techniques

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...

Modular building, part 3

My modular building project continues on from part 2... 

Nearly two months since the last update! Gosh. Now that the spring warmth has arrived, there is a lot to do in the garden. Combine that with numerous other small jobs and building a new laundry, there hasn't been much time for blogging. I haven't been idle though, just nothing of much note has been happening. Then there was the entire week that I spent debugging and fixing the electronics after I sent 15VDC down the RS485 bus by mistake. Took out most of the ICs in the system with it. Sigh!

Anyway, late in August I gave the whole building a zap with black primer.

This helps stop any light leaking through from the inside. It looks pretty racy all ...

Modular building, part 2

My modular building project continues on from part 1...

Construction

Once I had all the components, construction proceeded very quickly. I made a wall at a time, using lots of bracing on the back, and sections of 0.75 x 0.75mm styrene trim on the front to tidy up the corners.

The bracing on the back made joining together the corners pretty easy.

While shopping at our local discount asian warehouse I came across some rather neat miniature wooden clothes pegs that I knew would make great clamps:

Modular building, part 1

I'm building a new building for Ranuska, a small hotel by the seaside. Of course, it has to be interesting and a little different, and I'm trying out some new techniques too.

INspiration

My inspiration for this build comes from a few places. First is a residential building from Bobrujsk, Belarus, from the Soviet Modernism era of architecture:

Closely related to this is the Nakagin capsule tower, built in the 1970s in Tokyo:

 

(Read a

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...

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.