Hamley Circuit

Yep, Wynyard again, but we are also going down to Hobart for a book launch.
We did watch Back Roads on Monday night. Michelle was a bit distressed about one of the lines that Wynyard was "the most disadvantaged electorate in the most disadvantaged state".
This is the stuff that I am looking for though, it makes great ballast
My ballasting technique has improved since this early attempt.
Cheers
Tony

 

I finally got to do another assemble of the layout and an electrical test this weekend. Am happy to report that all the circuitry worked first go. I was being quite meticulous with my wiring, so it should have worked.
We gave it a good test all Saturday afternoon and it all continued to work well.
Here is an overall photo of the layout.

Note the remote throttles are temporarily clamped to a saw horse. In time they will be attached to the front of the layout.
The tracks seem close to the edge of the layout, but as I am feeding the controllers 12V instead of about 15V, the locos are a little subdued in performance, except for Percy of course.
Here is a line up of some of the expected roster.

On the Facebook page I have put some videos up of it running, don't have a YouTube account, so can't put them up here. One day...
This layout is also big enough for me to test some project carriages and locos that don't make it around the curves of my other layouts, or just need a longer run than the shunting layout can provide.
Cheers
Tony

 

Thanks Mark,
Well, the trip to Tasmania was very successful in a ballast sense, did need some shuffling of loads in the bags to fly home though.
Here is the work in progress in my father in law's potting shed.
One the left we have the raw materials, in the middle at the top (white bucket) have the rejects (large bits and organic matter), on the right we have the finished product.
In the middle at the bottom was the only sieve I could get my hands on that wasn't in the kitchen. A shaker for hot chic onto drinks, it actually worked very well.

Now I have to think about painting the sides of the rails. Going away for another work trip, so should have a few nights to read up on this.
Cheers
Tony

 

Been reading some posts about painting sleepers and track, especially taking notes from Gary's posts in his great JSRR layout. I did not wish to do the method I have previously employed, exacting work with a tiny brush, this will take weeks with the amount of track here.
I thought I would try with a piece of scrap track nailed to a piece of wood.
First of all I attempted to spray the rails with the airbrush. This proved to be a very annoying method and I stopped fairly early on.
Then I tried Gary's method. I dry-brushed the sleepers with a light grey artist acrylic. I may try to pick out some different sleepers in different colours in the real thing.
Then, with a not too thin brush I painted the rails with a similar mix of burnt and raw sienna paints. I went quickly and painted the fish plates and the tops of the rails (something I have always avoided as cleaning dried paint off the rail head is annoying).
Then before the paint dried, I simply wiped the paint off the top of the rail with my finger! So easy!
Any paint left over could be dealt with next day by rubbing off with a tiny piece of off-cut softwood, such as pine.
Hopefully, (as long as another storm doesn't hit this weekend) I might get to paint all the track.

Cheers
Tony

 

Well, this lockdown hasn't really resulted in any more modelling time for me. At least I am getting some home maintenance tasks done rather than shopping for supplies for more tasks.
I have managed a bit of progress on the scenery, namely getting a start on the buildings. I might have a near complete layout for it's first run, as I'm not sure when that first public appearance is going to be.
Most udrive layouts have pretty dire scenery, especially the buildings. They are often discards from other layouts and are generally fairly generic German or Soviet in style, in pretty dull colours.
As I have 4 boards my son and I have decided to do four worlds. One a fairground with working Ferris wheel, merry go round and real water fountain and more. One storybook illustration like, one Mr Men and the last one to be Minecraft.
I have made a start on the Mr Men houses. I have taken an image from the book, imported it into MicroStation, a CAD package, then traced the lines. They are always drawn in front view, so this is easy. I then have to make up the side panels and guess the roof angles.
I then scale this to HO and print the outline.
I decided to start with an easy one. Mr Tickles house. I made it all out of balsa. This was very easy to work with and the cartoony nature of the illustrations lends itself to this kind of construction.
It is mostly done from 3mm thick wood, and is cut with a craft knife and sanded to suit. Tacky PVA glue worked very well.
Here is a picture under construction with the windows partly built and the extra support visible.

The windows proved quite tricky as it made the front panel very flimsy and I did break it. Luckily, gluing it back together was simple and seamless. But they were fun to do.

Then after sanding and painting we have a finished product.

Next time I am not going to bother with cutting the windows out. I will take a leaf out if Roger Hargreaves book literally and just paint the window on like he does.
The next two houses are Mr Happy and Mr Messy, they are basically the same house, just decorated differently.
Making the figurines is going to be lots of fun too.
Cheers
Tony

 

Thanks Gary,
The next two houses have come along nicely thanks to some unexpected bonus time yesterday. Here is Mr Messy's and Mr Happy's houses in primer, just had to move the chimney on Mr Happy's house and make the chimney askew on Mr Messy's. The rest of the detail will be in the paint.

Progress continues on the carnival board, but no pics just yet.
Have to get busy with CAD again to design some more houses.
Cheers
Tony

 

I've also been building in plastic too.
I have made a start on the stuff for the fairgrounds board. Starting with sideshow alley. Found these little kits a while ago, IHC brand, made in Denmark, and they come together very nicely. All the colour here is by printed paper. This is supplied, and is quite decent gloss paper too. I have never really built in paper, did about 30 years ago, but that was another lifetime.
It worked quite well. With a decent snap Blade knife and a small steel ruler the sheets cut very well, and the cut marks were very well placed. An experiment with glue types showed that a clear scrapbooking glue worked best for sticking this paper to the styrene. I can see why people love their paper and cardboard structures. It's so easy to cut, and if you foul it up, it's easy to cut again. It also creates little mess, no dust, and is quiet. Perfect for a long winter's night at the dining table in the house.
The instructions said to leave the roof off so you can see the detail, but I didn't really want to do that, so I cut off 3 LEDs from a lighting strip, glued this to the underside of the now black painted roof, hidden the wires and no lit it.

Now I just need to get on with painting up some Carnies to go in there.
Cheers
Tony

 

The next item that catches my attention is the "normal" world. This board will have a more realistic, less cartoony aspect to it. But still keeping in the idea of bright and fun.
I picked up these little shanties at a market day a while back. Unfortunately they were already assembled (half my fun gone), and have been moulded in pretty ordinary colours. This will have to change. The previous owner was a good builder, no joint is suspect, which is bad news for me, as I really want to take some of these apart to paint.

Cheers
Tony

 

There has been some more progress in the Mr Men world. I am making these houses from 3mm thick balsa and it has been working quite well. For the next 2 houses I thought I would stick with the 3mm stuff for the walls, painting the windows on this time, but the roof would be made from 1mm thick balsa. The 1mm is very fragile, and while I didn't break it, it might be an issue in future. These buildings will be permanently attached to the layout, so they should be well protected. Here are the next two houses, Mr Happy's and Mr Messy's. All these three have the same basic structure, the next lot, which is a simpler house, based on Mr Mean's.

Cheers
Tony

 

Got them all done

Spread them all out on the board and there should still be enough room for the gardens. I will have to contrive the layout of this "town" as I really don't want any of the houses facing away from the front of the layout.
Yes, that is Mr Nonsense's house at the top of a tree.
Cheers
Tony