Saturday 3 January 2015

Progress on Corrieshalloch

It's about time for an update on the layout. Recently, I've been focusing on basic scenic work: carving the basic contours from polystyrene and coating them with a layer of plaster bandage to give a solid surface.

I've also been working on styrene platforms to replace the rough, temporary foam-board ones that I put in place for the summer exhibitions. I would have used foam-board for the final platforms if it hadn't been the wrong thickness.

This photo shows how the platforms are constructed from a skeleton of 40 thou styrene sheet, with a facing of Slater's stone sheet. I had this sheet in store, otherwise I would probably have embossed my own stonework in cartridge paper. The coping stones were added individually. After doing this section (the goods yard loading dock), I decided to simply put the coping stones for future sections on top of the platform top surfaces.
Here you see both the front loading dock and down platform in place (temporarily). The platforms are topped with sheets of 30 thou styrene. The dark appearance of the loading dock is an experiment with a piece of wet and dry paper to represent the cinder surface. It looks a bit too neat and tidy so will need some more attention at some point. The rear platform is still in its foam-board state.
The photos below show the up platform, with only the cattle dock outstanding. You also see my mock-up of the exit road bridge. This has a simple styrene underframe (which will be used for the final bridge), and this is temporarily faced with an elevation printed on thin card. I drew it up on QCAD to get the elliptical profile of the arch and wing walls. I'm happy with the mock-up so will now need to recreate the shape in styrene.
Finally, there has been the small matter of taking over editorship of the 2mm Magazine to deal with...