7mm Heybridge Basin

[Richard Gawler]

Yep.

I do need to be happy with my creations, and I am proud of almost everything I have posted on WT. Let's face it, if I wasn't happy I wouldn't be posting except to ask for help.

I was a bit cautious of posting my station flower bed because it would seem a bit simplistic. Nevertheless, I had decided each scenic structure should have its own post; and I had to post it now (to keep the sequencing right) or perhaps never. And I have explained it is a flower bed not the foundation of another building.

. . . but we do still shorten buildings.

This seems a good time to mention Heybridge Basin Signalling Centre and Traffic Management Office. The Basin Extension is worked one engine in steam, so no signals but I do think there should be at least a token to allow possession of the line beyond Heybridge, and a telegraph to allow communication back to head office.


This has lead me to sucumb to a second building from Narrow Minded Railworks, this one they intend to go with a ground frame.

Really, this a 7 x 5 shed but somehow I like the proportions. A place to keep the telegraph and a ledger, and keep the signaller sheltered from the worst of the weather though without any heating.

The proprietor of Narrow Minded Railworks has been ever so helpful. They printed this as a mirror image of the one in their eBay listing, so I could have the door at the end near the station.

 

[Richard Gawler]

I have glued down my first scenic models, and so my groundworks give way to the landscaping. I haven’t used plaster for years, though I have used paper mâché and card surfaces. This is my first go with Sculptamold.


I will probably curse the water column for evermore, but I have to fix it now so I can fill in the adjacent ground surface. Offcuts of foam board to reduce the depth of the landscape formation (see later!)


I want the mature tree to be demountable so the tree gets a locating tube, a ply spacer and some mesh where its roots have raised the ground surface. I have shoved the sharp ends of the mesh downwards into the cork.


Three layers of card to make a profile, and more patches of foam board.


Cling film and masking tape, then the Sculptamold.


The metal mesh was good; the mixture dried out overnight. The foam board less so; and a patch 12 mm thick laid directly onto a cork tile even worse. These areas are still damp at the end of the third day. I suspect priming these surfaces with PVA was unnecessary (if well-intended) and it is certainly slowing everything down.

Patience.

 

[Richard Gawler]

The Sculptamold near the baseboard joint has dried out enough to work up this side of the baseboard joint.


I have two of these end cheeks (as transit panels) from Grainge and Hodder. The strip of clear adhesive tape is to help me release the panel later. I dyed the Sculpamold brown so I could see it, and then pressed DAS modelling clay up against the tape to build a profile.


Quite a decent-looking edge for a baseboard join. The dark patches are where the Sculptamold reached the end of the baseboard.


There is a temptation to work up the mating surface on the extension but I think it is best to focus on the main board. The extension (with the sea lock) was an afterthought and it will become a distraction.

 

[Richard Gawler]

The surface of the Sculptamold I laid 12 mm thick (on 13th July) dried out after about 80 hours. I have no idea whether it is dry all the way through!

I am using a builder's PVA, "Ever Build 506 Universal". This is much thinner than the craft grades of PVA and it flows easily, as though it already contains a wetting agent. Next time, I might prime the surface underneath the Sculptamold, or put a layer of wet PVA, or do neither. Certainly not both.

 

[LarryG]

0 gauge is certainly more satisfying. Even where the track is laid on the baseboard unballasted, it still looks realistic.

 

[Richard Gawler]

0 gauge is certainly more satisfying. Even where the track is laid on the baseboard unballasted, it still looks realistic.

Larry this is very kind of you. I do enjoy making things, and my choice of subject is letting me do this to my heart's content here. I watched 'Blackwater' hauling a PW train on a club layout and I found the sight more satisfying than watching trains in the smaller scales; I felt the models actually looked like they had a purpose. I couldn't do this project in 00 (let alone N): I don't have the manual dexterity or eyesight to achieve the standard I want but worse, the end result would look like something of nothing. Conversely, I find modern diesels and mainline coaches rather overwhelming in 7mm; good in a garden but otherwise all too much of a good thing. Also, because such models I see are RTR, I wouldn't get much long-term pleasure from owning them.

I am however still short of satisfaction here. To be blunt, I want success but I have only the vaguest of notions of how to get it. I have a visual balance on Heybridge Basin; and I can achieve a reasonably spacious apearance as long as I don't fill up the sidings. I am on my way to an old-fashioned look, though this needs more effort to lock onto the 1890s. Making this scene specifically Essex is very difficult indeed; at least in part because most of Essex was much like Suffolk and Norfolk before its 1930s housing boom.

My present challenge is my choice of colours for the landscape. I can experiment on fairly large sheets of card before commiting myself on the layout. If I can get this right then the ballast can go on afterwards, and suddenly a picture ought to emerge.