Aiming for some Atmosphere Part 3

Hello Again :o)

I have had one of those weekends. You know the ones where you spend virtually the entire weekend sitting around pondering things, doing household chores, and generally avoiding the modelling bench. All until Sunday afternoon when you try and cram everything you wanted to get done into a short time before the weekly grind of work comes around. Sometimes things work out, fortunately it feels things worked out for me...

The ends have been bugging me, its the thing that has held this engine shed up a bit. I have been trying to work out how to add the windows and also how the middle beam bit fitted together. I made a start using photos and things as a guide and its looks reasonable alright to me. What do you guys think? There is obviously still lots of work to do.

I have also tried to finish off the floor / ground bit and today I spent a bit of time with some filler and paint and above is the result. This is classic me, throw all sorts of different paints at something until it looks about right to me. I could never repeat exactly the method but it did start out with some suede effect paint, then the fun started! I am happy with the result, especially as it was semi-rushed and total guesswork really.

Finally, as with the previous posts, below are a couple I took (with the camera on my phone) t remind myself why I am dong this...

Julia :o)

Aiming for some Atmosphere Part 2

Hello :o)

I think I have made enough progress on this to add another blog post, things have moved on a little since the last post. There are a few photos to post so lets make a start...

Thanks to Andy H for the supply of bullhead track which has meant I could make a start on the base for the engine shed. I had some Easitrack point bases already and so armed with the two I finished off the track today. The Easitrack chairs were glued onto a 0.5mm thick piece of styrene sheet which in turn was stuck to a piece of foamboard for rigidity. It also meant I could cut out the access pits and give them some depth too. The photos above show the base at the beginning of infilling the track with a couple of layers of cardboard which annoyingly gives a nice texture and colour.

We now move on a little bit and this is now how it looks, I still need to infill between the tracks followed by adding some steps to the pits but I am happy with how it looks so far. Its a shame most of the track chairs will be covered really!

And the final check 'to see if it still looks ok' The second smoke 'thing' (I still dont know what they are called!) needs adding and them the whole lot needs some details sticking on.

Julia :o)

Aiming for some Atmosphere Part 1

Hello.

For a while now I have had the idea in my head to create a little something that can be used purely for taking photos of engines. The inspiration came a while ago on RMWeb in the form of a roundhouse diorama which has also recently appeared on the cover of the excellent 'Finescale magazine. The photos just oozed atmosphere and really appealed to my sense of modelling and what I like trying to achieve.

With these images in my mind the opportunity came at the N Gauge show where I spoke to Maurice and Mike of Osborns models to see if they could laser cut something I could use in the form of a GW Engine Shed. A short while later I was the proud owner of one shed which I posted about a few posts ago.

So, it was down to me to turn it into something I could use. I started with the roof by CNC cutting out a bunch of roof trusses out of plasticard sheet (which I previously posted about). This now brings me to todays post...

The reason I chose styrene for the roof trusses is so I can easily glue them to the existing laser cut wood. Above you can see them glued to half the roof.

There is still plenty to do but this gives an idea of what I would like to achieve. The long wall will be removable so you can get a camera inside.

This is what the roof currently looks like. I haven't figured out how to do the channels for the smoke yet (I am sure they have a proper name!).

Finally the two photos below hopefully give an indication on what I am aiming for...

I think there is glimpses of atmosphere, fingers crossed it gets better with time...

Julia :o)