Anyone fancy a little Cuddle.. (report that is)

It's been about three weeks since the last layout progress report, so I thought it was about time for some kind of update from my workroom.

Last time I had turned the painting of the embossed stone styrene sheets over to my wife. She offered to do it so who was I to turn the offer of help down?

That left me at a loss of what to do for a while. With time on my hands, I turned to some micro layout design on my old blog Small Model Railway Layouts. One concept was so well received that I will have to build it. You can find preliminary concept work here.

All this has been keeping me busy, but it's not getting any work done on the layout. So I forced myself into action, and I started the ground cover process. The first stage involves covering the baseboard with lightweight sparkle, and for obvious reasons is known as the snowscape stage.

The snowscape phase.

Once that had dried. I set to and painted it with Woodlands Scenics ground colour. This is the same method as I've used on all my previous layouts.

Woodland Scenics ground colour down.

Then, while looking at the location of my model on Google earth I happened upon a photo of the actual beach in front of where the works would have been located.

The beach where the Cuddle works are sited

This helps immensely. Now I know what scenic treatment I have to do for the frontal area. To be honest, it looks an awful lot like Woodland Scenics Grey and Brown Talus.  I reckon I have some in stock somewhere too. Put down a base coat of grey paint and scatter Talus liberally atop of it, and I should be good to go.

In other news, I've found another suitable locomotive to operate the line. It's "Petrolia" of the Blakesley Hall Miniature railway, before its rebuild in 1910. A remarkable looking thing. Only two pictures are known to exist of it though, so some conjecture will be needed to produce a model. But in my early days in Gn15 I used to do that all the time.

I think Petrolia will look great running on the layout (Wikimedia image)

A little report.

It's been a quiet couple of weeks in Cuddle. As I had passed the task of painting the stonework over to my wife, I felt in a little of a void. So my mind began to wander a bit. I gave new life to one of my old blogs, which may, or may not, result in another layout in the future.
Once I got my focus back, I painted and weathered the brick portion of the chimney stack on the main building. Not a task I enjoy, that's why I passed the painting of the stonework over to my wife, who seems to get great pleasure from it. But I think the end result is quite OK.

Painted and weathered brick chimney stack. The cruel eye of the camera makes me realise it isn't finished.

In other news, the Shapeways kits of the tipper skip wagons designed by TeeBee models arrived in the mail, and they look outstanding. No two ways, about it they look excellent. Nicely detailed, and once you put a set of wheels in them, very smooth running indeed. Being 3D printed they are quite light. But it should be easy to add weight to them, given how deep the tipper body is.

TeeBee Shapeways skip. Excellent quality

So, there we are. Not much going on. But we are getting into the summer now, and here in Minnesota it's a time when you can always find something to do outside.
With that, I'm afraid I must close, as the grass needs cutting.

Busy doing nothing

With the embossed styrene sheet passed over to my wife for her expert painting, I have been left with time to think about other items associated with the layout.

Lorrie starts work on the first of the styrene sheets.

Like the locomotives and rolling stock. What am I going to use? I accumulated a fairly eclectic collection of locomotives and rolling stock in my earlier Gn15 days, and it's all been sat in storage boxes since then. Some Sidelines kits and quite a few scratch built items of my own.
I found no less than four Heywood TOPS wagons that I built for Whinny Lane and they haven't seen the light of day in a good ten years.
The TOPS concept and design would be perfect for this project. Wagons that could double as flat and open wagons, carrying oil drums or ash from the furnace.

A fleet of TOPS wagons, fresh from Duffield Bank Works.

I would also like some Hudson-type "vee" tippers. I have some Bachmann ones in On30 but the skips are a bit on the small side. Conscious that technology and model making have come along since I built the TOPS wagons. I looked on Shapeways and found an absolute plethora of Gn15 kits and models all ready for me to pick and choose from.
There was a lot of tempting things there.
I shall return and fritter away some hard earned cash there in time for the St. Cloud show. But for now I needed some "V" skips, and I liked the ones produced by TeeBee. So two of them are on the way to me. I shall report back in due course. My only experience with 3D printed kits has been with the OO 6.5 minimum gauge line from James Hilton. Those are excellent. If fiddly, due to their small size.
Another piece of 3D printing I found this week, were these Oil drums from from makeitRC.com. They sell a small line of diorama accessories for radio control cars in 1:24 and 1:25 scale. Oil drums being one of them. Now as I model in 1:25.4 (or 1mm = 1inch) I figured the 1:25 scale ones would do fine. I do have some 1:22.5 (nominal G scale) ones, but they are huge by comparison and I can only fit two in a TOPS wagon. These drums at 1:25 scale are just 1mm under size in diameter, and I can fit 4 in a TOPS wagon, so a big win there. These drums look great.

Make it RC oil drums. Two for $1.95. I'll take 12 please.

If I thought things were just falling into place this week I wasn't prepared for what was coming next...
Out of the blue, I decided to take up a subscription to the French model railway magazine, Voie Libre, again. I've not had a subscription in a long time. Carl Arendt persuaded me to try it in the early 2000's as there was always plenty of inspirational content in there. Quite often with a Micro bent. The magazine is available as an iPad app, so it is available to read in English.
As I flicked through the pages I was amazed when I found an article with photographs, and drawings of a Schneider type 69 0-4-0T loco from 1870.
Never heard of it? Neither had I. But when I saw the pictures, I knew I had to model it. It was originally built to 500mm gauge, and as I model 15” to 18” gauge prototypes the less than two inch difference didn’t bother me in the slightest.
I’ll have to find a mechanism for it first. A Bachmann “Percy” perhaps. Or the On30 Porter. Both spring to mind quickly. I don’t have any experience with the Percy mech. It might not have the slow speed control needed on this short layout. The Porter is excellent.

The Schneider at the Pithiviers railway museum preserved at 600mm gauge.

Anyway. That locomotive was most definitely an unexpected find this week. The drawings for the oval skips that accompanied the locomotive will need further investigation. But they are rather interesting too.
Just what did I accomplish on the layout this week?
Once again. Not much. We now have some vents in the clerestory roof. As soon as the painted stone sheets are finished I can clad this building and move on.

It pretty much looks the same as previous weeks...

The week of wiggly tin.

As I sit back and review this weeks work on Cuddle for the blog, once again I feel like I’ve not achieved much in the past seven days.
I shouldn’t be so hard on myself. This layout is being built to a much easier deadline. The Granite City Train Show in St. Cloud MN, in November. I’m usually working down to the last minute doing much, much more. The relaxing atmosphere does help with the stress of the Covid-19 lockdown. But still, at the back of my mind the little voice won’t shut up.
The vast majority of this week was spent on the covered loading dock. As the corrugated paper was delicate, I worked very slowly and carefully, gluing the panels in place. It was a case of two nights per face, and there are only two faces to it. But in the end. The time spent has most definitely been worth it. Even my wife got in on the job, corrugating and distressing some of the panels.

Front of the loading dock cover. 

The side that no-one will see. 

Take a closer look at the rears of the panels, they were all printed brown to minimize the chance of any bleed through of light from the rear.
I used the down time between glue drying to weather the track.
I know many modellers who go to great lengths on their track to get it looking realistic. As this layout will be mounted quite high up and much of the track will be buried in ballast and mud. All I’m interested in doing is killing the plastic look of the PECO crazy track.

A quick spray with light earth and some washes of grey acrylic work wonders.

The structures still have no stone cladding on the walls. But the embossed sheet arrived the other day and has been turned over to my wife to paint. In the meantime I focused some attention on the clerestory roof of this main building, that included the roofing slates.

Taking shape. This structure will feature corrugated iron, stone wall, slate roofing, brick chimney,
and a wooden chute for the tipper. A wide range of materials and textures.

Something else I have been working on, not related to this layout. But most certainly has had an effect on it. Is a series of posts I have put on my "Model Railways of Ian Holmes" Facebook page.
"Top Ten" lists have been in vogue on social media lately. With people (myself included) posting lists of their ten favourite things; Records, Films, Cars, etc. Well, I decided to do a top ten model railway layouts list.  A list of ten layouts that I admire, have inspired me, and influenced my attitude to the hobby. It's made for quite interesting reading as I researched these old layouts. Looking out photographs, and reading magazines that brought back many so memories. I can see many influences of these old layouts coming to the fore in Cuddle.
I'd urge you all to do this too. Think back to the layouts you've seen over the years at shows or in magazines. Then as you recall them, see how they've influenced your approach to the hobby. If nothing else, I guarantee you some great memories.

All stones left unturned.

In ending last weeks post, I mused that perhaps we would see stone cladding on the buildings by the end of the week.
It didn’t happen.
Why is that? It’s my own fault. I put embossed brick styrene on the top of the chimney. As soon as I’d done that my fate was sealed. Take a look at the picture below. Embossed styrene on the top and stone paper below. The difference is staggering.

The difference 

Even though the brick is unpainted, and the stone paper quite outstanding in its realism, it is, as I observed in a previous post, flat. I thought I was going to be OK with that but now it bothers me, and other developments coming up will make the lack of relief even more noticeable. So I headed to the internet to find some embossed plasticard.
I found a nice Plastruct stone wall texture. I hope that will work.
So what did I spent the rest of the week doing?
One evening I recorded a revived Micro Model Railroad Cartel podcast. “Cartel Conversations” with Tom Conboy. It looks like there could be more of them on the way. So look out for Cuddle talk there.
The rest of the week has been spent working on the covered loading dock.
A lot of effort was expended on building a strip wood frame, staining it, and now working on the corrugated iron cladding for it.
Here, in good old step-by-step fashion is the work I’ve done so far.

Step 1. The frame is assembled from stripwood. If it were a real building, it would probably be blown away in a gust of wind. However, it’s only there to provide support to the cladding so it will be fine as you will only get an obstructed view of it.

Step 2. The shell gets stained with my India Ink weathering wash. It looks a bit dark in this image, almost like the wood is burnt and charred. But it dried lighter.

Step 3. Experimenting with what cladding to use on the frame. This is embossed styrene, as I had it to hand. Though in the end, I opted for downloaded textures run through my scale crimper.

Step 4. The platform of the loading dock. Once again, stripwood stained with the India Ink wash. An excellent effect. The wash is made by adding a few drops of Indian Ink to a pint of rubbing alcohol. I wash it over many things to tone them down. That pint has lasted me years.

Step 5. Rusting corrugated iron textures, downloaded from textures.com. Cut to size, distressed, and run through my Fiskars corrugated crimper. A much better effect than I could ever hope for with painted embossed styrene.

What else have I been up to this week? Well there was another mockup made, as I thought about adding a working sliding door to the store room. As you can see from the video “keep it simple” is the watchword.

In closing this weeks report, I’m not going to make any rash promises about putting stone cladding on any of the structures. I’ve learned my lesson there.

It’s been a quiet week in Cuddle

As I sit here in front of the layout. I can’t help feeling a little disappointed with the progress this week.

A little disappointed with progress

Perhaps I was getting ahead of myself expecting more.
I certainly had envisioned the small building being clad with stone by now. But I messed about with the height of it, trying to give enough clearance over the locomotives and stock that would pass through the doorway. This building’s height then affects the larger one.  Even now there’s a nagging voice in the back of my mind saying.
“Just make it a quarter of an inch shorter”.
The larger building I do feel really happy with. It seems to be big enough and imposing enough to dominate things. So the shell for it proceeded at speed. The chimney stack standing 1 foot tall looks just about right, and I was really excited to get the embossed brick on the top third of it. Perhaps this will be the first part of the layout to get the stone cladding.

One foot tall and really pleasing to me.

Just in front of the man in the yellow coat, you can see the new addition. What will be a section of disused track. Perhaps it will lead into a disused mine level. As this will likely be buried under mud and ballast the suggestion of the feature will probably be enough, and this constructional photo below will be the closest you’ll ever get to it.

Disused pointwork cruel close up

All it entailed was butting one piece of track up to the other having bent it around a fierce curve. Then cutting, trimming and extending the On30 crazy track sleepers to look like longer pointwork timbers.

Another view of the layout progress, now it doesn’t seem so bad

As I take another look, then perhaps it isn’t all bad. The tipper is in there, there’s a loading dock too. Dare we hope to see stonework next week?
Thanks for checking things out and stay safe and healthy.

The week in Cuddle

What has been happening on my fictional slice of the south coat of England this week?
Much time has been spent on design and research, but I have managed to start a little construction on the buildings.
You will recall that in a previous post I mentioned having the models reflect the area of the layout by having them built of the appropriate materials for the locale. In this case, stone.
Quite obvious when you think about it. The buildings would be made from materials easily to hand, and that would be the stone from the cliff faces.
I looked for embossed styrene to model the stone walls, but didn’t like what I saw. It all seemed so regular and even. It had got to the stage where I was preparing to scribe my own and hand paint the stones on watercolour paper. But then I took a look at the Clever Models website. I have used their textures before and really like them. They had a sheet on their site called “Illinois Block”. It was O scale and some of the blocks were HUGE. But in G scale they were just big, and that suited me fine. As you can see from this picture, in G scale the stones look quite fine.

G scale or O scale stones, You decide 

As you know, I consider a working feature a necessity on a micro. As a consequence I’ve been giving much thought to that. I was considering a working crane, like on my old Whinny Lane layout. But I’m not sure if I could get one to work. But I am still considering it.
One thing I have settled on is a working tipper, representing the ash from the retort being disposed of.   My last endeavors at creating a tipper were none to successful, so I resolved to put some effort into solving the tipping issue. A mock up was built.  This little video shows how it works.

Things were progressing well, so I decided to work on a proper structure for the layout, no mock ups. I plumped for the shale oil condenser. A tall structure that will be a centerpiece of the layout. It wasn’t going to be easy.  The panels the structure was built of had some interesting pattern in them. Not to mention the hundreds of bolts to used to join the panels together.

I found this structure quite interesting and knew I had to model it.

The detail in the panels was created by gluing varying lengths of .5mm x .2mm styrene in place. It wasn’t as arduous a task as it sounds, and the finished result is quite acceptable to my eyes.

I like the effect of the panelling. I’m not looking forward
to adding all the bolt details.

Hopefully, in the coming week I can get a start on the structures proper. I was taking a closer look at the chimney of the retort house in my reference photo and it has a stone lower part and brick In the upper part. That should make for an interesting model.