An Industrial Narrow Gauge Adventure - test #1

This is an image of a short piece of modified narrow gauge track that I have modelled to test the idea that I can make the Peco 'crazy track' look more realistic and in scale if modelling narrow gauge in 1/35th scale rather than the 1/43rd for which it is designed for.

I started with a scrap piece of wood, actually a piece of a used pallet. The ends were cut and sanded square.

I had this spare piece of Peco 'crazy track' (designed to be used as narrow gauge track when running HO-OO motors with modified O gauge engines and figures), left over from an earlier project. The gauge or distance between the track is 16.5mm (HO-OO).

I removed some sleepers and re-spaced them. This was not a detailed test, the spacing was done my 'eye' at about 16mm centres.

I have in the past used thin cork sheet to build up the track and banking. I didn't have any cork, but did find this piece of balsa wood which I cut and sanded to shape.

The balsa wood and track was glued in place with a hybrid superglue and small nails were used to secure it while the glue set.  The ends of the sleepers were cut square as my plan was to extend them using pieces of spare sleepers.

In this image you can see the extended sleepers. I used superglue and accelerator as Peco plastic is notoriously difficult to glue. The joins were hidden by applying Green Stuff to the edges.

I have used DAS White (applied over uPVA glue) to build up the banks either side of the track.

The groundwork was applied over dilute uPVA glue and then using a small dropper and some Wet Water (water with a small drop of washing-up liquid), I soaked the whole area to make sure that the small stones and sand were held in place.

Painting was done with standard acrylics and some washes. I wanted a well worn look so there was lots of green applied to the sleepers.

I will be using diesel engines on my planned layout and so I added a very dark black/brown to the centre of the track to show lots of oil and diesel deposits. I have also painted the track with various rust colours and cleaned the top of the track with some fine emery paper to get that well used look.

Finally, I added some small static grass tufts and some ground foam to show weeds and growth coming up between the sleepers. I gloss painted the oil and diesel spills to make them stand out against the matt base colours.

This is only a short test piece. The wooden base is just 180mm long by 70mm wide and the track is only 150mm long, but it did allow me to test the theory that I could use the modified Peco crazy track to model 1/35th scale (or larger) if I wanted.

I am still to decide if I will use 1/35th scale figures and scale or a larger 1/27.7 scale to model this project - stay tuned for more updates.

If you 'click' on the images, you can super-size them.

Tony