Chateau Impney Hill Climb 2019

Practice day at the 2019 Chateau Impney Hill Climb and here are some of the cars I saw either competing or on display.

Tony

An Industrial Narrow Gauge Adventure - Wooden fence

Regular followers of this Blog will know that I have been working on an industrial narrow gauge railway layout built to 1:27.7 scale or 11mm = 1 foot. The choice of such an unusual scale has meant that much if not all items needed for the layout have had to be heavily modified and/or converted from existing models, completely 'scratch built' or sculpted by me.

In these latest posts I will update the Blog with 'work-in-progress' images and text showing how the initial project is developing. For more information look out for the Narrow Gauge Labels to the right.

This latest update shows how I modelled the wooden fence that will be fitted to the right hand side of the warehouse (see illustration above and ignore the X).

The fence was built from craft lollipop sticks which had been  painted yellow. I first soaked them in a tub of white wine vinegar to remove most of the paint before adding texture with some rough sandpaper and a wire brush. I trimmed the fence panels to size (remembering to add some variety and damage to the odd panel). The panels were individually coloured with acrylic paint washes before I glued the panels one at a time to two strips of craft wood to produce the fence.

The nail holes were pressed into the wood with a sharp needle and additional markings and colouring was applied with water colour pencils.

When I had finished with the main painting I added some damp stains rising from the lower edge with more washes. The panel is 170mm long and 68mm tall.

Tony

The Channel Island at War

Yet another second-hand book purchase - this time a large card bound book called The Channel Islands at War written by George Forty which was picked up at a recent car-boot sale in Worcestershire.

The book is full of black and white illustrations which give a real flavour of what life on the islands must have been like. I particularly liked the illustrations of the underground and narrow gauge railway complexes.

Although not one of my usual periods or genres, I did like browsing the chapters.

The Channel Islands at War - A German Perspective by George Forty
Published by Ian Allen
ISBN - 978 0711026780

Tony

Another Book

Sue bought me this book earlier in the week. It is another charity shop purchase, bought for under £5.00 and features images of a number of 15'' gauge railways. The bonus is that is is signed by both David Mosley and Peter van Zeller.

Fifteen Inch Gauge Railways - Their History, Equipment and Operation written by David Mosley and Peter van Zeller
Published by David & Charles in 1986
96 pages with loads of black and white images
ISBN 0-7153-8694-8
List price - £9.95

Thank you Sue.

Tony

Broadway, Cotswolds

We visited Broadway yesterday and I took a couple of photos of some quaint cotswold stone buildings.

The Indian was parked just off the main road and was the centre of attention. Quite a machine.

Tony

An Industrial Narrow Gauge Adventure - Ground cover

Regular followers of this Blog will know that I have been working on an industrial narrow gauge railway layout built to 1:27.7 scale or 11mm = 1 foot. The choice of such an unusual scale has meant that much if not all items needed for the layout have had to be heavily modified and/or converted from existing models, completely 'scratch built' or sculpted by me.

In these latest posts I will update the Blog with 'work-in-progress' images and text showing how the initial project is developing. For more information look out for the Narrow Gauge Labels to the right.

The main ground cover areas have now been painted and textured. After building up the surface with DAS modelling clay and then sanding it smooth, I added some light texture from fine sand which was glued in place with a mixture of PVA glue and Matt Medium. Later I painted the ground cover with various acrylic paints applied in light washes with some opaque areas 'splodged' in.

The concrete wall section to the left (see this post for more details) has been glued in place.

The final detailing, the lightly laid ballast around the 18 inch narrow gauge track was modelled from some small clay bricks (part of a build-it-yourself house kit) which I ground up in a mortar and pestle before sprinkling it along the route of the track and sealing in place with PVA glue and Matt Medium.

It was good to see the baseboard covered after so long.

Tony

An Industrial Narrow Gauge Adventure - Adding detail

Regular followers of this Blog will know that I have been working on an industrial narrow gauge railway layout built to 1:27.7 scale or 11mm = 1 foot. The choice of such an unusual scale has meant that much if not all items needed for the layout have had to be heavily modified and/or converted from existing models, completely 'scratch built' or sculpted by me.

In these latest posts I will update the Blog with 'work-in-progress' images and text showing how the initial project is developing. For more information look out for the Narrow Gauge Labels to the right.

The first items of clutter added to the layout were the large oil storage container and some greenery modelled from artificial hanging basket material as seen in the image below while the image above was me placing items to see how they interacted with one another. I had great fun moving items around until I had found what I thought was the perfect position.

The low wall (in the centre) has been glued in place with a corrugated cardboard spacer to move it forward, away from the back scene and the groundwork built up from DAS modelling clay.

I mounted the oil tank onto concrete supports made from plastic card as I though it looked a little too low. For details of how the oil tank was built and painted see this Blog post. These supports were glued in place first and the ground cover painted with a mix of dark brown and black which was both washed over the DAS and later touched-in with a more opaque mix of the same colours. I superglued the oil tank in place and then added the grey oil barrel and the red oil container (to add some much needed 'colour' to the scene).

The hanging basket material was first superglued and then coated with PVA glue to hold it in place. I will be adding more greenery later.

The first items of clutter certainly help to fill in the large blank areas of the layout. More to come and soon.

Tony