scenery

Happy new year

Happy new year! December was a wash with nothing being achieved before we flew down to Christchurch for xmas. I did however get a little bit of modelling in while I was away, having a bit of fun with the Jörgen Edgar technique for making N scale locomotives quickly. And come Christmas day, I was pretty spoilt with models, kitsets, people, tools, and even books. So no complaints here!

Ranuska scenery

Ranuska is coming along well. I have made an executive decision not to use the "tall skinny house", it just didn't seem to fit with everything else. It will be used elsewhere I am sure though. Instead I have turned the area into a small overgrown park.

Just need to add a picnic table or two and maybe some raco...

Ranuska scenery

With the sanatorium complete, attention is moving to the quaint seaside settlement of Ranuska...

It's no secret that I love doing scenery, and I've been making good progress this week. Here is a before shot from last Saturday:

First of all I had to build up the contours a bit to make the landscape a bit more believable. A block of polystyrene was soon sculpted into a crude shape.

Three buildings, each on its own level.

One of the things I've struggled with in the past is attaching my buildings to the scenery....

A home for the sanatorium

The saga of the Sanatorium continues...

It's funny, but after months of stop-start progress getting the sanatorium completed, I am not on fire and have achieved more in a few days than I have in months!

First up were some holes for the lift towers. Luckily I had a hole cutter that was just a few mm bigger than I needed. It made short work of the plaster shell / polystyrene core scenery. Then I was able to gingerly lower it into position and admire the result:

Wow!

The holes were miles too deep, so I made up packers to raise them back to the right height. Once the spirit level was happy I wrapped the tubes in masking tape and made up some sculptamold to fill in the around them.

Crossing safety

I've now finished the railway crossing over the crossover; for a long period of time this was a chasm of railway tracks that would swallow entire cars whole! However all good things must come to an end and so I have patched up the holes. Always fun trying to squeeze bits of road between moving turnout blades!

The crossing is just an elaborate collection of carefully trimmed pieces of balsa, painted and weathered with powders to match the rest of the road.

I've also taken the chance to install some cross-bucks. Thanks to the wonders of the internet, these days even the Federal Highway Administration have the exact dimensions of railway crossing signs online. Saved me having to visit a real railway I guess.

Back yard gardening

"but that can wait for the next rainy spell" I said...

Well the next rainy spell arrived pretty promptly, so with little delay I settled down and made a back yard garden for the little E.L. Moore cottage.

Raised vege gardens

When I off handedly mentioned building a vege garden, the matriarch very quickly handed down her specifications: two raised gardens, on the sunny side of the house, at least 1 foot off the ground. No wide than arm's length, with good walking space between them. While you're at it, I'd also like a glass house.

Well! Not one to argue I rummaged around under the house and found some suitable ship-lap styrene siding that had seen better days. A bit of cutting and sanding later and I had the framing made up. I filled up the boxes with some of my usual dirt mix (glue-plaster-paint) and then mixed in some horse & sheep manure from over the fence.

A bumper crop of cabbages were soon well on their way, along with some stalk...

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...