Doing Some Construction Modelling

Friday night a few of the Tuesday Nighters got together and headed to Brendan’s place for some BBQ snags, cold drinks and a great time.  We had all in spades!  Geoff, Darren, Peter, Grover and myself turned up at Brendan's after 6:00pm and had plenty of good company, conversation and construction.  I took along my scratch built Murwillumbah Cement Silo.  I was building some square structures for the top of the three cylindrical towers on top of the base structure.  I then started off bending up some pipework out of various size styrene rod to simulate the various pipes that run up the side of the structure to and into the top towers. I have completed the piping to one of the three cylinders on the roof.  As luck would have it I ran out of styrene.  So over to Austral Modelcraft on Saturday morning to pick up three more packets of various sizes of different size styrene rod.  I plan to slowly chip away at these pipes and then once finished I will see if I can spray these all the one colour at the same time.  I can them permanently glue the silo together.

 

Saturday afternoon entailed a trip to the Club and I was installing the Road over Rail Bridge on the Club room layout.  So my clinic for these weekend was assembling the bridge on the layout.  So I placed the foundations on the ground (actually cut them into the trackside scenery and then glued the bents to the wooden foundations.  I then balanced the headstocks on top of the piers and then cut and installed the bridge girders above them.  I then built two more piles for the outer edges of the bridge and added the headstocks to them as well.  The deck that Tristan had laser cut for me will fit quite nicely.  I just need to trip it up and glue it onto the frame.  I just let the bridge frame to set for about 2 hours and before I went home, I just picked the whole construction up in one piece and took it home.  Today I trimmed the deck to size and sorted through my scale lumber supplies and found some pieces that will form the bridge kerbs when I continue construction in about 4 weeks time.  I stained them and now everything is set aside as I plan to work on completing construction of the bridge at this year’s May Model Railway Exhibition in Brisbane.  That will include installing the posts, railings and all the other above road pieces on the bridge.  Then it can make its way onto the Club Layout permanently.

 

Today I also spray painted the tin shed that attaches to the Club’s Medusa Cement Silo.  I painted this a separate colour to what the cement silos themselves will be.  I am currently uncertain what colour to paint the silos, I just know it will be different to the corrugated iron.  I visited a hobby shop of Friday morning and saw a huge range of various grey tints in spray cans.  I will just need to see if I can find a photo of this American silo and copy a colour from that.

 

Today I also did a bit of staining of a few pieces of road on the layout around Cassino and Murwillumbah.  I use my standard black/grey stain on balsa wood as my road colour.  I just think it comes up better than other products.  The small roads that back onto the Cassino station have been down for a couple of years, but I never painted the roads.  Well now that has been done.  I them stained a road that will be installed at the end of the Murwillumbah headshunt and will lead towards the Lismore Shell siding on the layout.  I also glued down the cork that I installed around Cassino Yard last weekend.

 

My search for Chuck’s Ballast in Brisbane has turned up nothing.  But it does appear that Vogler’s in Ipswich stocks it.  So I might need to make a trip over their on one of the next few weekends.  This next one is booked with a soccer trial for my son followed by a running session at Anthony’s.  Failing that I will try my luck at one of the Interstate shops at the May Model Railway Exhibition.