English Station Architecture

A good read from the BBC: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-34333684

I love the old steel and glass Victorian era buildings, I hint the new King Cross looks great and my favourite station in the world in York.   Seems I'm far from alone.

Adding some greenery

This post is filled with more pictures of work in progress.   It's not the pretty finished work most of us like to showcase, these are process photos and may be useful to others doing similar construction.  

In the image below you can see that I've started to add trees.  I've picked out a spot for a rural farmhouse, and I've been blending the rock colours together.  There's still exposed plaster below the bridge and by the tunnel mouse, and lots of flecks of plaster strewn about. 

 Looking at the same corner from the other side.  Again, much work on normalizing the rock colors, and this tunnel portal has been cleaned up.   I'm thinking I'll have another little farm here, maybe a fence by the rail line, and then a service depot in the foreground.

The ridge line is now mostly covered and I've finished major ballasting, I think I have one 3" segment remaining, and I'm thrilled to be done with it.  Ballasting looks great but N scale is not forgiving when it comes to stray pebbles and glue. 

There's still lots of work to be done however!

The next major thing I plan to tackle is my town.  I've decided to build it higher density then I had originally planned.   I have several kits on order, and I will be adding another road and packing things in tighter then I had previously roughed out.  Also, I'm unsure about my current geography- I'm not so keen on my rick lined road as I once was and I think I may just flatten this down some and go for grass. 

 

Back on Track II

It's been a construction filled Labour Day weekend.  I wish I had a good before picture to share, I guess you can look at what I posted in 2012-13, but here's the after.  I still have lots to do, obviously.  I need to balance my rock colours, and add some more rock, and finish my stream and tunnel portals, and patch up my grass and add shrubs and trees and then fill the foreground and plenty more!  Still, a lot was accomplished this weekend, have a look:

After years of exposed foam and plaster cloth I've finally added some greenery to the corner.

Here's where the line emerges from under the table.  I had been long hesitant about how to do this feature as the slope is so gradual that I worried it would lack a focal point.  I'm happy with the result.

Offset double portal into the hill.  Not done yet though...

Backdrop is up, has a bit of a ripple but I'm worried about tearing if I fuss with it more.

First layer of 'water' is setting.

Yeah, I'm mixing nations and eras today.

Back On Track!

After reading Jerry Quinn's post on Quintopia about what prompted him to tear down his layout I took a long introspective look at my own hiatus.   Why had I stopped?  What was frustrating me, and most importantly what was I going to do next?  We're the issues blocking me so fundamental that they too required a tear down?  Short answer: no, but without a willingness to make some big changes I was not about to turn things around either.  So I went back to the layout with a new willingness to rip things up, to add or remove track, to make things better.

I considered removing most of my yard, as I was unhappy with the ratio of track to green space and I have found that all yards really afford me is a place to park trains.   N Scale does not shine brightest trying to do fiddily switching operations.  Sorry, but that's really the domain of HO.   On the other hand, I do want to convert a section of my yard into a programming track, and I do have a double stall maintenance shop I still want to use, so in the end I elected to finish some of the terrain in that section and then re evaluate what needs to go or change.   It could well be that with less blue and pink foam and a bit more grass and hill I'll find myself feeling quite differently.

I built up a new ridge structure, I've ordered new backdrops and today I'm working on grass and rocks...some progress photos:

Here I have constructed a base of insulation foam and coated it in plaster cloth, and then applied a bit of hydrocal on top to smooth things out.

On a whim I mixed some pigment into my hydrocal, I wish I had started doing this sooner!

The ridge line is taking shape, and more importantly doing a great job hiding the inclined double track behind it.

Most of the town has been relocated during construction, as it's become my supply depot.

The first ground cover is applied.

Starting to look pretty good...

I am going to need a lot of rocks.  Below is one 'load'.  Over this weekend I've made six of these, and counting.