POWs is being misread on another forum as well - eyebrows are being raised over potential breaches of the Geneva convention! Though no-one's suggested I'm talking about the Prince of Wales (yet)?Old Man Aaron wrote: ↑Sat Aug 31, 2024 2:35 pmA bit off-topic, but I've been watching a documentary series on WWII lately, and totally misread that for a minute.
No matter what we do, sidings are always an inch too short..
That J69 is gorgeous, by the way.
To use a phrase from a reply to another of my posts - I have a cunning plan... I'm going to build a PECO buffer stop the 'wrong' way round and hope I should gain an extra couple of inches.
Well, I scraped a last minute entry into the Quarterly Gallery using a snap of progress to date on this little layout. Saturday was a steaming day with our local group, so Sunday saw some basic scenic work to try and ensure I wouldn't disgrace myself (too much!) with the entry. And 13 entries might have been unlucky. Though I was unlucky with the light for photography, Sunday pm was rather wet and gloomy.
I tried a few simultaneous interpretations on 'something beginning with B' - ballast, buffers and blue references, to say nothing of Bill, Ben and Bob. One quirky/left field interpretation was of a product beginning with a bee - honey. I happened to have a small jar of an individual portion and thought it might be about the right size for a wagon load - building some new wagons and wagon loads is something I'm hoping to do this autumn. I had a look and it didn't look too daft. So I cut some timbers (lollipop sticks from the big world) to act as bracing/securing pieces.
Three buffer stops were speedily repainted into a more weathered condition and slid onto the rails. As above, I will change the one on the middle road which the sack trolley is propped against. I've been wondered about ballast for a while and reading up on various others' experiences. The Gallery gave me the impetus to try, so I spread some flint grit over some of the track. I think it's about the right size and is a mix of browns. When I break ground outside, I'll try a few feet of track with it and see how it weathers.
The hedges were borrowed from my demonstrating stock - they are a bit underscale but I was playing around with ideas, partly for the Gallery picture and partly to see whether I wanted to add them permanently. I think certainly some more clumps of grass and a few bushes, not sure re a hedge all the way along the back though. And then I twisted some bits of wire and wood together for a shunting pole for 'Bill'. My first was based on a cocktail stick but after I'd cut the head off, it looked too short, so I used a metal tube and a larger diameter wire protruding from this, bent to shape (sort of!) and glued in place. I will revisit this, next visit to a model shop I will get some small diameter dowelling and use brass wire which bends more easily to get that corkscrew type effect of the business end.
A slightly different angle to the picture sent for the Gallery:
- Bee 2.jpg (677.43 KiB) Viewed 37525 times