Day 4.

The days seem to be rushing by. I don’t see how I could finish this in three more days. I desperately need something to come together to make me feel like I’m getting somewhere.

Today that happened. 

I’ve been cutting and staining strip wood and slicing up styrene girders for the past 2 days. I was desperate to see some progress. Today, with some jigs and a little patience, I achieved something.

Something!

The tipping dock is in a state where it looks like what it’s going to look like. It stands on its own 10 legs. I shan’t fix the deck in place until I’ve laid the rails on there. 

The superstructure is rigid thanks to all the bracing I put in place.

The underside showing all the bracing in place

After that my confidence was at a bit of a high, so I started to think about the garage/workshop. I poured over photographs of prefab garages getting a feel for how they were assembled. You can even find the instructions on the internet. For a while I gave some thought to actually making panels and assembling them like the real thing.

Perhaps not…

I mocked up a shell of the building to get the size right. I was originally going with a scale 16’ long building bit I felt it was too long. So I decided a 12’ structure would fit the bill.

A slightly smaller structure than planned. But all is good.

All in all a good day. A confidence building day. I’m looking forward to getting a lot more done in the next couple of days.
 

Pause, reflect

I've reached that stage.  I'm the vast majority of the way through the layouts construction. It's just detailing work to do. I can add bits and pieces here and there to my hearts content to make the scene looked lived in. Like a place of work should. There's so many little things to be done, or could be done. But what? Time to pause and reflect. Here's some things to think about.

To do: Detail the workshop with tools and other rubbish. Perhaps a delightfully dated, (maybe some will say sexist), pinup poster on a wall. The workshop will need properly bedding in, like all the structures on the layout. In the future, I may also run a short section of panel track into the workshop to model a wagon under repair.

 

To do: Do I need to do more? I could add pipe, or girders, bag of cement, and even more wood to a pile of workplace junk. But would it achieve anything extra to what's already suggested here?

Quite a nice vista. Not a view that the regular layout viewer would see.
To do: Anything? Right now I can't think of anything much. A new viewpoint like this can make you think. How about a rack of steel sections in front of the sheeted over items maybe?

To do: Why is that ladder up against the gutter? Is he going to clear the gutters out? I once had a sunflower growing in one of the gutters of my garage. Weeds in the gutter to add to the scene then. The door does need a handle though.

Just messing around. To do: More tension needed in the weighted down ropes that hold the tarpaulin in place.

This is good. Seriously, I might not ever top this as a vignette where I set out to do something and achieved what I set out to do. Nothing else needed here.

Aerial view. There's a surprising amount of space to fill. If I wanted to, that is.

From this view you can see all three tracks, as set out on Carl Arendt's original Squarefoot estate railway layout.

I have a couple more Binnie skips to build, and as you know I plan to model those as fairly new and free of damage. There's a Motor Rail kit coming from LocoRemote too. Then there's an 'Issing Sid kit to build for fun. All those items will need painting, and it's too cold here in Minnesota to go down to the garage and spray paint things right now. Perhaps I will have to wait until March to do that job. The only truly major task to do is to devise the tipper to fill the wagons. I have a few ideas on that, it just needs fine tuning to fit the location. So perhaps there won't be much activity on here in the coming weeks. We'll see. 

What do you think I could add? Reply here or wherever you were referred from, either Facebook, NGRMOnline, or Voie Libre. I'd be interested in feedback. 

*It should be noted that the figures aren't painted for a reason. My wife wants to paint those. So I'm leaving them well alone.

Real progress

 The relative success of creating the workshop really spurred me on to make further progress on the layout. 

General overall view. I was planning a tall hedge behind the workshop. But I think a brick wall is easier.

The workshop interior. The up and over door feels right too. A short length of rope hanging down to facilitate the closing of the door will set it off perfectly.

Debris and detritus around the yard will help create the right feel. I might also run a disconnected length of track into the workshop.

Aerial view

The brick base to the building really makes this. The door adds something too, a big improvement on the plain wall previously.

The view is layered, creating more depth. Final positions of scrap  to be decided.

Calling Arthur “two sheds” Jackson

 That’s a Monty Python reference for you young ‘uns.

Progress ground to a halt on this layout for a while as I couldn’t decide how to treat the left hand side of this micro. I knew that I wanted a shed cum workshop on there, but I couldn’t find a shed to inspire me. Yes, I really do have to be inspired by a shed to build it. I don’t quite know how I found it but a video appeared on YouTube of a German gentleman’s Feldbahn collection. I spent hours on the internet watching his videos and perusing his website in the name of research. Feldbahn in Obersulm is the site, and I heartily recommend it. I don’t understand a word of German, but I found the videos very interesting. His backyard railway would make a great micro layout. He has, on his railway, a workshop, and it spoke to me. It’s a home built thing. Using pressed siding for walls and roof, and though I didn’t have the siding type to match it. I had plenty of different corrugated siding.

A couple of stills showing the workshop/loco shed

That was all I needed. I set to and using the video stills as a guideline. I started. I also had plenty of strip wood in stock, so I could model the framing inside, it would be clearly visible. The most difficult part of the project was deciding how large the shed should be to fit some workshop equipment inside. Construction was quick, just cutting wood and sheet styrene to size, and before long I had a shell that I liked. In my mind, it has the correct homebuilt feel to it.

Workshop shell. Not a match. But the original gave me the push I needed.

The speed of the project quite fired me up and before some of the glue was fully dry, I had a quick test fitting of some workshop equipment, just to see how it all looked. I think it looks pretty good.

The workshop seems to sit well in the scene

The door opening might look tall. It’s a scale 8 feet, and as there is little room for swing doors to open. I may model an up and over door instead.

That quick project has certainly got the momentum going on the layout again. You can now look for more reports as things progress in the near future.

Back to the sketchbook

 I made a trip to my local hobby shop (Hub Hobby in Richfield, MN. A 40 mile trip) on Saturday to get some paints to finish off “Huddy”, more on that when it’s finished. While I was there I was rootling through the 1:18 automobile shelves. Let’s face it 1:18 scale is as near as dammit the same as 1:19.05 for 16mm scale. I was still rather keen on a suitably sized car on the layout. A Landy (Land Rover) would be nice, but not surprisingly there wasn’t one around. But what I did see was this:

Do these 1:18 scale tools hold the key to the layout?

Tools. 1:18 scale workshop tools no less. In my blockings in. I had mooted the idea of a workshop in the distance. I like the idea of a workshop scene. I had a very nice one on Purespring Watercress, 

Purespring Watercress workshop

It garnered a lot of attention. Perhaps another one would be in order. With almost scale sized tools, it would be a lot easier. Tool chests, Air compressor, Welding equipment. I looked further and I find that there’s a lot of 1:18 scale automotive workshop equipment out there. 

My mind went to the sketchbook. Now that I have blocked in photo’s that I was very happy with. I could use those as a basis for my iPad musings.

A front three-quarter vision of the layout with workshop

Only the layout operator will get to see this view of the layout

Looking at these I think a workshop scene is a really good idea, and right now I really like the idea of scratch building a 16mm scale pillar drill. It will probably be easier than making a Land Rover.

A workshop scene it is then.