Sunday, May 13, 2012

The Week After the May Show

Monday this week was spent with Geoff working on the Structure Building Stand at the May Show.  Early on the Monday I went around and took a number of photos of the layouts or various scenes on the layouts that I liked.  Some of these I will try and replicate on my layout.

While I do like the scale of the Coffs Harbour layout, I thought the best layout on display was A-Tractiv Effort by Peter Lewis.  His eye for detail is just great.  I had a real good talk to him before the show opened on Monday and got some snaps of inside some of his buildings.  He has one building very similar to one of mine.  Maybe PK once lived or visited where Peter's layout is based?

I just love the detail here.  The fencing around the rail formation and beside the road, outside the house.  It is just brilliant.

I just loved how the swings were working.  I'm going to find my old chain and made some as well.  The merry-go-round and the see-saws also worked.

I also love how the railway is in the background.  I wrote a proposal for a new Club exhibition layout like this maybe 10 years ago for our club.  I wanted members to volunteer to build a building on a block of land on a street for the front of the layout for half the layout.  I had hoped that it would turn out just like this scene.

Don't you just love the rock garden edge in the back garden.  Apparently PK used to visit the house to the left.  And what about the quality of the buildings built on this layout?

Another scene that I have never seen modelled before is the dried mud on Queens Wharf.  Being O scale may have made it easier to do, but it just looks great.

I always leave an exhibition with a renewed enthusiasm for what I need to accomplish in my modelling.  I hope to do some of what was captured above on my layout over the next year or two.

After a day building items and talking to the public at the Exhibition, Geoff and I packed up quickly and were one of the first groups to leave the hall.  Once home, I unpacked my stuff down the shed and started thinking about my next endevours in the shed.

On friday after coming home from work early, I went down the shed and got to work.  I had an old packet of 100 trees ranging in sizes from 3.5cm to maybe 6cm high.  This cost me $15.99 a couple of yers ago when I purchased it.  I started placing these on the layout with the few really good trees I purchased from Brian at Trackside Trees.  The best trees you can get come from Brian.  Placing these trees, made me get out my tree making matting, and the foam board with about 20 or so trees that I have previously built that was sitting in one of my cupboards in the shed and covered them with glue and the various shades of green matting.

I then laid out a few of my telegraph poles around the layout.  Many years ago a retired Telecom technician advised that telegraph poles were always 132' apart when placed along the railway right of way.  This is 2 chains in distance.  My poles were just thrown around, and not spread out according to scale at this point in time.  However they will be.

I took the family and the mother-in-law up the coast yesterday as my youngest niece on my side of the family got married.  We came back at lunch time today so after unpacking I could only get down the shed for about 2 hours this arvo.  I made up a few more trees and placed a few more on the layout. 

A few trees are being placed around Ron and Margaret's B&B.  The ones in teh foreground are from my pack of 100.  It seems PK is getting taste of his own medicine in this view.

Running Creek has had a few more trees installed.  I still need a few more weeping willows around the creek.  A bit of water in the creek wouldn't hurt either.

Here a few more trees have also sprung up.  Mostly saplings. 

 Over the next few weeks I think I will try and pick up a few more packets of those 100 trees in various colours and see if I can place then in the same areas I planted the last lot and then start moving further around the layout.  This work will complement the base board colour I've recently spread around.

This Tuesday the guys are coming to my place.  I have styrofoam everwhere on the floor from my various activities over the last month or so.  I guess I will have to try and remove this before hand.  Hopefully the guys will see some improvements or progress since last visit.

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