Impressionist Scenery...

Well, it's been about two years since my last post on this blog, so going on my performance over the last ten years or so, it must be time for a new post!

As I mentioned at the end of my last post, I was, at the time, about to retire from the editorship of AMRM. Hard to believe that was nearly two years ago... being retired is great!

In that time I have been steadily working away on Lambing Flat and it is now 'complete' (though far from finished), just in time for it to be dismantled and moved to a new location! In early 2021 I purchased a very pleasant 'retirement' home in Cowra, NSW, (yes, Lambing Flat is going (almost) 'home'!) and after many delays, mainly caused by the various Covid lockdowns and the severe shortage of tradies, I am finally ready to move in. The date has been set and by the 1st August, I, Lambing Flat and Leo the Blunderdog should be happily setting up in our new home.

Now, with the preliminaries out of the way, we come for the reason (excuse!) for this post. While I have expanded the layout and completed most of the scenery, there were a couple of areas that had not progressed beyond the track and carved foam stage of scenery construction. With the move rapidly approaching and my realisation that those particular sections would not fit in the new space, there was no point to finishing them, but the bare foam was very jarring and detracted from the 'look' of the rest of the layout. What to do... then came the 'lightbulb' moment... I remembered Marcus Ammann's rather clever use of 'impressionistic' scenery on some parts of his very extensive layout and how effective it was. So I thought, why not just use my acrylic artist's paints (used for the 2D backscenes) to quickly apply some colour to the 3D sections as well! I splashed a bit of paint around one Sunday afternoon and the results can be seen in the accompanying photos (and the header photo). It may not be as detailed as finished scenery, but it doesn't ruin the illusion as much as unfinished scenery does. 

One of the sections that were unfinished, linking the mill scene and the stockyard end of Lambing Flat station, across the short end of the garage. The header photo shows the same scene after painting.

This is the unfinished section between the mill scene and Bulla Creek yard in 2020. I was not happy with the track arrangements and it won't fit in the new space anyway.

The same view, taken about an hour ago. Since the first photo was taken, the hill to the right of the main line has been reduced in height and the section of hill between the main line and the loco depot has been removed. The water tank has also been finished (more on that below). Once more, while not as good looking as finished scenery, it gives an impression of scenery and blends in far better than it did in the earlier view.

Another view of the 'impressionist' section with some 'real' scenery behind along Back Creek.

I've come to the conclusion that this is a very quick and effective method of 'filling in the gaps' of an incomplete layout and will be doing this to unfinished sections in future until I can schedule the time to apply more detailed scenery.

As mentioned above, the NSWGR water tank I was building in the previous post has now been completed. Here are some images of it.

By 16th May 2020, the water tank looked like this. The base colour is an airbrushed coat of Tamiya XF-24 Dark Grey. The concrete footings and the drain were hand painted with Top Coat 'Concrete' colour, while the ends of the water crane were picked out with black and the silver section hand-painted Tamiya XF-16 Flat Aluminium. Weathering consisted of various 'washes' of very dilute in isocol alcohol Tamiya XF-10 Flat Brown, XF-52 Flat Earth and black. The plywood base was painted an earth brown and then a light covering of my 'earth' and 'ash' dirt mix, plus a bit of green scatter material, glued on as per my normal scenery making method. Then I had to gradually pour layers of Woodland Scenics Realistic Water to represent the water. What a saga that turned out to be...

Ten months after the previous photo the water pour had finally been completed! I first spent a month carefully pouring layer after layer of Woodlands Scenic Realistic Water, but I wasn't completely happy with the final result. The Realistic Water was easy to pour (just time consuming as one can only pour a couple of millimetres at a time, wait a day for it to dry then pour another couple of mm), but, in this circumstance, it manifested a terrible meniscus that was quite unsightly. By the end of June 2020 I has reached the top of the tank, but the water wasn't level at all, with that unsightly meniscus showing everywhere the 'water' came into contact with anything. I tried painting the 'humps' a greenish hue to disguise it as algae, which did alleviate the problem a little. As mentioned earlier, I wasn't happy with it, but I couldn't think of any way to improve it, so I just placed it on the layout and got on with other things.

After a couple of months of not going out to the layout room for various reasons, I came back to find that the water had shrunk about 7-8mm below the original surface and looked even worse!

At first I experimented with adding layers of Feast Watson Decking Oil obtained from Bunnings (I had used all the Realistic Water I had, plus I wasn't happy with the result from using it anyway). This worked for a couple of layers, giving a nice dirty water effect, but then the surface started to 'wrinkle', long before I reached the needed 'top' of the water.

Ah well, looks like I'd have to get some more Realistic Water and just put up with the substandard result... However, a trip to MRRC at Blacktown revealed that they had sold out of Realistic Water and weren't going to be able to get any more any time soon (the supply chain had been completely disrupted by the COVID epidemic). They did have some Woodlands Scenic Deep Pour Water however, so I decided to give it a go.

I wish I had used this stuff to start with! It is very easy to use, can pour much thicker layers and has a much smaller and less obtrusive meniscus. I'm now very happy with the look of the 'water' and the tank has been on the layout ever since. Now, my only frustration is that all that intricate interior detail I spent so much time putting in the tank is all but invisible under the water!

Another shot of the completed tank.

That's it for this post; see you in two years!

 

Building a standard NSWGR 40,000 gallon locomotive water tank

Yes, it has been a while since I wrote anything in this blog, but I have been a little busy!

Let's see, since my last entry in December 2017, I have:

• dismantled Lambing Flat and moved house
• got divorced
• set up a new household with a new partner and re-erected Lambing Flat in a new configuration!

Do you think that might be a reasonable explanation for the lack of entries?

I haven't been completely idle on the modelling front (other than dismantling and re-erecting a layout!), but I am only going to talk about one project with this post (if you want to see what else I have been up to, just have a look at my Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/amrmjmes )

Also, the old configuration of the layout at Beecroft was described in my article in AMRM Issue 340 (February 2020), which describes pretty much all the things that I had promised to outline in here, but never got around to. See the AMRM blog for details of that issue and how to acquire it if you haven't already got a copy.

http://australianmodelrailwaymagazine.blogspot.com/2020/01/february-2020-issue-of-amrm-is-being.html

My latest major modelling project is the construction of a standard NSWGR 40,000 gallon cast iron locomotive water tank to serve the rebuilt and enlarged station at Bulla Creek (the location formerly known as New Yard on the old configuration of the layout at Beecroft).

This came about when I was looking in my unbuilt kit drawer for something else, when I rediscovered a treasure I had forgotten I had! It was a Rails North epoxy and timber kit for an NSWGR 40000 gallon water tank and it had been in there since circa 1983! Well, I did need a loco water tank for the reconfigured Bulla Creek, so I started construction.

Of course, I didn't build it as per instructions (the instructions are typical of the era, not all that helpful or accurate!), but instead used the contents of the kit as a collection of parts to help me scratchbuild the version I actually want. I used Peter Jarvis's excellent articles in AMRM Issues 299 and 300 (April and June 2013) as a guide, as well as various photos and drawings I have access to, particularly images of the tank which once stood at Campbelltown.

The tank was assembled as designed, but the interior was detailed using Peter's articles as a guide. The stand was assembled by gluing the components together using a simple set of lines drawn on some spare paper to keep them all square and in line. The wire rigging was some hard nickel silver wire glued to tensioning rings made from aluminium tube and then glued to the legs of the stand.

The water level gauge was constructed from styrene and brass wire, with some chain from the 'bits' collection. The ladder was some ladder stock I've had in my scrapbox for around 40 years. The inlet pipe was a section of steel bar included in the original kit with a tap fitting from my collection of bits.

The water crane was adapted from a Uneek kit for a standard water column, bending the main column gently to shape to form the 'U' shaped outlet pipe. All the linkages to allow the crew to open the water valve from the back of the tender were formed from brass strip and wire, plus some superglue impregnated paper strips to hold it all together. The drain on the ground was formed from styrene sheet and a section of old Lima LV panelling for the grate.

This image shows the rear of the tank and some the detail of the water crane outlet tap linkage and the rear of the water level gauge and the float.

The model is complete and waiting for an opportunity to be painted, which will hopefully happen in the next couple of days. If not, it may take a bit longer, as I will have to get back to working on preparing the August issue of AMRM, which will be my very last issue. Oh, didn't I mention? I'm retiring at the end of July! The magazine will be in good hands with my replacement being trained up at the moment. If you want to find out who my replacement is, you will have to wait until the June issue of AMRM is released in a couple of weeks!