iPhone plant lookup actually identified my work as a plant! Day 23

There is a feature on iPhones wherein you take a photo of a plant or an animal, and the phone will search its database and tell you what you have taken a picture of. So just for a laugh, I thought I’d see what it thought my creations were. To be perfectly honest, I wasn’t expecting anything. So when I ran the picture though the camera and got an answer I was shocked.

It’s Yarrow!

I was aiming for Ragwort, but Yarrow is native to the UK too, so I’ll take that as a win. Next up I tried the one I was proudest of, the Cow Parsley.

Alyssum or Buckwheat

Sadly, it didn’t recognize it as Cow Parsley. But if I was modelling a garden setting in 16mm scale. Then Alyssum would be a plant to have in the flower beds. 

I tried my third different plant..

Goldenrod for the win!

I was amazed. Goldenrod is native to Minnesota and the UK, and it grows along the trail that I run daily. This plant was in my mind as I created these models. To have my miniature creation recognized for what it was intended to be was unreal. 

You can just call me the miniature gardener…
I’ve made about 20 weeds right now, hopefully that will be enough to make a mark on the layout.

Weeding - Day 22

Making them, not removing them that is. 

One of the great things about modelling in a large scale such as 16mm is that you can do much more than suggest plants you can actually model them, and depending on how skilled you are. With quite some accuracy. I wasn’t too bothered about recreating nettles in painstaking detail like Roy C.Link did on his Crowsnest Tramway layout. But I was keen to try to go a bit further than using commercial products. I wanted to make some of my own. 

Driving around with all the summer flowers, (and weeds) in bloom. It was clear that yellow would be THE colour to use. But how to make the plants?

The secret to the method lies in tree modelling in smaller scales. There are skilled folks out there who use stranded wire twisted and bent to all sorts of shapes to recreate stunningly accurate models of trees. This may go back to G. Iliffe Stokes in August 1958 Railway Modeller. But a much simpler method will suffice for plants like Cow Parsley and Ragwort for example.

Ragwort

Cow Parsley

One thing that is apparent about all these plants in the field is how straying the stalks are. It seemed quite natural to use straight wire to model straight stalks. Keeping the stalks straight during construction was nigh on impossible.

The wire 15 AWG multi stranded hobby wire

The wire was cut to a suitable length and cladding stripped off.  The individual strands of wire were then thinned down into smaller groups of between 4 to 8 strands. These were then twisted together to create the desired shapes, and a little solder was melted into the end of the stem. This I hope will make it easier to plant the stems into the baseboard,

Strands ready to be twisted together.

Twisted strands ready to receive solder

I was feeling pretty good about the way things were going. Nothing had been too difficult. Twisting the wire strands had been fiddly, then I remembered that I had made a bunch of  trees for my T scale layout Gonou, culminating in flowering cherry trees. Happy with the way the stalks were looking it was time to foliate them.

Step 1. A spray of a green paint to get rid of the copper wire colour

Step.2 A spray with Woodland Scenics scenic cement, and a sprinkle with fine foam

Final step. Dab the ends of the stalks with white glue and sprinkle yellow (for Ragwort) and white (for Wild Parsley) scatter on the ends.

I’ve only made a dozen so far. I just made a few to see how it went. To see if I enjoyed it enough to do a load more. I don’t know how many I’ll need. But these look the part, and when grouped together will probably look quite convincing.

Another new skill learnt.

Day 21. All in all it’s just another brick in the wall

Those were the words running though my head as I was putting together the sand bin for the layout. You can see why… I marked out the courses to help me see them as I scribed the board. There’s no doubt about it. It’s a Pink Floyd Wall. 

So they weren’t bricks in the wall they were breeze blocks

I have been thinking about the sand bin for a long time. What’s the best way to model it? This is 16mm scale. The breeze blocks (cinder blocks) such a bin would be made from have size. Approximately 22mm x 11mm x 11mm in 16mm scale. So there’s no cutting corners really. 

This is my first attempt at recreating the bin. Using foamcore board. This board is too thin to represent the older thicker concrete breeze blocks. But it’s the correct thickness for the more modern, lighter, cinder blocks. So it might work. This is going to be something that will be moved on and off the layout as it gets filled. So it also needs to be quite sturdy and to take the weight of the Woodland scenics ballast that I will be tipping. Some testing of how much handling the bin will take is needed.

There’s one other thing that the structure looks like in its current state. A urinal at a lower league English Football ground…

Day 20. Casing the joint.

It had to happen sometime. The display case had to be started. As the layout progresses, the time when all my hard work needs to be properly protected becomes more important. Case in point being yesterday’s incident with the tipping dock. Not that a protective case would have helped in that instant. I just don’t want to go through any more repairs to things. So the case had to be built.

As you know my woodworking skills are severely lacking so a monumental task like this has to be done when I am in the right frame of mind. Perhaps yesterdays occurrence helped in that regard. But as I started marking up the 1/4” ply. I felt pretty good. Then I started checking and double (event triple and quadruple) checking measurements. I measured a distance in inches and then the same distance in millimeters. 

I may have mentioned before that I have dyscalculia, so any dealings with numbers are fraught with issues. It was tough. Dyscalculia is not number dyslexia. It’s difficulty in dealing with the processing of numbers. Basic addition is OK. Anything beyond that and I struggle. Anything smaller than an eighth of an inch, and forget it. If course I should be working in metric, (Dammit so should America). But when everything is measured in imperial, converting is hard work and mentally exhausting.

But after a two and a half hours, I had cut 5 pieces of plywood to the correct (or near enough correct) shapes and sizes, and much to my amazement everything seemed to fit together. 

Front left view

Front right

From the rear.

After a few hours sitting and staring at the photographs and thinking things over. I have come to the following conclusions:

1. I don’t know how on earth I managed to get this all to fit together.

2. The rear uprights are only 2” deep, they should probably have some bracing against them in order to keep the structure rigid.

3. The split ground level is problematic. The window depth is about right when looking at the higher ground level. But very deep at the lower level. 

4. I wonder if an extra brace at the front would be needed. A thin piece of barely noticeable tube giving extra support. (The front right photo seems to show something like that, with the way the shelving unit behind it lined up).

5. Lighting inside the frame/box. Some four foot lengths of 2” x 1” or smaller, running the length of the layout with LED light strips like these affixed to them to light the layout. Would they also help hold the cabinet square?

5. I rested the layout on our grill to take the photographs. The track level is 58”.  I like the height.

6. Still undecided about what to to about the backscene. As I prefer to be “hands on” with the operation of the loader, tipper and couplers an open back is preferable.

7. Seriously, how on earth did I manage this?

Now, the next task is to work out how to fit a sector plate/fiddlestick to the side. Though I might wait a couple more days before doing any more woodworking.

Day 19. Dodged a bullet

I had an enforced long break for the layout over the past four days. I had the not most pleasant prep for a routine surgery. Most I think will know what I’m talking about. It basically entails overdosing on laxatives… 

Anyway, today it was back to business as usual. The plan being to add long static grass to the layout. So I stripped everything off it and set to work.

You always think that when you have put things out of the way. That you’ve put them WELL out of the way. Nowhere near where you’ll be when working on your task. 

Then you go over to where you’d left something. The tipping dock for example, and forget that it’s there.

And…

Well let’s just say I was not a happy camper as I heard it hit the floor. The air was not blue, just silent as a wave of shock and disbelief that this had happened, rushed over me.

I dared not look though, lest I burst into tears thinking about all the work I had put into this centerpiece structure.

But I would have to look sometime…

Oh.

That’s not too bad.

I had expected to see it smashed into smithereens. Hand rails and legs all reduced to their consistent parts. 

It wasn’t. 

I don’t know if it was due to my constructional techniques or what. But the damage was manageable. None of the legs were reduced to their component parts, and only four handrails had become detached from the posts. Some of them still had the locating pins in place. Enabling me to easily fix everything back together. I lost one post. But I had several spares on hand.

Fixing the damage

I shall take my time fixing it. But it could have been so much worse.

As for the static grass. That’s not looking too bad either.

This is starting to look like neglected, industrial permanent way

Only my second attempt at static grass but looking promising

We live to work another day.

Day 18 This is where we’re at.

Buoyed up with confidence over the mocked up look of the top end from yesterday, (and finding more fine leaf foliage) I set to and worked on finalizing the scenery for the loader end of the layout. Things are coming along quite nicely. So I decided to put everything together so to speak, and see how it looks as a whole…

Looking good, but a bit clean around the loading chute.Much detritus needed.

Nice visual. Train passes between gaps in foreground objects

This is well on the way to looking like sand quarry trackage

Even a simple bit of detritus like a wrecked skip chassis adds to the scene

Wether it’s a hut or a sheeted down pile of whatever. This space needs something.

The tipper and bin is already well established. I just need to decide how to model the concrete blocks

Overall view from one end

Overall view from the other

I think that we can agree, everything is coming together pretty well. As the layout stands it’s pretty workable. All it really needs is the details and detritus that an industrial scene would have to pull it all together. 

Then it needs the display case with lighting. 

Then it needs the sector plate, fiddle yard/fiddle stick. 

Then it needs legs. 

Then it needs an extension. 

Wait. I didn’t really say that did I?

Day 17. Greenery vignettes.

You may recall that the last couple of posts on here, certainly yesterday’s, had centered around rusty corrugated iron fences as a backdrop. Reaction on NGRMOnline, the principal place of objective discussion on this project, was initially quite positive. Which I was quite happy about as I quite liked the idea. Then there was a swing away from that towards natural vegetation as a backdrop. Cool I like that idea too. I’d not had a chance to try that out. But I was definitely considering it. Certainly to help separate the scenes. Like this first picture.

Undergrowth

Don’t you like that? I most definitely do. Studying pictures of the Sand Quarry railways of Leighton Buzzard reveals an awful lot of weeds and suchlike growing all over the place. There’s no proper soil so thistles, nettles and suchlike thrive. Like in this picture on Flickr. 

Another view. The back edge of the layout has vegetation along it.

I’ve never been 100% sure how to work with that fine leaf foliage that I’m using here for the undergrowth. The “plants” always seem to want to fall apart on me. Anyway, I like the feel in this view. Static grass needs to be added to encroach on the track a bit more. But it’s a good start.

Sadly, I appear to have run out of the fine leaf foliage that I used for the undergrowth.

Yes, I’m out of fine leaf foliage. But if the hedge line gets carried along the top of the mound at the back, it should be good. How about a wrecked skip chassis as a bit of foreground details?

This picture tells a story

I just threw this scene together for giggles. One day a skip fell off the tipping dock and never got moved. 

Still more to think about…