Coaling stage

I've made the coaling stage using Plastikard and a plaster casting of a coaling stage. The model still needs painting and weathering

 but here it is posed with the engine shed. The engine shed is not as yet finished and is also posed. I received a very helpful comment on the previous post that would suggest the cowlings were not conical but perhaps a pyramid shape.

Screw - fix

The cowling on the engine shed vents has caused me a little thinking. Until I saw on my workbench a small screw sitting base up. Now if I could just have the top part of the screw this might do. So armed with table vice and hacksaw the end result wasn't too bad. In the pictures below I've only posed the vent cover on the model. Since then I've inserted a small plastic rod into the Philips head of the screw driver and pushed this into the cut off biro I used as the actual pipe out of the engine roof shed. Some super glue made all good. So please ignore the general wonkiness of the cowling in the picture as the finished item(s) do look straight . Maybe a little oversized to be honest but one can count rivets too much.

Stoned .....again

Well it has been a long time since the last post ( and that's not a euphemism ). I've been thinking about the station building and its  finish , considering I have now covered the engine shed in stone paper.
 The Station building was hand painted , way back in what seems like another century. I had wished that the finish of all the buildings would look of the same "style " of build, but having had no success in the finish of the engine shed by hand painting I had resorted to stone paper which is seen in a previous post. Now this was not going to match in with the style of my other buildings. Doh!
  I could have used the stone paper in the Outback model kit again but decided to keep this for when I eventually build their kit . The Outback kit is of the extended version and one which I do eventually hope to get around to building and Iam told , uses photograph images of the stone work.
 I contemplated driving to Lynton to take pictures of the station itself to produce digitally my own stone paper, and then ... An idea. Google Earth. Now then , it occurred to me that if I could get some screen shots of the station building from Google Earth how would that look? Well .. Not bad actually. So after some judicious cut and paste using my iPad and re - sizing in pages I was able , after some trial and error , to produce some usable sheets of stone paper which are after all, the actual stone used on Lynton station. It took some time to cut and "wallpaper"using watered down PVA but the end result I feel looks much better than the painted Plastikard . Here are the results of my efforts.
Lots more to do yet....

Stoned

Well... It has been a while since the last post on this blog. I've been thinking.......

 I was not very happy with my efforts to reproduce the look of the engine shed stone walls through the use of acrylics and enamels. I was beginning to loose momentum and dreading the thought of trying to replicate the same effect on all my model buildings. How long would this take me to just paint a few buildings whose finished look would be, well, less than desired? A new , quick and more realistic effect was required. Life is too short.
      Only a few years ago modellers " brick paper " was not of a very high quality. These days however the paper effect is much better. Photo-realism can be achieved by taking pictures of real prototypes and using the computer whole sheets of suitable stone or brick paper, doors windows etc. can be created with results far superior to my eye.
In my case the engine shed does not exist to take such pictures but I had recently bought the Outback Lynton  Station kits which, on closer inspection, included some very nice printed stone walls for the engine shed. Of course they were exactly the right size as well. Bonus !
So without too much trouble the engine shed walls were pasted with a very thin dilute wash of PVA glue and the stone print from the Outback kits pasted on. The external detailing had to be re done but a small price for the benefit gained I think. The new look can be compared here below against the acrylic painted original.
The rusty corrugated iron roof is not yet finished as this still requires the roof vents and the capping but was created in this case using Scale Scenes paper. Scales scenes can be downloaded from the website and reprinted as many times as you like once purchased .

Pots of paint to paint a shed.

Well normally painting a shed would mean I  would be in the Garden and a pot of B&Q's finest green. It would be Summer and a beer in hand. Here ,on the other hand , yes , a beer in hand but indoors , whilst Britians longest downpour in memory continues unabated. Time to ponder about how do I try and recreate the look of the stone finish to this shed?
    Many years ago I managed to persuade the family that a summer holiday in North Devon would be a good idea. A certain railway station was visited and a close photograph of the stone wall construction at Woody Bay was taken ( the trip also enabled me to study Barnstaple Town by the way).

 I've started the painting by an under cost of Halfords plastic grey Primer. After this a quick wash with acrylic white ,which was quickly then rubbed off leaving only white in the mortar coarse. Using various acrylics I've tried to copy the colours of the walling. Surprising to me is the high level of reds and Browns. I started the painting on the unseen side of the shed ( North) in case of drastic alterations.
Now , to be honest the jury is out on the finish I've managed and I'm looking over what has been achieved . To me it still looks too bright and fussy?  Perhaps more subtle use of the acrylics is in order and also a weathering afterwards.....let's see what more beer and pondering will deliver.

Engine shed progress

A little more work and the engine shed begins to take shape. For the benefits of the picture the shed is held together here with good old Blu Tac . Compared to my previous model of the shed this now looks correct and with the right proportions.

The next job will be to add the poster rails that hung vertically on the station side. The whole construction sits on a plywood base so that it can be a stand alone diorama.

Running in board

The running in board was made with a photograph of the actual board and here it is shown in-situ on the platform. Please ignore the unfinished ballast and the water pipe not yet bedded in. All the ballast was ripped up during the recent modifications , which gave me the opportunity to do some repacking under the sleepers. The reason for this was that unfortunately , as I built the layout using Sundeala, it tends  to warp a little. So this means a little bit of TLC to the track work is required on occasion, "just like the real thing" as they say.