Previous Posts

More train room improvements

Improvements in the train room continue.

My sister will be pleased to see that we now have curtains to match the wallpaper...

The previous curtains didn't exist, which helps explain why the room is always cold. So on our rounds today we stopped at the Salvation Army shop and rummaged through their curtain pile. After some hunting we found the above pair that were the right size and reasonably thick. The curtain track cost more.

Earlier in the week I put up some more shelving to store my modules on.

This has made a huge difference and now there is actually enough cle...

A shelf for Utrainia

My workbench is coming along nicely, with the addition of a display shelf today.

Nocked up fairly quickly out of some MDF and pine trim, it makes a nice back to my desk and will stop things disappearing down the gap between my square desk and the not-square walls.

After my adventures with Hammerite, I decided to paint this with some very cheap dark grey test-pot-paint, and then went over it with a can of cheap satin black spray paint. It looked pretty rough at the time, but now that it's dried I quite the effect.

Once inside I bunged a couple of screws in at the corners into some joists and dug out my Kato Unitrack. The 30mm pine is just the right size for the Unitrack to sit on, and then it was time to populate it. For now I've decided on a mix of Japanese and US pa...

A space for Utrainia

Poor Utrainia. Since moving house a grand total of nothing has happening in the nobel republic of Utrainia. Here Utrainia sits waiting for a home...

But slowly things are happening. Utrainia has a space at one end of the house, though it needs a lot of work. First on the list was some storage space. A grotty closet was cleaned out and given a fresh coat of paint, then a few shelves fitted. A quick clean out and it was ready to house the first load of boxes:

Next on the list was a workbench. I recycled my old workbench from the garage and while I was at it I found a few shelving...

Scenery for Ranuska

Work in Ranuska has been slowly ticking along, helped somewhat by the excellent modelling weather we've been having. Week after week of rain makes it quite nice to retire down to the garage after dinner and listen to the raindrops on the garage door as I quietly beaver away.

And beavering away I have been. Lots of scenery work has been done, in fact despite everything being in boxes I've been romping along on foresting Ranuska.

Rapid Forests

In the last update I had painted everything a good brown colour (Resene Sambuca). Next step is to slather on a good coating of PVA glue and start sticking down lumps of lichen. I'm lucky that I have dozens of containers of old lichen scraps lying around from previous scenes and railways, so I would just grab a handful and sprea...

Colouring Ranuska

Ranuska hasn't received a whole lot of attention lately, packing up the house has instead taken most of my weekend time. However I've managed to find a few hours here and there to keep advancing Ranuska.

Ballasting

With the faulty point repaired, I decided it was time to do some ballasting. I used my trusty chinchilla dust and tinted it grey. Then I sieved it through a tea strainer and applied it in the usual manner. It's nice and seems to look pretty good.

Retaining wall

Around the back of Ranuska there is a sea wall next to the track. I used some Tomix plastic retaining wall sheets that I joined into one long sheet and then painted concrete colour. A wash with some dilute dirty grey helped bring out some of the relief, though I think a heavier wash is sti...

Weekend progress on Ranuska

First on the workbench this weekend was to get one of the points operating correctly. It turns out that building very tight radius points that operate well is quite a difficult task.

One of my points is located right at the mouth of the tunnel, making it fiddly to work on. It's also quite a tight radius and I was having trouble with the wheels jumping off the track, so the engineering department was called in to take a look.

The foreman first decided to take off one of the point blades and grind it down to a sharper point. This went well until some of the grinding equipment (a piece of sandpaper) snagged the point and bent it into a U shape! Panel beating efforts were unsuccessful. So a new point blade was duly fabricated.

The foreman then noticed that the rebate in the outer track was too big and the point blade wasn't lining up correctly. The maintenance window was extended and the workers set about correcting this. First the rail was built up using solder and...