Further wood butchery but creative times for the 009 gauge layout!

Although a bit sparse on entries over the last few days progress is being made on My Last Great Project with further battles at the WMD HQ garage/Room of Gloom between me and various bits of wood that just do not want to go together. The good news is that I have the basics of the 'trolley' that the layout will sit on in my Man Cave. The idea is that I can easily move the layout around to access all sides. As I talked about in a previous post I am not getting younger and I really do not want to have to duck down to get into a central operating well and I don't want a lifting flap with the issues that can cause so whilst it has compromises this trolley idea works for me - well at the moment at least! The trolley castors are rated for 55kg each so should be up to the job which is good as I want to put a shelf on the lowest level for storage.

Meanwhile back at the WMD HQ garage/Room of Gloom those geometry lessons all those years ago suddenly came in useful! I did not want a straight end to the baseboard, more of a curve and this is what I came up with.

The picture makes it look a little distorted but in essence there is a 2 foot radius 'curve' on each side. Lots of head scratching, lots of cutting, lots of bits of wood ending up in the firewood pile but eventually it all got there without to much in the way of force to make things join! Still more to do and probably several more days until the four sections of baseboard are complete.

Moving onto the 009 gauge layout there has been some progress made. In brief the dummy point levers and the buffer stops have been installed, the quarry siding has been 'toned' into its surroundings and a scrap pile and wood pile have appeared as well as some additional fauna.

First off the dummy point levers needed to be set into the scenery so a bit of ballast and landscaping had to be removed to reveal the baseboard surface onto which the lever was glued. Luckily the damage caused to the ballast and landscaping was minimal so little in the way of repair was needed. I must be getting good at this!

Having left some of the original plaster mix to set in the tub I mixed it in, I used this to tone down the ballast in the siding to give the effect that the quarry material had spilled onto the track over the years. The hardened mix was broken up and crushed to a powder and as the ballast is sand and is like a sandpaper, some lumps of the mix were simply rubbed along the ballast to produce a powder that adhered to the ballast and surrounding area.

After a little while the original siding turned from this

To this

To add some interest a scrap pile made up from parts from the scrap box and mainly consisting of 1/35 scale tank parts was created, sprayed black and then treated to some rust weathering powders. A srip of balsa wood was cut up into some suitable00 scale plank sized pieces, randomly glued together and then treated to a dilute wash of Vallejo black paint. Both were glued in place and then using a variety of grass tufts and vine type scenic products some further fauna was added to the area to give that 'wild' look. I think it all came out well - but I would! These photos give some detail as to what I did.

This weekend's modelling is going to suffer as we loose an hour going into summer time but hopefully progress will still be made on this layout over the following weeks. 

Just to finish off, it's always nice to 'play trains' so here are a couple of photos of a West Highland Railway Baldwin loco doing the very unlikely haulage of some Lynton and Barnstable Railway coaches. But its my railway so anything is possible!

Ballasting Time!

Any railway needs firm foundations for their track and the ballast provides a lot of that. The stones that usually form the ballast are angular and when compacted lock together holding the sleepers and rail allowing the trains to pass over without deflection that could derail them. Ballast also provides drainage preventing water ponding and soaking into wooden sleepers and rotting them. Modern concrete and steel sleepers still need drainage even though they are less susceptible to deterioration from water than wood is. 

In model form ballast can take many forms. Usually crushed granite ballast is used or one of the other custom products from manufactures such as Woodland Scenics. You can even get underlay sheets such as those made by Hornby and Peco. Here at WMD and being tight fisted sand is the choice of ballast for this 009 gauge railway. Not ordinary sand but kiln dried sand. It is about the right scale for ballast in 4mm scale and it is cheap! What's more WMD HQ stores has a large bag in stock bought many years ago for about £3. 

So the material for the ballast is chosen. What happens next? Well before ballasting I should say that before laying the track I did weather it with a spray brush and picked out the spikes holding the rail to the sleepers with a rust colour so that was one job already done! Talk to many people about ballasting and they talk of problems with points. You do have to be careful but my dodge to try to minimise issues is to apply petroleum jelly to the moving parts. That way any glue used to fasten the ballast is unlikely to glue the point up and any stray ballast is therefore also unlikely to end up glued solid to the moving parts. Have a look at the phots below.

Applying the sand was done with a tea spoon (note to self; do not admit to Mrs. Woody use of kitchen utensils!) and a small soft flat brush was used to brush the sand into place. A handy tip is that when you have the ballast roughly as you want it use the spoon to tap the track or baseboard to in effect 'vibrate' the sand off the sleeper tops and into where it should be.

Once happy with the placing of the ballast it was time to fasten it down. The long used mix of diluted PVA glue with a few drops of washing up liquid was mixed ala James Bond style (shaken but not stirred) by putting the ingredients in a jam jar, remembering to securely put the lid on and shaking for a few minutes. The drops of washing up liquid will cause a froth but the main liquid is what is needed. Using an old syringe, (having cats means that you do end up with syringes from the vets to administer various lotions and potions) the glue mix was syringed onto the ballast. It looked a right mess as the pictures show, but as with any process where you have to let things dry, it takes on a whole different look once the glue sets.

Without admitting to Mrs Woody, the glue was given an encouragement to dry from her hairdrier!

Once the glue was set the track looked like this.

I think it looks good but then I would! With a bit of cleaning trains were soon testing their newly ballasted track.