Fencing

A quick break from work this evening has let me put the fencing in place, though not permanently yet.

The idea of building it on the U channel has worked better than expected, especially since the channel could then be pre-planted with vegetation.

The intermediate strakes are 0.6mm Plastruct rod. If doing it again I would probably use wire. They are so obvious in photos of the line that they need to be modeled, and that in turn meant I had no real choice about whether or not to model the fence wires, for which I used knitting-in elastic. This is one of the alternatives to stretched sprue that kit modelers use for rigging biplanes. I could imagine using it to represent signal wire as well. In this case I've used Metalcote on it, but to be honest I think it would have been fine in its natural state.

I think it has made a big difference to the diorama

Not good enough

No one is probably more surprised than me that I've made a fair amount of progress against yesterday's to do list.

As always though it isn't that simple, and as I've improved one thing I've become more dissatisfied with others

Giving the goods yard a wash of various tones has improved it considerably, but it still isn't quite right. 

The platform is looking better, but still needs some weeds to disguise imperfect join between the platform surface and the platform edge.

The attempt to improve the weighbridge windows

Appears to be no better than my first attempt.

Time to bite the bullet I think and build a new version. 

Behind the revised version you can see I've been trying to sort out the lineside fencing as well. Given that I'm having to retrofit it I've opted to build it on a sub-base made form U channel. This was a good move because even then trying to get the "knitting-in elastic" in place was a struggle for my poor eyes. Having said that it worked better than expected. It has just enough tension to remain taut without pulling the posts inwards too  much, and enough give that it doesn't get damaged when you catch it accidentally. Incidentally I've not attached it to any of the intermediate posts, it lies up against them due to the tension. I've still got to add the thin wooden strakes that were used between the concrete posts on the prototype.

A wet August bank holiday

Well what a surprise. So what to do?

Having a lie in was number one priority, followed by a list of chores, but after that the aim is to cut the wood for the baseboards of Llanrhaiadr Mochnant, and a smaller board to use for test building my first ply and rivet EM gauge track in thirty two years.

And just for a change I might rebuild the track bed of the garden railway, which hasn't seen a single train run this year.

Meanwhile I have a couple of conundrums to consider.

The first is the bridge.

Now as far as I can ascertain I got the dimensions absolutely right, but it doesn't look it, does it? Now some of this is down to taking photos of a small layout with inappropriate cameras, which is very tempting because a wide angle lens has lots of benefits when trying to take photos inside a very small box. You'll have noticed that in some photos of the station it looks like I've forgotten what a right angle is, but trust me that is mostly down to barrel distortion of the lens used. Mostly. On the other hand this is a very small bridge which wasn't designed for large locos.  Bearing in mind that LM didn't feature a bridge in reality, but one is needed as a scenic break, should I be prepared to go down the "based on" route rather than being strictly prototypical?

The second issue is about lineside fencing.I know I need some, and it should be post and wire fencing, but again what compromises should I make, especially where the "wire" is concerned? In the past  I've used wire, I've used plastic rod and I've  used nylon , but all of them seem to be not quite right somehow. Any ideas?