Wednesday 25 February 2015

Sturminster Newton - Landscaping and Signal Box -part 3


Well I’m back from concreting and shed building, and now the developers are hard at work over the road dropping trees, inspiring!
- tree demolition.
I started the week by tackling the front of the layout.  I’ve been pondering the final design for here since, forever!  As much as I wanted to plonk a church there, the nearest one was over 5 miles to the north. All my references said there was nothing there except for trees and open ground and this includes the RAF aerial photos in 1947.  So why fight it.
- area to the south of the station, which will be the front edge of the layout.
With a slight bending of the station road, a small portion of the Sturminster Newton village will appear in the front left-hand corner of the layout.  I will admit that I will cheat here and use some ready-to-plonk buildings; a mixture of some SD moulding plaster cast and Hornby Lyddle End.
A bit of foam shaping and it was time to apply some plaster bandage.  I started with some 6” wide bandage that Mrs Neb found at the local $2 shop.  This went on reasonably well.  Once this roll was finished, I then started a new roll of 4” bandage, which I “acquired” during one of Mrs Nebs recent hospital visits.  This stuff was great, the plaster was really smooth and spread quite easily. 
- plaster bandage drying.
 This dried within 4 hours and so I was able to put some base coat down before I attacked the area with some static grass. From here I moved onto the station road area.  I shaped some 3mm ply to fit the area, including going over the bridge and down into the goods yard entry and round the milk factory.  I’ve use ply, as I want to give some ridged support to the area, in particular using DAS clay as cobble stones from a roller I found on Shapeways.  This still needs some further testing to get it to work.
- Sturminster village in top left hand corner.
I also managed to get some more work done on the signal box.  I’ve put all 4 side together, and its almost square.  Now I working on the balcony.
- balcony components.

5 comments:

  1. Hi Neb.

    I think you made the right decision not to add to much to the plain areas and to keep is as open countryside, I am sure you will end up with a nice open feel to the layout when you get further along. Also thanks for the tip-off regarding the cobble roller, that looks like an intersting solution and I am looking forward to seeing how you get on with it, especially aligning it.

    The layout is looking really, really good too.

    Julia :o)

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    1. Thanks Julia, the more I keep looking at the photos, the more I realise less is best. Stay tuned for cobblestone roller tests

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  2. Looking great and significant progress in the last 3 months. Looking forward to further developments. Hope to have a look the week after Easter as will be back in Brisbane for the week. Sydney is a little lonely with not much modelling action!

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    1. Thanks Anthony, has been fairly busy 3 weeks on the layout, hopefully we may even get it up to Toowoomba this year. Graeme left your 2-6-2 with me, so you can collect when you visit
      cheers

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