Nixnie - a minimum size 009 layout

[tedp]

improvements to the trestle bridge

Well, it took less time than anticipated, so I took a few photos of the bridge which I posted below. To hide the N gauge sleeper web I put in a narrow wooden bridge deck and guide rails. The guide rails are Plastruct I section profiles slightly lower than the standard N gauge rail. These were painted rust colour and glued to the sleeper web. Then I added balsa planking between them and painted these a basic rust colour:



The sides of the sleeper web were a headache as most trestles have the rail spiked to the deck. However, I found a few with the deck closed at the sides (above the carrying beams) with planking on top. So I compromised as shown below. Probably it is all wrong, but then using N gauge track is all wrong...  ;) I completed the job by painting and weathering all woodwork.



And just to annoy all Pug critics  ;D , here is a close-up of the Pug and the bridge deck, and a low level view:





To be continued...

[tat2drod]

Ooh - that encasing makes a big difference! Looking good Ted!

[tedp]

Thanks, Rod - and here is the next instalment.

Hagrid's

Perhaps you remember the nondescript industrial gable end that disgraced the end of the siding at Nixnie. This was made up of old kit parts and scrap, and includes a gable end from the Pola brickworks, some ill-fitting windows, doors from the Ratio goods shed and various pieces of strip, even two lengths of N gauge rail:



As this is the last structure to paint and weather at Nixnie before I add bushes, trees and final details, I took the ultra-flat low relief 'building' from the layout and set to work. First the basic brick colour was put on, being Tamiya hull red:



Next, I picked out individual bricks in other colours, and I painted the window frames, the 'steel' building framing and the doors dark green.



After painting I put on weathering by flowing in various thin washes of acrylics: light grey, dark grey or black. And I found a sheet of crumbling rub-off letters to put on the door...



I thought Hagrid & Co would be a good idea. If you slide Hagrid's door aside, there is what will be the access to the fiddle yard!





To be continued...

[ECMT]

Fantastic modelling Ted, and a very clever way of hiding access to the fiddle yard.
I love the way the waterfall/stream & bridge area really comes to life after the resin water treatment. The idea of using cotton wool worked out really well, and the deck timbers on the bridge is superb. I look forward to the next installment . . .

[tedp]

Thanks - I'm glad you like it.

About the fiddle yard access: Nixnie is really meant as a demo layout to show a working 009 layout can be made in a very small space. But it is rather small and has very limited siding space. So some sort of fiddle yard is necessary, not to run trains into or from in the normal sense, but to be able to exchange stock now and then and run a different train for the public.

So Hagrid's door was thought to be a good solution, providing a 'magic exchange'...

[jaymzhatstand]

I really shouldn't be reading this, its encouraging me to have a go at a small layout, even if its just for my own entertainment!  Its a very nice little layout and it just seems to work.  Nothing looks out of place and the whole thing seems to flow from one scene to the next.  The bridge is also very smart indeed, the boxed in trackwork really sets it off nicely.

Looking forward to more updates, and hopefully not stealing the trackplan!

Cheers

J

[Graeme Dunbar]

I have looked back over the thread. It is an inspriation Ted! The concept is excellent. It is a "beginner's" layout in size and track plan scope but executed with such skill and imagination. I like the way you have three distinct "rooms" (to steal a garden design TV programme term   :laugh: ): the brickworks, waterfall scene and station. Also the use of the scenic break and a bold building in the brickworks where lesser modellers would dot small buildings randomly around the layout or have a station and a fiddle yard.

If there is any justice, Railway Modeller should be knocking at your door wanting to publish it as a short series as it definitely "shows you how".

Would you be able to reload the track plan again please as it seems to have gone missing?

[tedp]

Thanks, all - I don't know what to say as this tiny layout seems to have taken on a life of its own! The funny thing is most of it wasn't planned but just 'happened' due to what I had available in used structures or cheap kits. Most of the track is secondhand. The plan just grew naturally and actually the brickworks was originally meant to be the main scene, with a fiddle yard behind. Turning that into a station scene was an afterthought, but a successful one it appears.

Railway Modeller? Well, perhaps they may be interested but I don't have top class photos, only what I made with my HD video camera. For the moment I think the 009 News should have priority.

The track plan has reappeared - it had gone due to a filename change.

[tedp]

the grass starts growing

...and trees as well! Today I did a little detail work around the station, adding a fence, a station seat (bashed from a Faller park seat kit) and an outside oil lamp. I also made a small loading crane which has been placed outside Hagrid's (no photo of this feature yet).

The main work done today was adding ground cover, shrub and trees to the station area. As my Woodland's of a certain shade was almost gone, I went out and bought the nearest to it which I could find at short notice... I thought! A packet of Busch ground foam, which upon arriving home proved to be a very artificial green colour. I did a bit of landscape in it and then soaked some in a thin wash of ochre acrylic paint to improve matters.

First I smeared PVA glue liberally on the grey plaster scenery base. This is spread out with a fingertip (scenery building is messy!) then I sprinkled it with various shades of ground foam:





After the glue has set, the excess foam is vacuumed off with a cloth over the suction mouth to catch the loose particles for re-use:



By this time I was so fed up with the poisonous Busch colour that I soaked a large amount of the stuff in a wash of paint, spreading it out to dry on a wad of newspaper. Some of it was used wet, to complete the work, but this was exceedingly messy. It's better to wait until it dries and use it afterwards. I also had to tone down some of the foam that had already been put on the layout.



Here is a first glimpse of the end result. I added rubberised horsehair and various dried mosses to create bushes and brambles, then drilled holes in the scenic cover to receive the Heki 'Meerschaum' trees I have used elsewhere. The down side of this stuff is that they are fragile and there is too little variation in colour, but the advantage is you have some sort of wooded area up within half an hour.



I will now let the photos speak for themselves, showing that it is possible to create a Col Stephens atmosphere in 009, in a very small space. The area photographed is about 60x25cms, as the curve on the right hasn't yet been fully landscaped. Note the way the trees in the corner hide the aperture in the backscene where the track comes through. On the other side there will be a similar scenic block, trying to create the impression of a tree tunnel for the trains to move through.

















I hope you like this little transformation from an almost bare layout to a wooded scene, which took only a few hours!

To be continued...

[Isle of Stoner]

Long live the pug! I've not done one since about 1980 but I have a kit and a chassis so maybe the time has come for 'Phoenix' to be born.

Layout looking good too!

John W ;D

[tedp]

Thanks, John - there is nothing wrong with a Pug and it makes an excellent loco for this kind of scene. I have two of them. Here is a side view.

[tat2drod]

Oh, I do so like that foto of the train emerging from the trees. I'm nearly finished on my little layout and hopefully will be presenting it to the brother-in-law fairly soon (just after I've made some foto's). I may just have a look at trying something like Nixnie next!

[tedp]

Thanks, Rod - the tree tunnel is a favourite of myself as well.

Yesterday night I spent some time wrestling with the brickworks. It had to come off to enable me to cut into the plastic baseplate so I can fit wagon turntables to line up with the plastic moulded track. I almost wrecked it as it had stuck so fast with only a few dabs of glue used last year!

The reason for the changed plan is that the single siding cannot have a string of wagon turntables in it as that would prevent its use for locomotives. I now only put in a single turntable halfway along the siding. This gives access to a light track parallel to the siding, which in turn connects with the moulded track on the baseplate.

One thing led to another, and with the building off I also installed lights in it. They are nothing much as the building has no interior, but they will add interest anyway. It's intended to be only a simple demo layout - at present there is no time for a lot of detail as it needs to be ready for the Valkenburg show. Only a week to go!

[tedp]

more ballasting

A few moments ago I completed the ballasting process for the area around the brickworks. Some of the sidings will be treated with coloured plaster wash as the surface is still too coarse, but for the moment it will suffice.

First, the dry ballast is spread on the track. I start with the coarse Busch grain and fill in some fine grain ballast:



The point is handled very carefully to avoid the moving parts. The baseboard has been painted track colour underneath and note this will not be ballasted at all. Also note there are some grains that strayed in the flangeways. These will be removed by flipping them out with a tiny screwdriver:



Next, a stiff paintbrush is used as a bulldozer to clear most of the area between the rails (the 'four foot' in SG parlance). This has the effect of throwing the ballast outside the rails and creating a ballast 'shoulder'.



Next is an image showing how the point has been cleaned up meticulously. A particle in the flangeway is lying too deep to bother us. Note some rock dust and sand mix has been added to the ballast, outside the track.



The curve made up of N gauge Setrack sections is ballasted over the sleepers, to hide most of the N gauge look:



The sidings and the wagon turntables have been ballasted as well. Here however, the initial surface will be filled in further using grey plaster, resembling mud and loco ash, and obliterating the sleepers and part of the rail, so it will look like much lighter track. Note I forgot to paint the rail of the track between the turntables.  







Now the glue/water/soap mix is flooded in, most of it from the side, but the kind of syringe I use runs very lightly so it doesn't squirt the particles away. So it can be dripped from the top as well. The mix I use is about 10:10:1 PVA:water:soap.





This is continued until a milky solution is visible between the ballast particles. Add some between the rails as well, as the solution will creep in only slowly from the sides. And stay away from the moving parts of the point, wetting the ballast outside the stock rails is enough, and be very careful with the glue between the frog and the checkrails.





Even with the wet ballast, the look of the area is much improved:





To be continued!

[tedp]

On the NGRM forum the use of fairly coarse ballast on a narrow gauge layout, and the fact it is laid over the sleepers on the N gauge track led to some comment. The use of N gauge rail on Nixnie is unprototypical, but was resorted to in order to create a stable curve radius. So the track has to be covered to hide the sleepers. The ballast will be flooded with coloured plaster in order to tone it down and reduce its neatness. The end result will look somewhat like this, like ballast clogged with sand and ashes:



A short session tonight with a coloured plaster mix resulted in a grey 'industrial' scene which, together with the track ballast, can now settle for the night. The plastic baseplate of the brickworks has been touched with the plaster mix as well so the texture will continue across the join. The colour is still a little uncertain as thinly covered areas always dry out quickly and in a very light colour.





As you can see, similar to the station scene at Nixnie, the ground texture looks fairly coarse, rather like a slate quarry with all kinds of slate rubbish on the surface. Much of it will eventually be covered in vegetation, but the exposed parts and some areas of ballast will have to be smoothed by touching up with a thin wash of plaster. There will be pathways linking the buildings that have been trodden flat. The large open space to the left of the works may be used as a rubbish dump, or possibly as a storage area for brick. I'm not yet sure what would look best in the model.

More developments soon.