The Burnbake and Woodyhyde Railway

[rod335]

This just keeps getting better and more atmospheric with every new post. I am very jealous!

Rod

[tedp]

I like that backscene. Or has the layout been photographed in a real location?

[clayliner]

Thanks, Rod - I guess 'atmosphere' is what we are about. But I think you of all people have nothing to be envious of!

Yes, Ted, it's a real castle - Corfe Castle, here in the Isle of Purbeck in Dorset. As you may know, it was a Royalist stronghold in the English Civil war but fell to the Parliamentary forces in 1644, and two years later Parliament voted to have it 'slighted', which accounts for its present ruinous appearance. But as a ruin it probably draws more tourists these days than if it was intact - almost as many tourists as the Swanage (steam) Railway which now runs below its ramparts.

Anyway (back on topic!) my trusty OS map tells me it's less than two miles from Woodyhyde and only slightly more from Burnbake as the crow (or raven - they inhabit the castle's turrets) flies, so it's not out of place in the background. It was one shot in a panorama I took last year, printed out onto a sheet of ordinary A4 paper which gives a nice soft feel, I think, though it was also quite a misty day. The plan is to cut around the 'terrestrial boundary' (for want of a better term) and mount it on a plain sky background but the indistinct outlines would make this tricky, and unfortunately some of the other shots in the series are out of focus, so I need to get out and try again soon, especially while the spring foliage is still fresh.

But I think this approach has possibilities - though one panorama is unlikely to fill the required 9' run so some careful joining will be required. The other challenge is to get the right sort of foreground at the right distance which will tie in with the model convincingly.

David.

[clayliner]

At last, some significant progress on the backscene.

Summer evenings have given the opportunity to get out with the camera and take a number of panoramas to see what may and may not work. I'm lucky here to have an ideal backdrop in the shape of the Purbeck Hills - the chalk spine running through the Isle of Purbeck - and which I have decided to use for most of the backdrop. Burnbake and Woodyhyde are actually both on the southern side of the hills, but because the heaths are on the north side that's the side I've been photographing, so as to tie in with the layout scenery as much as possible. At this time of year the sun comes over the hills in the evenings which improves the view.

Having decided on the main panorama the next step was to print out the individual shots - just standard print quality, colour printing on normal printing paper (not photographic paper) to give a soft quality which I think may be better for a distant backscene. Pinning them all up in sequence on the wall gives us an overall impression like this:

panorama1a by clayliner, on Flickr

As long as there's a minimal overlap and the land / sky proportions are roughly right that's okay - they will be trimmed more precisely later.

The next step was to cut off the sky, i.e. along the horizon. With the hills this is mostly a clean line which makes it quite a simple job with scissors, but where there were trees on the skyline I discovered that tearing round them - using a sharp blade to hold the paper and then pulling the paper away - gave a more ragged edge which was more convincing. Leaving one or two trees to break up the skyline adds a bit of interest (but it was a simple matter just to cut through the mobile phone mast in one of the shots!) Next I ran a brush with water colour along the cut edge to hide the white paper edge - and quickly learned that even a minor amount of water disrupts printing ink almost instantly. Okay, so I could probably have guessed that, but I obviously hadn't thought it out carefully enough (usual story). Using the driest brush possible it's just about possible to get away with it, though I'm not sure it's really essential (given my layout is at eye level) and may abandon it in future. Each sheet also needs to be trimmed to give a butt joint with the next, matching the scenery as best as possible.

Having learned this lesson I then realised that glueing the paper to the backboard was going to be tricky. I planned to use wallpaper paste as it has some slip and would make removing any disasters easy at a later stage. The bottom line is that if you apply a fairly thin layer and then leave it to half dry before applying the paper again it is mostly possible to get away with it. Too much paste and water will bleed through - I was also caught out where there is a join in the backboard and paste collected in the gap... Yes, the sheets will bubble up, as wallpaper does, but you just have to swallow hard and walk away until it's all dry - and yes, the bubbles do dry out and disappear, just like wallpaper...

Then you can stand back and appreciate the result. There are changes in shading from sheet to sheet which cleverer photographers than me might be able to avoid, but adjusting the brightness setting before printing out (really a matter of trial and error) may help in matching adjacent sheets. Serious changes in colouring and other blemishes can probably (hopefully!) be obscured by trees, etc.

I'll show some of the finished results soon (waiting for paste to dry, and need to go out this evening to get some more shots).

David.

[MickT]

Looking good David and nice to see that you have been quick off the mark enjoying your Thursday Sales Team holiday!

Since being transferred to the Sales Road Division last night, I have now got the little challenge of shifting quarter of a ton of the "miscellaneous junk" (as well as 10 VERY heavy boxes of books) that was deemed unfit to travel in the 009 Executive Mercedes, and is now weighing my Nissan down, to Steventon at early doors tomorrow and then into the northern lands on the other side of the Thames towards Mansfield in time for Sunday! I expect the boss will want me to bring what is not sold back as well............No rest for me then.

Mick

[clayliner]

Thanks, Mick - hopefully you had a good day at the Steventon show yesterday and that you managed to shift a lot of the stock there. Certainly the people attending the exhibitions at Oxford and Mansfield are being treated to a bumper crop of new stock!

I got the next set of photos okay, even if I did have to stand in the middle of a field where muck-speading had recently taken place (the sacrifices we make for our craft). The smell - really not that unpleasant, actually - is still lingering around the house...

As promised, a few photos of the more-or-less finished results:

backscene 5a by clayliner, on Flickr

backscene 4a by clayliner, on Flickr

- the more observant may notice that the castle has moved a few miles to the left (from the mock-up earlier)!

backscene  2 by clayliner, on Flickr

backscene 3a by clayliner, on Flickr

In the last shot the next sheets to the right have only been blu-tacked on and are awaiting trimming and glueing. The final section, incorporating the new set of shots, now looks like this:

backscene 6a by clayliner, on Flickr

The second panorama starts behind the rather drunken-looking tree, which I plonked there just to convince myself that strategically placed foliage might manage to hide the breaks - the second panorama was never going to tie in perfectly with the first (even if it's the same range of hills) so this break is sharper than the others within the sets. At least, the upper part is okay and hopefully it won't be too difficult to convincingly place foliage lower down to blend the backscene in with the layout scenery

Apart from the far left-hand end, where I plan something more coniferous, it's more or less complete. The 'sky' will need re-painting, I'm afraid, and obviously the bottom edge needs trimming and generally sorting out. From a distance it all looks okay though I'm a bit disappointed that the joins are as conspicuous as they are - there will eventually be a lot of carefully placed trees, hopefully at not too-regular intervals. Printing onto plain card might have been better. But I think that the idea is fairly sound and others may be encouraged to have a go at the process and will hopefully be able to execute it better than me.

David.

[clayliner]

Apologies for the long silence: other things call in summer, many of them involving garden maintenance. Another key factor is that while I was out taking more photos for the backscene a few weeks ago both I and my trusty 5.1MP camera fell into a bog... I'm pleased to say I survived, but unfortunately the camera didn't. So much of the delay has been waiting to buy a replacement, which has now been done, so the project can continue.

Where was I? - the next step is to add trees to the backscene, mostly to help obscure the less satisfactory joins. First, find your tree. The requirements are that its background needs to be a fair approximation to the area of backscene where it will be applied, and it's probably best to try and avoid a lot of sky unless you're confident it will match that of the backscene. I've tried to find trees with a background of other vegetation - here's one I took a picture of earlier, as an example:

P1000005 by clayliner, on Flickr

There is some sky at the very top but I will lose most of that. Step two is to print the tree out onto normal paper, and step three is then to extract the tree from the background, which involves pecking away at the outline to produce a shaggy, natural-looking product. Fortunately trees don't have a particularly defined outline so one doesn't need to follow the shape too precisely. For this I used a triangular needle file in one hand to hold the paper, which I then pulled away with the other; the file grips the paper well and leaves a suitably ragged line. It sounds tricky and time consuming but actually isn't - five or ten minutes per tree outline is par for the course. Having isolated the tree you then need to touch up the margins with paint to cover up the white bits which inevitably result (printing onto green paper might avoid this, I suppose?); the paint needs to be thick (to avoid water leaching into the print and disrupting the inks) and a reasonable match to the foliage you're painting. Here are three useful-looking trees after the above steps:

P1000040 by clayliner, on Flickr

The general tone of each tree will depend on the tree and the lighting, but can be manipulated on the computer to make it fairly sympathetic to the part of the backscene it is destined for. The one at top left, for example, is bluer and darker which will go well against some of the gloomier heathland sections. The one at the bottom, the tree we started with, is now ready for application to the backscene, after which it looks like this:

P1000044a by clayliner, on Flickr

I've been a bit daring here and taken it above the skyline, and although it looks a bit startling in the photo it looks more natural in real life; although it does stand out from the background which will help it to link into the foreground, especially when other foliage is added around the base and maybe some proper 3D trees in front as well. One happy surprise was to discover that (neat) PVA glue doesn't seem to disrupt printing ink like wallpaper paste does - next time I might use PVA to stick the backscene on to avoid problems with ink running.

Oh - and best of all - now you can't see the join!

David.

[MickT]

Very impressive David and lots of good ideas coming out of this topic.

Regarding the problems with touching up the edges of the cut-outs and inkjet print running etc - it might be worth having a go around the edges with "neutral" felt tip pens rather than paint - light brown and grey come to mind. Worth considering?

Looking forward to more progress reports on this fascinating project.

Mick

[tedp]

I agree to what Mick says - impressive scenic work, and a good idea for making up a backscene. Perhaps it needs a little perfecting still, but it does work.

[clayliner]

Yes, Ted, next time (!) I would probably do some things slightly differently, but maybe my learning experience can help someone else do better first time around.

Mick - I too had wondered about felt-tips. However, my limited attempts were not very successful as the neutral-ish blue-grey I had didn't look right and I didn't have the right pens to make a good match. Someone with a better set of pens might do better. Also, the tips were moist enough for ink to leach into the paper enough to create a dark edge around the tree. But I wouldn't discourage others from trying the idea.

David.

[theelliotts]

This is an interesting method. A laser colour printer might do a better job and the ink is not water soluble. Were you using a tripod to take the panorama shots?

David
Victoria Canada

[clayliner]

I meant to say, Mick, that using felt-tips would have one big advantage in avoiding something probably familiar to many modellers who enjoy a glass of something while they paint - the twin horrors of dipping your brush in your drink, or (maybe worse) taking a sip from your painting water.

David - interesting to hear about the advantages of a laser printer. That's obviously the answer to another problem - but I'm afraid I just used my handy ink-jet printer. Yes, I did use a tripod, though it probably isn't essential if one is careful to get the horizon in more or less the same place in each shot - see my previous post of 27th June.

Meanwhile, a water tower has appeared outside the loco shed:

water tower 1 by clayliner, on Flickr

I was comparing it with the one at Paglesham on the NGRM Forum the other day - theirs is a much more delicate affair, but I'm guessing that when knocking up a structure such as this the Company would have used whatever was to hand, provided it was strong enough for the job (and I think this is - it does in fact look rather over-engineered). Apart from the stout timbers, the water tank was also taken from a redundant tank wagon, so a real home-made effort.

Two questions which folk may be able to help me with: the input side - a water main and a valve (on the right) is probably okay, but what about the delivery side? A lavatory chain affair seems to be popular, but are there alternatives? Obviously the outlet valve needs to be high up but the valve low enough to be within easy reach by the loco crew, though a u-shaped pipe with the valve at a lower level but returning to a higher level might also be suitable, perhaps? Secondly, is there a decent enough head of water here? - if not, then I suppose a concrete plinth might usefully add a foot or so of head.

Given that the structure is made of recycled materials, here is a picture of the original tank wagon (obtained from Members' Sales, naturally!):

P1000025 by clayliner, on Flickr

I wonder if any member out there recognises it as having once been theirs? If so, I hope you will excuse what I've done with it. Of course, it's provided me with a useful flat wagon as well!

David.

[gtmspyder]

Hello David, very nice modelling, thank you for sharing your pictures with us.

In answer to you queries re the loco fill tank.

The water inlet, if mains fed, would almost certainly have a stop valve at low level, protecting a large ball valve in the tank itself to top up the tank after water has been drawn off by a visiting loco, automatically.

The large diameter outlet pipe would have a largish spring or gravity weighted lever arm gate valve, either with a rope or chain hanging from it that would pull against the balance weight or spring to operate the valve.


Hope that is of some use.

Regards,

BrianT.

[clayliner]

I think the water tank is now more or less sorted. I went for a simple rope to operate the outflow valve and delivery via a simple piece of hose (the traditional 'bag' as used on Bigger Railways would have been out of place here, I think). The structure now also rests on a concrete base:

water tank 237a by clayliner, on Flickr

'Creech' - resting in the shed in the evening sun - is now proudly sporting a pair of antlers, the result of an encounter in the gathering gloom one evening while returning across the heath. Not that B&W trains ever run at more than a leisurely pace - even an elderly deer could easily outrun one - but deer do sometimes dither when surprised, on this occasion with fatal results. (I am happy to acknowledge John Allen as the inspiration for this bit of whimsy, though I think on his Gorre and Daphetid they were probably moose antlers.)

The grass has also grown quite a bit over the summer - more on this anon...

David.

[clayliner]

Yes, it's been mainly grass, and scenery in general, over the past month. I've been struggling somewhat with the area in the right-hand half of the picture in post 126. It's been tricky because part of it is a removable section (for access to the track beneath) and also because I didn't have a very clear idea what I wanted to do with it.

This is what it looks like so far:

embankment2a by clayliner, on Flickr

I started with static grass on the main area towards the back. This wasn't very successful; probably because I spread PVA over too large an area which I think dissipated the charge, resulting in rather thin and not very upstanding grass. I didn't like the original colour, either, but the fibres do take a dryish mix of acrylic (applied with a toothbrush) okay, although looking back the original colour would have been quite a good match for the grass on the backscene.

The two trees at the far end were made using grape stalks which I have mentioned before - just recently I've also come across an article by Simon Augur recommending them in the 009 News back in 2000. They do give some nicely random shapes which I find difficult to achieve if I make armatures myself, as my mind insists on tidying up anything that doesn't look nice and symmetrical. Nature, as so often, is just more natural. Just the two of them do look a bit awkward and I'm mindful that garden designers always tell us to plant things in threes or multiples thereof. However, they're staying as they are for the time being because this isn't a garden, and nature is often 'unsatisfactory'.

The dead tree is part of some dead ivy stripped from a felled telegraph pole I came across a while ago. This looks rather different from typical domestic ivy but maybe it's just because it was a very mature plant. Anyway, I collected a bagful so I have plenty to experiment with for my next crop of trees, and I feel it has considerable potential for the more substantial type of tree.

The grass in the foreground is of the 'hairy cigar' variety which I have also been experimenting with. It can work very well but can be tricky. Rolling the cigar is critical, I think, in aligning the fibres in a north-south axis prior to planting. The glue also has to be very tacky so the fibres stick the first time, and the cigar needs regular trimming with sharp scissors in order to present a clean, flat end to the glue. I think I cut my original fibres too long and sometimes the appearance is improved by application of a beard trimmer (which tackles hemp much better than synthetic fibres).

Next is the area on the far right where the track disappears behind the embankment* - the blue is bare paper towel which will be more sandy bank, with plenty of foliage (willow bushes, I think) above. Once this is done I can move more towards the front of the layout, which is perhaps more critical.

David.

*I have to make a conscious effort not to say 'hill' which would be all too easy - but the bank scales out at rather less than 30' which no way qualifies as a hill.