual glance, so here it is:

It is built from cereal packet card, with Scalescenes paper over the top. After the success of this, I am planning a station building, transfer shed and signal box.

009 Society AGM

I went to the 009 Society AGM this afternoon. Well, I went to the associated exhibition, I skipped the actual AGM, as I had no clue about the issues or people involved. Anyway, the exhibition, while small, was good, with some excellent layouts on display.

Had an interesting discussion with the guy from Blackham Transfer about transfers for rolling stock. It was not cheap at £60 for a full sheet of A4, but part sheets are available. Seems a simple way to put light lettering on dark paintwork.

Noted the couplings on the layout at the back (Maesog I think). They used Greenwich couples for the rolling stock, but just the static part for the lococs, which makes uncoupling much easier.

A few purchases too including a guards van kit.

Finally got something moving

I am starting to feel that I am making progress. Spent an hour wiring up, including hunting dowen a short circuit, and an 009 engine has actually run (well, the chassis has). Points all switch as they should, and one even has the electrofrog wired up too.

I have also been painting my rolling stock. One Peco "James", which looks pretty good, and two Parkside Dundas coaches, which are not so good. The cream paint was too thin - possibly because the brush had just be used for the copper on the engine and still had a trace of white spirits - and will need some further work.

Only the track in the station has been laid, and the tight curve to the left will not be easy, but wiring should be simple after this. I am starting to think about scenery (things I can do in the house, rather than the garage), and am wondering if I can adapt a ScaleScenes factory to a transfer shed and engine shed.

Back in the day

I was away over Easter staying with my mother, so no chance to do any modelling, but there is a stash of Railway Modeller magazines from 1976 to 1984 to read through. It cost just 35p when  I started to read it. It is incredible how many layouts are GWR branchline termini. Of the layouts that are point-to-point terminus to fiddle-yard, it must be over 90%.

It was also fun to spot the SuperQuick kits ubiquitous across so many layouts, as was the Airfix girder bridge. And all these things are still around today exactly the same. The bridge is now markets by Dapol, the SuperQuick range has a few additions, and Railway Modeller features more colour, but they all look the same as they all look the same as they did 30 to 35 years ago.