Boronia

Having pretty much completed my other two layouts (mostly), it is time to start on the next one!
Been planning this for a while now. It is to be an exhibition layout, and therefore portable. It will be of the cameo box style, with an off-scene circuit around, so it can run as a hands off roundy, but there will be plenty of scope for good shunting action. My other layouts are pretty much full time attention by me at exhibitions and the like, it will be nice to have some time to not always have to be touching something control related.
It has been in the planning for some time now and has changed many times, it started off being a quite large layout, needing a box trailer or small truck to move it around. This presented many issues, like construction time and cost, storage space, help on exhibition days setting up, rainy days to move it, the list went on.
There were many ideas though that were non-negotiable and they have stayed.
It is to be a NSW based layout with a standard brick island station building. It would have to have a bit of a goods yard. It would have overhead catenary. It would have some particular buildings. It would have curves large enough for 12 wheel NSW coaches. It would be set somewhere in the 1980s, the time when i was growing up.
The basic track plan, drawn up very roughly is here

I'm not sure when I'll be in a position to actually make a start on construction, I have most of the wood, but getting time to build the baseboards is going to be the first challenge. Getting hold of some of the track components may be difficult due to supply issues at the moment, not that i have specified anything too exotic.
A couple of days ago i had the house to myself for several hours so I made a full size mock up with butchers paper, cut to the size of all the boards and some printed Peco point templates. I also cut out pieces of card for each building that i could include to see how it would all sit. This, even though i spend my working life using various CAD packages, is a better way for me to get a feel of what might work in a visually pleasing sense.
A part of layout building that always takes time to do well is buildings. So, since I could not start on the rest I wanted to know which buildings out of my stash I could actually use, so i could start building them. They deserve plenty of time, some I propose putting together as the designer intended, others will involve considerable customisation.

So, in order to have something at the workbench to do when i get a little bit of time here and there i have started on a few. A large shed, a Bachmann Plasticville bungalow which can be made to look Aussie and a life-like church, that is going to need considerable modification, but should be almost unrecognisable as this kit when i am finished with it.

More to come.
Cheers
Tony

 

Thanks for your kind words all. No rush with this build so I am having a play with things.
When I had my first layout as a kid I had one those fairly ubiquitous Life-Like town churches. It is of American design, and some features of it are very American, but the basic shape and proportions are correct. I thought I would start with the windows, they are way too ornate. For the front two windows I'm thinking of keeping the arch at the top, but removing the inner panes, the original in the other gap to show what it was. The side windows I want to take the whole top bit off, one of these I have enlarged the panes horizontally, one I have not. Think I will go with the fewer panes of glass look.
I will also keep the stained glass windows much plainer than the kit.

Cheers
Tony

 

Thanks Gary, I already have two of these kits though.
Am planning on doing work similar to what Brian Ayling has done on one based on Hazelbrook, inspiring stuff!
I plan to add extra details such as the window sills based on our 3D laser scanning of Redfern station a few years ago.
No, i'm not basing on any prototype, too restrictive for this time in what i want to achieve. Maybe one day in the future I will do one.
The rough place in the world is near the end of the wires so to speak, more in the outer reaches of the metro area. So no suburban trains, but interurbans and country trains.
It is named Boronia after the tunnels in the area up here, and the flower, which is really common around here in spring, our wildflower!

Also finished off the shed tonight apart from glazing the windows, might do a superglue on the glazing to replicate really dirty shed windows.

Richard, Rosehill? yes, but not this year, not a hope, and I don't want that pressure.
Cheers
Tony

 

I hope it won't be 8 years...
Progress has been a little slower of late, back to work as well as looking after a swimming pool and some chickens.
Continuing along with the church build I have put the walls together and decided that the vestry will line up by the ridge rather than one wall, it has taken me a week of looking and thinking that one...

Also added roof supports as will not be using the supplied roof which is some sort of American shingle or slate, will be of much thinner styrene as corrugated iron, so will perhaps need more support.
Then it was the matter of the front porch. The kit has the front door as a double door on the front panel with a very shallow porch. I wanted a more typical Aussie look with a deeper porch, door on each side and a window in the end.
To this i copied the size of the kit porch, and cut the top bit off the double door and separated the two doors.

In the post today some plank styrene cladding arrived so i was able to get started. My first cut out of a window, seemed to work ok.

Still thinking will this building sit on the ground or on brick piers. Plenty of time to think about that one.
Cheers
Tony

 

Hi Richard, nice idea for the sandstone foundations. Not sure i have seen too many timber buildings on sandstone, usually brick piers. Sandstone foundations would make for an easy way to tie the bottom of the building into the landscape properly without gaps, but still allowing the top part (the building) to be removable. Could also make it removable on the brick piers too, will just have to insert a floor to stop light bleed.
Painted up the windows and doors now to see if i like it. Also have the porch built.

Cheers
Tony

 

Slow progress here, but there is progress.
One of the issues with plastic buildings is that they can get a bit see-through if you illuminate them from inside, spoiling the effect somewhat. Even with 2 coats of paint on the outside, OK it was off white, didn't seem to do much, the light still came through.
I should have primed the whole thing before painting, but i didn't. I then applied a coat of carbon black artists acrylic paint from the Jo Sonia range and this seems to have done the trick. I have not done the same treatment to the vestry at the rear as it is not the intention for it to be seen all that much or to be lit.

Getting the stained glass painted now with clear paints on the window panes.
Once they are inserted it will be roof making.
Cheers
Tony

 

Got the roof on the church now. Used Evergreen 1mm metal siding as corrugated iron. 3.2mm L section along the ridge and 2mm L section for the barge boards.
Windows are now installed. Was hoping to use special brush type craft textas for the window, but they didn't work as well in the real thing unlike the test one.
So had to go back to using my clear paints with much more limited colour choice.
These windows are very simple, it is a rural church, so there was not much money for fancy stained glass, so each panel is just frosted, in a different base colour, like green, blue, pink, that sort of thing.

Cheers
Tony

 

The church is now done until it is time to put it on the layout.

Once it is there i will decide whether it sits flush on the ground, on brick stumps, or on sandstone as i have a lot of suggestions for. Then I will need to finish off height dependent things like steps and down pipes.
There is one more thing and that is the rose window at the top, i could turn it into a ventilator, but i have another idea, just waiting for the right bit and a bit of time with the printer.

Showing here is a comparison to the box. I have kept the mains bones of the kit, but the windows i have reduced the number of small panes, chopped the ornate gothic tops off the side windows, while keeping the gothic tops in a simplified form for the front windows. The original kit had rather garish paper inserts for stained glass patterned windows. I have gone for the more rural economic look of different coloured frosted glass in each pane, as in the real world, lead lighting is quite expensive. The windows have been ground down in thickness too, the original ones stick out from the walls way too much.
I have replaced the front porch that was very shallow with a huge double door with a longer porch with two side doors. The 2 side doors were done by cutting the double door in two (and cutting off the gothic top) also making a piece of trim down the side of each door to make each symmetrical. A window was added to the front of the porch.
The roof was originally some sort of shingle, which could have worked painted as fibro shingles or modern image black tiles. But i wanted corrugated iron. The was done with evergreen sheet as well as L strip to cover joints and make barge boards.
The original guttering was modified for length and cut, although i did run out for the vestry at the rear, but i anticipate that this will almost be out of sight, so no-one will see it, and hopefully i will forget. Also, it's going to be a church in a by-passed town, they don't have a lot of money, so things are a bit run down and some details get forgotten, but more on that when the layout starts.
The colours were chosen on the basis of 1980s and earlier colour pictures of suburbia around Australia, especially Newcastle and Sydney. The dominant form is white houses with red a red roof. This is what i intent to create for most of the town. The green windows was chosen by what i thought would work well. The walls or painted vallejo off-white, which is probably going to get a lot of use on this layout.
Other details from the kit i have left out such as the steeple with the bell tower, just too American, and as for that flag pole...
The base plate of course will not be used, i may use the sign with my own print in it, i may make something else. The little brick walls for a fence may get cut up and used for stumps, or they may actually get used for a brick fence somewhere else.
Now for curtains on a house....
Cheers
Tony

 

Time to concentrate on the next building, a Bachmann Plasticville Bungalow, which, though small, does look the part.

It came in the usual all white with a dark grey roof.
Roof has been painted a dirty red colour, The walls are the same as the church, Valejo off-white. Window frames are just straight white, with Azure blue doors. I have glazed the windows and have tried a new technique for window treatments.
A lot of kits from overseas have coloured inserts for curtains. Not sure if that applies overseas but you do not see coloured curtains here (they would fade is QLD in daylight savings...)
Either through the back of the curtain has no colour, or the curtains are lined, and this lining material is generally white.
Or of course there are venetian blinds and the ubiquitous lace curtains, especially in rural Australia.
I found venetian blinds of a website family garden trains and modified to suit. The lace curtains i went to the Australian fabric shop Spotlight, on their website they had images of just the lace for lace curtains. I was able to scale this down in Word to my window size.
Once i had glazed the windows i was able to stick the curtains on with tiny dots of Elmers clear washable glue.
Apart from weathering the roof, that might be enough for this building prior to placement.

Cheers
Tony

 

Well, it is now September, been a while since the last update.
But there's a good reason. For a number of reasons I have decided that this layout is just not going to work in the short term. For what i really want in this layout, a platform that will house a 4 car inter-urban train and have the sort of village attached that I want to make, there were to be too many compromises in order to get it to fit our current vehicles. There will be a time in the future where we will have a longer car, and it will be possible to get it all in comfortably without compromising what it is I really want to do with this idea.
I will come back to this later, and do it properly.
In the meantime there has been another idea kicking around in my head for something a little smaller but keeping a similar theme, but in a more compact space. There were many ideas that couldn't be put into one layout anyway. So what's better than one layout, well of course 2 layouts, but that will all be in time.
The important lesson here is to be patient, and don't accept a compromise that will make the dream not work. Better to just pause it and go for a slightly different dream in the meantime.
The best part is, I haven't made too much physically for Boronia yet, and what I have, the Church, house and shed, will work quite well on the other layout. As it will still be NSW, and will still be around the 1980s. But this time will be out of Sydney to allow for shorter trains and no overheads.
All will be revealed soon in a new thread, now that i have finally come up with a name for the new layout. I still want to use Boronia for the design here.
Cheers
Tony