Glen Ogle

[Hugh Norwood]

Footnote - the memsahib and I are approaching our 32nd. we got married a few days after Charles and Di. It's lasted a bit longer than theirs! :D

[Frank]

Congratulations when the day comes Hugh!!!!

Frank

[gtmspyder]

Whoops, what have I started, congratulations for the day, to anyone coming up for a wedding anniversary. ;D

That's going to save me a lot of typing I hope. ;) ;) ;)

Regards to all participants,

BrianT.

[MickT]

My 47th next Tuesday. We got married same day as England played Portugal quarter final of the 66 World Cup - it helps me to remember to get the right date, but I do also have a phone call booked from the Samaritans....................

Mick

[gtmspyder]

Right then I promise not to mention my birthday and likely Christmas present, honest. ;)

So back to Glen Ogle, it's trials and tribulations.

I mentioned earlier that I had used a heavy duty wall paper lining paper to help strengthen the joints in the blue foam, I am still using this method as it does seem to do what it says on the tin, and more has been added when I split the two sections of base board and was able to turn the model over..



I have started to cover the foam with Artex .



With the boards split, you can see where the viaduct drops into place and where I have started to form a scenic break across the head of the Glen by creating a jutting rock face through which the rolling stock will disappear off scene.



And the viaduct placed on the half board.



BrianT.

[gtmspyder]

A little more progress made today:-

I have coated the viaduct and track bed approach, both sides, with varnish today, ready for the laying of the track on the approaches and across the viaduct, and also ready for laying the DAS modelling clay on the viaduct piers and arches to model the random stone work.  The varnish I hope will protect the rather thin MDF I have used for the track bed and viaduct from the wetness of the modelling clay and when laying the ballast and fixing.



I have also done more work on the scenic break to the right at the head of the Glen, with a tunnel mouth leading off scene.

This view looking down towards the bottom of the Glen, shows the slight widening of the track bed at the approach to the tunnel at the top and a track leading to the road, I thought I might have a small Halt here for the passengers to disembark and take a scenic look back down the Glen.



You might also note that the baseboards now have a smidgen of colour applied overall of Brown and Green diluted poster colour, sprayed on with one of my wife's ex household bleach sprays, just to remove the overall starkness of the white Artex, I was going snow blind. ;)



Well, that's it for today, not a lot done really, but I'm still struggling with the hip, and I need to let several sections thoroughly dry out where I have done a lot of wet work with Paper Mache around the viaduct.

Regards,

BrianT.

[gtmspyder]

Well, today I have been drain building, or more accurately, culvert building under the A85 as it climbs Glen Ogle on it's way West to Crianlaric and the coast.

The Glen has mountains to the East and West of it, the railway travels up the West side and the A85 up the East, and both collect a lot of water which is channelled into Loch Earn.

One of the tributaries passes through the viaduct on the West, but on the East, the road gets in the way and a culvert had to be constructed to channel the water down to the growing river in the valley bottom.  On one memorable occasion, the culvert became blocked with debris, and the water inundated the road in two places as it spilled across, blocking it, and trapping several vehicles on the rising gradient, which had to be rescued when the road was eventually cleared of boulders, luckily, no one was injured, and I think all the vehicles escaped damage.

I decided that the culvert would have to fit into the location as I had modelled it, and therefore, would have to be bespoke to that position, which would make it difficult to construct off site, so I settled on the overall dimensions in my head and cut some pieces of 20thou black styrene to cover the rough dimensions, and then took them to the baseboard and cut and assembled them in situ.

I had decided the size of the roadside wall overlooking the culvert, so the first job was to make a cut out in the base foam to fit this wall, two parallel cuts were made down into the foam with the reciprocating saw the length of the wall section.




Then the wall section was inserted into the cut out section to check for depth and to mark the walls protrusion out of the ground to give an approximate wall height at the road side of 3ft, (half an inch in our scale)



I then cut down into the foam at right angles, in line with the flow from the culvert, and this section of foam was removed.



With the roadside wall in place, I was able to estimate the angle of the stone work that would guide the water, as it left the concrete pipe laid under the road, and cut the two side pieces to fit the multi angled position.  To simulate the concrete pipe, I used a section cut from a piece of tank overflow pipe, and cut a hole in the wall section for it to poke through.  Finally, I cut a section of plasticard to fill in the floor of spill way.



The nearly finished plasticard model, drying out from all the solvent.  The angle of the delivery pipe has yet to be adjusted, by slightly ovaling the hole through which it passes, to line it up more with the spill way.



And the spill way wall ends. and the floor of the spill way, lined up.



Tomorrow will see my first attempts at lining the plasticard model with DAS and scribing the stonework on it before dropping it into place and fixing to the baseboard.

To fix the DAS clay to the plastic, what is recommended to act as a key between the two dissimilar materials, PVA on the plastic, or MEK liberally laid on?  Do I roll out the Das with a rolling pin type tool before picking up and placing on the plastic, or pressing small lumps in place, and then flattening it to a suitable thickness on the plastic model?

Regards,

BrianT.

[gtmspyder]

Well folks, my first attempt with DAS modelling clay on the culvert, what do you think??

I really would appreciate absolute honesty because I can easily strip the DAS off and redo.

I think the mortar lines want a rub to remove the fash, and the capping stones are not very square edged, but see what you can recommend please. :)









Regards,

BrianT.

[Graeme Dunbar]

It is looking good. What "age" is the culvert? By the looks of it, with the pipe protruding, it is a recent concrete pipe culvert with modern "decorative" stonework. An older one would probably be all stone.

You have the pipe protruding on the outside, but what do you have planned for visible part the under the road through the hole?

[tedp]

If you can get rid of the 'swarf' on the courses, I think it will do very well. Much better anyway than my card squares glued on to a backing piece. I wouldn't mind a slightly random pattern.

[gtmspyder]

Well, I did write a long answer to Graeme's post addressing and explaining my thought's, but Ted's post had been posted in the meantime, and I have lost my post while looking to see what had been posted, so here we go again.

The two first pictures where you can see through the white tube, were off scene photo's, taken to get a good view of the modelled culvert.

In actual fact, when placed in position on the base board, the only way to get a similar picture would require the camera to be placed in front of the viaduct looking back across the base board towards the road, and in fact, to see the culvert at all, one would have to look down from the road above, so this little bit of scenifying will be very little seen in day to day use, but I know it is there.

The use of cast concrete pipes to make culverts for waste water is a fairly modern use, but they have been used for this purpose for over fifty years or more, and while I have passed over this culvert for many years on holidays, I have not viewed it in the flesh, so I have done my best.

The stark white of the plastic will be toned down with a more realistic concrete grey, and the inside will be painted black, although other than my photo's on here, you will probably never see it again.

I think a hard tooth brushing of the DAS will hope fully remove the flash lines of the mortar joints produced by the scribing process.  A weak solution of black will be run into the joints, and the Devon Red of the raw DAS will be toned down by a selection of other stone colouring applied to individual stones.

Then some greens for the algae and weeds scattered around should finish off the scene.

Thank you Graeme and Ted for your comments.

Regards,

BrianT

[gtmspyder]

Here are some picture upgrades of the Glen.

The hopefully improved culvert with new capping stones to the wall, and the stonework mortar lines less defined by flash.



I did note the clay parting from the backing plasticard, and I have done something about it. ;)




A view of the viaduct from the culvert wall.




The viaduct has had it's first coat of clay applied over a coating of PVA, still a lot more to do, arch capping's to the arches and lots of scribing to do.







The fresh coat of over all green alters the look of the scene quite a lot in this view.



Just to  keep things on the move, not a lot of progress really.

Regards,

BrianT.

[gtmspyder]

We appear to have had a landslide over night, blocking the track bed, a few garden centre ground cover pebbles acquired once when I thought, "they might come in handy sometime", I need some more now, I only picked up a hand full at the time.






The river bed and culvert have been detailed ready for a pour of clear varnish when the coloured plaster has dried.





Onwards and upwards.

BrianT.

[gtmspyder]

Well, here we are again, a little more done to the scene.

The viaduct stone work clay has been cleaned up and smoothed, and the prominent arch stone work base has been applied ready for the final carving of the courses, and a few trees have been added, transhipped all the way from China.



The trees come in packs of ten in plastic bags, and well packed in jiffy type bags overall, the service was exceptional, and at

[Hobby]

I've been using those trees for several years now. I've found that giving them a coating of different shades of green flock improves things immensely...