scenery

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...

Early morning in Ranuska

It's a national holiday today in Utrainia, and it just so happens I'm taking the break in Ranuska. I woke early today and went for a walk along the sea wall. There was a gentle sea breeze blowing and the cool winter air was quite refreshing, though not cold; it's never that cold in tropical Ranuska! Luckily I'd brought my camera with me, because as I strolled along, this lovely wee railcar rattled in to the funicular platform.

Yes, Ranuska is back in my sights again. I've made a couple of miniature saw horses which are perfect for sitting a module on while I work on it. They follow my usual design, just with stumpy legs and a sorter top. Turns out they also make great chairs!

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...

Ranuska tunnel taking shape

Ranuska has been slowly ticking along. The tunnel has been the focus of my attention lately.

First port of call was to get the track into place. Thanks to my chopper I quickly made up the sleepers. A few test fits later and I glued the track down for good with 24 hour Araldite – 24 hours so that I had some time to get everything lined up before the glue went off. Once that was set I attacked the track with dark gray undercoat.

Now I had the track sorted, it was time to get the tunnel into place.

Before I put the tunnel walls in place, I need to line the inside of the tunnel. I did this with some well-expired Scultamold, that it turns out never set. I also added some small wood brackets to mount the tunnel to.

A tunnel for Ranuska

Around the end of the  Ranuska peninsula, the track passes under a mountain and skirts quite close to the coastline. When the engineers were building the track, they had to dig through a lot of loose rock, and had problems with the hillside above. Since the tunnel was so close to the surface, the engineers built up a brick and concrete lining where the tunnel broke through. The resulting tunnel has become something of an icon for the area.

So here is the area where my tunnel will go, with the sanatorium perched above. It is so close to the edge that a tunnel would just look silly, but I want a tunnel. While surfing for ideas I came across the Cinque Terre in Italy, which is a rugged patch of coast line along the Italian Riviera. I found some great looking stone structures that were half tunnel, half rock shelters, so I decided to copy that.