Wednesday, July 31, 2013

The Roadmender

As you can see I've now expanded the road to form the factory yard which has allowed me to ballast the factory siding as well. Unfortunately I'm going to have to re-do part of the yard surface...... again.

To make sure the factory doesn't appear to float in mid air, I needed to embed it into the yard surface. On the first attempt I ended up placing the factory too far from the siding, leaving a rather huge gap from the loading bays to the wagons. By the time I realised this though the clay had dried solid and so I couldn't easily rectify the problem. To move the factory I had to cut out the rectangle of clay around it and start over.

Cutting out the first attempt, re-positioning the factory, and laying the new surface was easy, and everything looked great. Unfortunately I didn't do a very good job of smoothing out the new surface and levelling it with the first attempt. The result; a bumpy surface around the factory and an obvious straight line join between the two attempts. Of course I made sure you can't see these problems in the photo!

So I'm going to rub down the surface, and add a little more clay to smooth things out and to touch up a few places where the surface meets the factory wall then I'll repaint (hopefully with a slightly better colouring). Hopefully at that point I won't be embarrassed to show a photo that includes more of the yard surface.

2 comments:

  1. I've just been sitting contemplating. The patience issue apart could I get the satisfaction from making a model that you obviously get? I f I could do it well perhaps I could. But could I do it well enough to satisfy me? Therein lies the conundrum. That's why I gave up trying to play a musical instrument. So in the meantime I will enjoy my modelling vicariously through you Mark. And I am enjoying it very much. One day, I hope, I shall see the real thing.

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    1. Well even my patience is wearing thin, as I've now found that the factory is on a slight angle to the siding meaning the wagon hits the wall if you run right up to the buffers. So instead of just touching up the yard surface I've had to rip it up completely for the second time.

      I know that some aspects of the layout won't satisfy me, certainly not at the first attempt. I'm happy with the fact that I can run the trains and know that I'll get there with the rest eventually. Hopefully when you get a chance to see the model, I'll be happier with it than I am at the moment!

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