Paint Stripping and other progress on Philip's Creek

I was tempted to use the well-established media practice of misleading or exaggerated headlines as a title for this post but eventually decided against it.

I mentioned earlier that I had recently purchased an EHO guards van kit and the self-induced pressure to assemble it led to a quick adjustment of priorities. For guidance, I consulted Ray Pilgrim's short article on the kit published in AMRM a few years ago as well as some other photos and an earlier plan also in a much earlier issue of AMRM.

The kit went together without difficulty although I'm not sure that I have got the width of the running boards correct. I then proceeded to paint the model while it was in three parts; roof, body and chassis. For the body, I had purchased a jar of paint labelled as Indian Red that I understood was the correct colour for a van in the last 1960s. However, the colour that emerged was a deep purple or maroon, closer the colour of the Queenslanders’ jerseys  on TV last Wednesday night. I decided to remove the paint and start again. The hunt was on for an appropriate way to remove the paint without damaging the detail. After a search of online advice, I experimented (very gingerly I might add) with three options; methylated spirits, white spirits and nail polish remover. Of these,  the nail polish remover delivered the best outcome.

The paint stripping in progress.
The irony of this photo is that the paint colour looks
much better than it appears to the Mk 1 eyeball.



I used a small syringe to wash over a portion of the wall, waited for a few minutes and then brushed it with a stiff bristle brush. I didn't want to remove the primer that I had applied earlier, hence the grey colour that you can see in the photo.

As yet, I haven't got around to repainting. Hopefully that can happen next week. Once that has been done, I will then add some additional weight, assemble the three elements, finsih the model and then weather.

On other projects, the back drop had another test fit and continues to progress slowly. My wife reminds me that I am getting a work of art and that takes time - we'll get there eventually.

The silo continues to progress slowly although the purchase of Keiran Ryan's  etched brass component kit has added some nice detail particularly around the receiving area.

To finish this post, the following are a couple of recent photos from Philip's Creek.



3123 awaiting more shunting duties





The new Halt for the Philip's Creek mine employees.
 Still not yet complete with signage and fencing to add





Backdrop Progress

This is just a quick post after a test this morning when we refitted the backdrop to see how things lined up. I have added a few photos to show the progress to date. I was very pleasantly surprised to see how much it seems to lift the Mount Windeatt area of the railway. These few photos capture the progress to date and identify where extra work is needed.



This photo was taken through the garage window being the only place where I could get enough distance to get an overall image.



Still a bit more work to do lining up the road and the terrain in the immediate vicinity.





This area still needs a bit more work with a number of trees to be painted onto the immediate foreground and probably a toning down of the green in the ridge in the middle ground.





Again, this section will also receive more attention. Mount Windeatt, the significant feature in the middle distance has already been recoloured to align the geology of the other visible rock faces. The white objects to the left are meant to be tombstones but need to shrink considerably.





This portion is very promising but the race track in the middle distance still needs finishing.



April Activities

 

It's hard to believe that another month has almost disappeared. I still haven't found a solution to the chronic shortage of time. Yet there have been some small steps forward at Philip's Creek.

I managed to finish off at least one job this month with the MFE now back in service. I am reasonably happy with the roof for the first attempt and the interior detail can withstand reasonably close scrutiny although that's not apparent from the photo.

Work on the silo has resumed and the cupola is now ready for painting. The silo is a LJ kit but with many surfaces overlaid with other materials almost to the extent of being a 3D version of 'paint by numbers'. For example, the cupola shown in the photo is substantially complete having be re-clad with scale CGI. I will give it a coat of grey primer shortly and start to weather individual sheets. The cupola has not yet been permanently fixed to the silos.I know there are probably easier ways of doing this but it's an interesting challenge. However, I do notice also that Kieran Ryan is selling a etched brass component kit that will make things a bit easier.

The backdrop painting has commenced and moves ahead in fits and starts. But I can't complain - it took 10 years for my wife to knit a sweater and she still hasn't finished her first novel yet and it was started six years ago. However, she is also very quick to remind me that Philip's Creek is not finished either and I have been working on it for over 15 years! Still very much a work in progress and there are still another about another six backdrops to go.

Another small project that has been started came about as a consequence of the withdrawal of the CPH from service. I had constructed a small platform on a siding at the Colliery for the use of the mine employees. The CPH would then do a shuttle run from the mine through Philip's Creek and on to Mount Windeatt. With the loss of the CPH. I decided to relocate the platform to the closest point on the main line.

The existing platform will remain for freight and equipment delivered to the mine. Incidentally, the container to the right of the photo is a product that I purchased quite a few years ago from an art supplier for use as a platform surface. It contains a sandstone coloured paste with a black fleck that gives a reasonable representation of the fine gravel surface that I recall on some platforms in earlier years.

I have also recently purchased a EHO guards van and will probably be tempted to start building that kit sometime soon, probably to the detriment of progress on the silo.

And speaking of building things.....



"I wish the bloke who built this place had done a better job, he couldn't get the awning right and I'm always having to fix something!"



 

Bits and Pieces

After quite a few years of modelling, I am quite convinced that the three main impediments to progress are time, finance and space. Of these, space is probably the least of these. You need only look at the variety of solutions published in magazine articles or on the internet to see the creative solutions that have been developed to deal with a lack of space. While we will often whinge about a lack of space, we do manage to create something.

 However, time and finance are probably the more difficult and unless you win the lottery, often mutually exclusive. When you have some funds coming in, often you are time poor and when you do have time available, you probably don't have a level of disposable income to expend on the hobby. Right now, I am very clearly in the first category although I can foresee that not too much farther down the track, the reverse will be true.

 This is a long way of saying that I haven't made any massive leaps forward over the past month and this arrangement is likely to continue for the foreseeable future.

The Silo

Work on the silo has almost stalled because I ran out of suitable corrugated iron and had to wait until I could get some more from my preferred source, Anton's. Work will resume on the silo after I have completed the 'filler' project that I started in lieu.

The MFE Upgrade



The roof has had some weathering with powders
 but not the extent described in Ian's article.



Very soon after I started work on Philip's Creek in 1997, I purchased a Lima MFE coach. While it had received a basic weathering, unlike my other passenger coaches, I had not fitted an interior. With an imposed delay on the silo, I took the opportunity to complete this work. I also decided to try upgrading the appearance of the roof using the technique described by Ian Phemister in his blog and article in AMRM. It worked well although I learned that there are tea bags and there are tea bags, and some are more suitable than others for this role. I also didn’t read his article closely enough and failed to work from both ends towards the middle.  However, I am reasonably happy with the end product and will probably tackle my FS and BS coaches when I can find time.

I purchased a MFE interior kit from Casula Hobbies and prefabricated the interior to be inserted after painting. After a primer, I hand painted the ‘timber panelling’ using a couple of coats of an acrylic paint, ‘raw sienna’. I wasn’t too worried about even coverage because the timber finish is not uniform.

It was also necessary to remove the thick glazing and replace them with a very thin clear material.

There is still some more work to complete by adding some passengers and refixing everything. I haven’t checked the under body closely at this time but suspect that any work there may have to wait.

The Backdrop

I mentioned backdrops in an earlier post.  My ‘better half’ has volunteered to paint these for me and I have now removed one from the layout to facilitate this. In the meantime, I grabbed the opportunity to take a few photos from angles not normally available when the backdrop is in place.

Projects for April

Bearing in mind my original comments, I hate to forecast anything but I’d like to think that I can finish what I started in March and move the silo project forward. Here’s hoping!

Have a great Easter break!

Just a few photos

There hasn't been too much happening at Philip's Creek over the past few weeks with most of my available time being directed to non railway work. However, I thought I would post some recent photos to show a few more details around the layout.


CPH at Mount Windeatt Station



CPH 16 is a Lloyd's kit purchased about 8 years ago but recently withdrawn from service for a while. It has not been running very well despite several attempts to improve the reliability of the pickups. I think I will be investigating an alternate chassis and motor.

  



The sawmill at Mount Windeatt





Yes I know I need to do some extra work on the ropes



The area shown in this photo used to the original site for the coal mine until I was able to extend the layout by 1200mm.  It has now become a siding combined with the location for a coaling stage and water tank. The coal mine in its new location is the grey blurred shape in the distance at the top right of the photo.



6018 about to take on water



6018 is a DJH kit. When I fitted the dcc decoders to it a few months ago, I took the opportunity to link the front and rear motors electrically. This means that the pickups on both  sections provide power for the two motors. I can never separate the locomotive now but hopefully that won't be necessary. To date, this change has worked very well.

And finally a photo that is not usually found on a model railway blog. Meet Godzilla Kitty aka Sasha, my daughter's cat. She has often decided that the railway provided a nice place to sleep and I can't figure out a way to dissuade her that doesn't cause major domestic friction. However, over the past few weeks with the significant number of thunderstorms, she has excelled herself and at least one MHG has found its way to the floor, twice!





The Next Phase

Now that things are settling down, I am starting to plan the next expansion of layout. The main motivation for this is to provide a destination for some of the wheat trains that pass through Philip’s Creek. With some 14 BWH/FWH, 3 WHX and 10 RU’s, there are enough wagons to form two block wheat trains of a reasonable length, at least for the early 1970s. My intention is that at least one of these block wheat trains should travel to a destination on the layout rather than pass through it as they do now.

My first challenge is to get my mind around how to present two separate elements, coal mining and wheat, that did not normally exist in close proximity to each other in the general area that I am modelling, somewhere on the Main North a bit beyond of Muswellbrook. From my limited research, I understand that the last coal mines are not too far north of Muswellbrook but wheat storage facilities do not occur until Willow Tree and beyond. That means there is a considerable distance between the two industries that must somehow be replicated in HO scale and unfortunately, the garage is not that big. As I see it, the only solution is to create a new scene, separated from the other part of the layout by a visual barrier.



The current staging area representing locations
 north of Philip's Creek that will be relocated



At this time, I am leaning towards leaving the barrier that now exists between the staging area and layout proper, relocate the staging area and construct the new scene adjoining the other modules. Conceptually, this is shown in the plan below. Potentially, I could also build the new scene to adjoin the existing staging area but with the space available, this means that I would need to create a branch line terminus and I don’t want to do that at this point in time.





I would like to get this section started at some time this year but there are a number of obstacles that will need to be cleared first as you can see from the photo along the proposed along the proposed alignment.  Unfortunately, there are other jobs, unrelated to the railway construction that will need to be completed to ensure that I don’t cop too much flak before I can contemplate the initial relocations.

So now, it’s just a matter of finding the time.

Meanwhile behind the pub...



"Please God, just one, pleeeease!"



Twisted Trees

Most of the trees on Philip's Creek have been created in part by using twisted wire coated with Liquid Nails and then painted. I used to feel that the twisted wire was a bit obvious and not a true representation of the way a tree grows - but no longer.

This tree was photographed last weekend in a carpark opposite Hornsby RSL. Unfortunately, although you can see some twisting in the bark, it is not as pronounced as it was a few weeks ago when I first noticed it. Still, from now on, it's my prototype tree.