Loxley Barton Falls

Withywindle Mill is progressing though perhaps not quite as quick as I would like as the exhibition at Amberley is next month - 6 weeks away. As you can see from the image I have built some landscape - I used a technique called FRocks which uses upholstery foam ripped up and covered in diluted filler. More on the technique can be found at Mario Rapinett's FRocks site.

Hedging is foam and rubberised horsehair. At the moment it looks very dark as I have only under coated everything - I always do this in black and build the colours up on top.

Posted by Simon at 6:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I am building a new layout and have decided to name it Withywindle Mill. We are having an internal competition within the GDNGRS this year to build a pizza layout (more on that later) but I have added extra pressure to myself as I intend to display it at the Amberley Railway Gala on the 14th and 15th of July.

My pizza layout is 500mm square with one loop of hand built track. In the middle is a watermill and a stream runs through from one side to the other. A set of sluice gates keep the stream backed up for powering the mill when required and an undershot watermill powers the mill itself. Working in such a confined space means that the scenic details must be top quality to keep the attention of viewers but it does also mean that a layout can be built fairly rapidly - we shall see!

After doing quite a bit of research I have decided that the mill will be based on a fuller mill for textile manufacture which will allow me to give it some history and texture rather than just being a water mill. I intend to power the wheel but lets see how far I get with that! It should not be difficult but I need a really slow motor and a set of gears.

Operationally it's not that exciting with one continuous circle of track and no points but it does allow engines to have a good run in while the operator is busily chatting to people - which is what exhibiting a partly about.

I will put some photos up of progress, as I did with Loxley Barton. in due course.

For more information on pizza layouts you must visit Carl Arendt's Small Layouts Scrapbook site.

Posted by Simon at 1:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I was given the Scaloox starter pack for Christmas and I decided to have a go at building the water tower and coaling stage which was a good simple project to test out this new building form.

Scaloox is a modular building system with stonework courses that you glue together in whatever combination you wish. There are several different shapes of piece to work with and the shapes have been specially worked out to give maximum flexibility.

The Scaloox pieces are cast in moulds and quite brittle so you have to handle them gently. Advice from others suggests that they are not happy with too much moisture either and I found this out when building the tower as I had a bit of a disaster snapping one course of stone work off and then I had to cut out the remainder and start that course again. However the experience meant that I was more careful and now know the tolerances better.

I scratch built my own water tank to go on the top from plasticard and here are the finished pictures.

Continue reading "Scaloox water tower" »

Posted by Simon at 11:45 AM | Permalink

I realised this morning that the Gallery images did not contain any of the final model as it went to ExpoNG 2005 yesterday. So this morning I did a quick photo shoot.

The image below is my favourite as it really captures the dark forbidding new industrial era of the Victorian age - just the atmosphere I was trying to capture with the model. It almost has a late Dickensian feel about it.

Posted by Simon at 10:38 AM | Permalink

Today I filled in the waterfall and stream. I had already added the base water using a Woodland Scenics 'Realistic Wate water product and on top of that I added strands of Deluxe Products' Scenic Fibre glued in place for the main drop of the waterfall and where the stream runs around rocks. Once the glue holding the scenic fibre had set I heated up the Deluxe Products' Scenic Water thermoplastic water product and poured it down the waterfall and along the stream using a brush to position the flow. Once this had set I added Woodland Scenics' Water Effects to build up the white water parts of the stream and falls.

I also used these techniques to add a several flows of water from the leaking lock gates.

Posted by Simon at 3:00 AM | Permalink

This weekend I have finished painting the lock gates. There is a base coat of black followed by dry brush burnt umber and then a light grey with a hint of burnt umber. The metal parts were picked out with a little rust detail and then the lock gates were finally super glued into place. I have not attached the hand rails for the top of the gates yet and I will either leave them off or cut them down a bit.

After I have finshed adding the water into the stream I intend to add the effect of water spraying out of the gates as if they did not quite fit perfectly. I got some great shots of the way this works from a walk along the two path of the Wey navigation earlier this year.

Posted by Simon at 1:25 PM | Permalink

Link to the Loxley Barton Falls photo gallery:

Posted by Simon at 12:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)