A tale of two sheds!

Over the past few days and defying my normal one or two days of frenzied activity and then nothing for weeks, I have made further progress on the narrow gauge layout - must really think of a name for it! 

The hillside that I started constructing a few days ago and left in the kitchen has dried undetected by Mrs. W and as you can see has dried to a light earth shade - lovely!

As shown in a post a few days ago this hillside will be at the side of the canal wharf. Between the hill and the wharf there are two sheds which are supposed to represent a small traders storage sheds. The sheds themselves come from the Wills SS12 Station Garage Kit but can be built differently to that supposed and instructed in the kit giving two shed like structures. Another case of the male of the species not following instructions! However in this case it does work!

I had already constructed the walls of the shed back in the summer when I wanted to get a feel for where various buildings would go on the layout. The kit is moulded in a white plastic and as I have previously highlighted in this blog white attracts the eye. Whilst I had plans to paint the sheds a blue I did airbrush all the parts, including the inside of the sheds, with Vallejo's black surface primer. As a hint, when I have a large number of parts that need to be airbrushed I tend to get a piece of plywood or cardboard to fasten them onto to be painted. You can use Blutack or what ever your chosen poster temporary adhesive is to fasten the parts to the board or you can use masking tape. if you turn the sticky side up and fold the two ends over on themselves before fastening the ends to the board you are left with a strip of stick masking tape to which you can fasten the parts that need to be painted. 

The photo below probably shows the masking tape in a better light. The various drums, barrels and crates are for the layout eventually but as I had some primer left in the airbrush it seemed a good idea to prime these up.

I do plan to have a door open on one of the sheds so a wooden floor was required. There is nothing better to represent wood in model form then wood itself. A small piece of balsa sheet was cut to size and then planks forming the floor were scribed into the balsa wood using a straight edge and the back of a scalpel blade. Using the blunt back of the scalpel means you don't have much risk of cutting right the way through the wood and it gives a nice visible groove in the wood.

In its basic form the wood was far too clean so a coat of my favorite diluted back paint was washed over it highlighting the groves and giving a nice weathered and worn appearance. Once dry it can go into the shed.

I also started on the cobbled surface which will cover the wharf area and into which the rail tracks will be inlaid. I found, in the WMD HQ stock pile of things bought long ago and which may come in handy one day a couple of sheets of vacuum formed plastic cobbles which should do the job.

 

A bit of cutting has the first piece fastened in front of the two sheds.

If I can manage to keep the momentum up hopefully the whole scene will come to life in a few days. However I understand Mrs. W does have a new list of jobs for me for 2022! Gulp!