workbench update

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.

A quick workbench update

With the lack of communication you may think nothing is happening in Utrainia, but that isn't quite the case. As usual I have a few pots on the boil.

First of all, a new arrival! A little wee tram recently turned up in a box from Japan, and delightful it sure is. As usual for Utainia, the international theme continues, and this tram is no exception. It is a German tram, gifted to Hiroshima after the war. Now it is running in the vaguely New Zealand setting of Raparapa, passing British and American cars, while French trains scream past on the other track.

I have also been playing with a halogen bulb for photography, which emulates the strong shadows of daylight very nicely.

Meanwhile, a huge truckload of our stuff from Christchurch arrived; amongst it is the best new ...

Ranuska progress

Today marks one month and one day of marriage, and so to celebrate a national holiday was declared for all citizens. Much was achieved today on several of the projects I currently have on the go.

Druzhba Sanatorium

Exciting progress has been made here. I have been busy casting and cleaning up the window assemblies, as for some reason each casting tends to include a few rather visible air bubbles, requiring quite a bit of cleaning up and filling. I've been working away on that when I have time, and today I had enough to move onto the next stage: assembling it.

I started by designing a cutting template for the floor, to ensure everything was correctly angled and formed a smooth circle. Autodesk Inventor made short work of that. Once I'd cut out the pattern in styrene I set about arranging the window assemblies. Luckily it all went to plan and soon I was looking at this:

The buildings of Ranuska

Perhaps one of the most interesting features of Ranuska will be the bizarre architecture, all of it based on real life examples of Communist-era architecture.

Psirtskha tunnel portals

One of the most striking thing to me about the Psirtskha railway station is the bizarre tunnel portals that it features. I have no idea why they are so large and ornate, but they are very striking:

(Source: http://www.panoramio.com/photo/16701862)

So I decided Ranuska should have one.

I designed the master in a CAD program, then converted it into G Code for my CNC machine and left it to do its business.

Ranuska progress

Progress continues slowly on Ranuska, but between a honeymoon and starting back at work surprisingly little has been achieved.

However progress is being made. With Rachel's help I've started building up the land forms. First off some scraps of foam were stuffed in the gap between sea level and land level to form a ring of rocks.

Other lumps of polystyrene were used to build up the land forms:

Around the beach are I added some foam core where the beach is to be. I then mixed up some very ancient Woodland Scenics Scultamold, which is a sort of lum...

Birth of a new module: Ranuska

There is much to celebrate here in Utrainia at the moment, be it the crowning of the Queen of Utrainia, the start of a new year, or first anniversary of the founding of Utrainia. And to celebrate, the citizens felt it was time that they had somewhere warm and sunny to go and bask, somewhere with a beach, and nice hotels, perhaps somewhere nice to eat, and naturally with good railway connections.

And so Ranuska is born, named in honour of the new Queen of Utrainia. It is a balloon shaped loop, a small peninsula of land surrounded on three sides by sea. Like many Soviet-era seaside towns, it has seen better days, however some of the old grandeur still remains. The tracks may be a little overgrown, and weeds are sprouting between the cobblestones, but that grand "communism will conquer all" attitude in their architecture is still there. The town is nearly tropical, which you may think is an oxymoron for the USSR, but I draw my inspiration from a real place: