building

Raparapa detailing

The weather here in the real Raparapa has been quite miserable lately, which has been a perfect excuse to do some detailing on Raparapa in our cosy lounge.

Sheep

Rachel bought me some sheep for my birthday, although the clever model shop in Christchurch managed to send OO scale sheep, which are truly gigantic in N scale – not so much sheep, and more like wooly mammoths! Eventually after several phone calls and even a personal visit, they managed to get the correct size of sheep sent over from Britain.

Out of the packet they were very plastic looking, so I took some time to paint them up like real sheep.

I chose to paint them as "black and white sheep" and "regular grubby sheep", as researched while driving to Rachel's school.

I snipped them off the sp...

Raparapa station improvements

Things have been pretty busy here at Utrainia HQ, but the blog has been a bit neglected. Time to change that!

First update is to showcase the recent improvements to Raparapa Station, as part of the Raparapa Beautification Improvement Project. I started by painting the window panes white, which has nicely lightened the mood and made the windows seem a little less oppressive. Then I redid the roof, this time a light tan colour, heavily weathered.

Perhaps the coolest improvement are the window planters. These were made up from some weather board styrene siding, with some static grass "plants" added. The plants were quite fun to make. I took a sheet of tin foil and dabbed on some super glue in little lines. Then I attached the sheet to the negative output of my GrassBlaster 40...

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...

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...