Let's All Go To The Model Village; Part Two. Making and Finishing

Previously on... Ben Struggles To Fit In Yet Another Project This Summer.  

The Peco Rail 200 Competition, to build a model-railway on a set-sized, laser-cut baseboard. It seemed such a good idea back in May, then Summer was a bit manic. There was a lot of work for British Railway Modelling magazine, some for Hornby, and a lot of family drama. It was to the point that the glue was literally still drying as I took the final pictures, the day before the deadline.

Just to recap, here's the plan.

The height restriction of having it no more than 14cm high above the baseboard meant a struggle to fit this in, modelling in a large scale, so I cut down into the frame. It was still going to be a tight fit, even using the sharply-curved Rokuhan tracks.

Cutting out the trackbed would be a quick and easy job... until the electric jigsaw died. And so it became a longer job, with the trusty coping saw.

Testing the clearances with some stock, and establishing the ground levels.

Starting planning where the paths would go.

For the surrounding walls of the old garden, I turned to embossed dolls-house brick paper, attached to the walls with double-sided tape.

To disguise the trackplan a bit, I decided to employ lots of tunnels and bridges. 

To further emphasise the fact this was a model village, I wanted to replicate this culvert-formed tunnel from Anglesey Model Village.

I had some of this ribbed piping, unused from when we installed the new sink.

Does the trick nicely, another detail that makes it clear this isn't a Z scale layout, but a larger scale layout with smaller trains.

The pond was black paint with some Koi Carp done with acrylic, then a layer of 1mm clear perspex on top. The landforms were then done with carved foam, then a bit of filler to create cliff faces. Tunnels from N gauge platform edging, and a bit of stone-effect plasticard.

For ornate railings, having discovered the intended model-ship brass railings would be way too pricey, I went for these 1/12th scale plastic dolls-house railings. Too tall as they came, they could be cut-down nicely for waist-high for the figures, with some lower railings for the borders.

Coming together nicely in this shot, with static grass sheet, some longer-fibre sheet, and a mix of whatever trees, shrubs, and bushes I could find in the scenery boxes. Flowers scattered over the bushes were from Katy Sue Designs.

Buildings needed to be done quickly- I didn't have time to do 'proper' buildings, plus they needed to look like the slightly flat-textured structures you actually get in some model villages, relatively simple structures. I ended up designing nets on the computer, and filling them in with downloaded brick and stone texture sheets, and some windows and doors from online stock sites.

Assembled around blocks of Balsa wood, with mountboard-card roof pieces.

For the trains, I'd be using the standard Rokuhan 'Shorty' stock, on their unmotorised, plastic display chassis.

A bit of a repaint into a slightly more British livery.

Same for the single-unit railcar, which will eventually run on the layout.

For the figures, I did think about re-using some of the old figures from the last go at Port Eden, the Miniature Railway end of the attraction. But I wanted something a little more 'family' in tone.

After searching around, I settled on these from the Schliech range; they had quite a few kid figures. I thought using the smaller children would help with the scale, and the limited available height of the scene. The vaguely Germanic looks and oddly styled/coloured clothing though would play into the nominally mid-1990's era of the Port Eden project.

Some of them would need a bit of cutting and re-modelling. I can see what they were going for, with 'girl feeding a carrot to her pony', but said vegetable looked a little... suggestive.

Carving away the carrot left a slightly-odd shape, disguised though with the balloons and a teddy. Someone has clearly been doing well on the arcade games.

It had all been looking a bit monochrome, but adding some brightly coloured figures helped, and the balloons added a kitsch, colourful, playful atmosphere. The star-shaped ones are chunky clothing buttons glued back-to-back, then large one here is a bouncy-ball, with the strings from paperclips.

I was only able to get hold of one adult figure in time. Ah, the weary, thousand-yard stare of the parent who's had to indulge their offspring on a trip to the fairground, and help carry and hold their tat..

The bridge over the middle of the scene limited the height, so as an experiment (and to disguise her from her identical counterpart a few inches away), Blondie here was remodelled to be kneeling down. Note the painfully-90's metallic silver skirt too.

These two ended up being the centrepiece of the layout; there's also a little boy, but his expression was frankly a bit haunting, so he's on the edge of the scene, partly hidden by a hedge. Well, I dragged my three foster-daughters around enough places like this when they were little...

Here's the finished layout; as I said at the start, the glue and paint was still drying at this stage, but I'd run out of time for submitting the final photographs. 

Just to prove it's within the 14cm height!

And that was it, done enough to enter the competition, with 24 hours to spare.

And just to see how it looks compared to the concept sketch...

So, the big question; am I happy with it? Pretty much. It's something a bit different from the other competition entries I've seen. It's a shame it ended up a bit rushed, but I had to prioritise paid work and family. Looking at it another way though, it means I nailed a working micro layout in about a fortnight of evenings and late nights. Plus, building it has scratched a metaphorical itch. I might end up upgrading it after the competition, add a few more details and figures, but overall, yeah, pretty happy with it.

 

Garden Rail Saturday; Planning the Line

Time for another instalment...

This was pretty as well as far as the old garden line got, the 45mm incarnation of it anyway, in the garden at the in-laws. As previously discussed, for a variety of reasons/excuses the line ended up an overgrown ruin and was scrapped. With the new layout underway in 32mm scale at our new house, we've been building up stock to test with. We needed a concept and theme for the layout, and started thinking about something small in scale, and vaguely Welsh in theme.

This is the sort of thing we're thinking of; small locomotives and quarry/feldbahn-sized stock. This was a gala event on the Ffestiniog a few years back, photo taken up at Tanybwlch.

A trip to the Tal-Y-Llyn this Easter provided more inspiration; moss, ferns, and rock cuttings, and dinky little locomotives.

A bit of Photoshop jiggery-pokery; one of the shots from the visit re-touched to represent a loco and coaches surviving into British Rail ownership in the 1990's. One of the ideas being toyed with is a Corris-esque line surviving through Nationalisation, in a similar fashion to the nearby Vale of Rheidol. The Corris at least has the advantage of smaller locomotives and coaches (the above Kerr Stuart is an ex-Corris machine). 

In terms of space available for a layout, however, this was the size of the area we had at the in-laws...

...versus what we have now. Not hugely inspiring in terms of what we could fit in, even going for a compact quarry-type layout. In fact it's about a quarter of the room we had the 45mm line in.

Doodling the trackplans led to this; actually working full-size, though with Faller stock to test clearances. A layout for the garden, effectively in the space you'd normally do a large indoor layout in the smaller scales!

And here is the plan, though since this was drawn-up, it's changed again a couple of times. But then that was the point of planning it so thoroughly; the 45mm layout suffered for being too big a project, and needing constant revision.

Anyway, here it is in the current issue of Garden Rail magazine; more soon, focussing on actually making a start on building the line... Though the next instalment will probably be a trip to a garden railway exhibition this weekend.

 

Medical Monday; A Rash Undertaking

Something directly medical themed again for todays Medical Monday, and the production of simulated rashes to go on the high-fidelity medical robots.

When I became an NHS Education Technician, I didn't really know much about Sepsis. It was just a weird sort of infection you sometimes got, right? Pretty rare, a bit unpleasant, but there were bigger things to worry about. Right?

Well, now I've worked 3 1/2 years in Medical Education, I am f*cking terrified of Sepsis. It's bloody everywhere. We train the medical staff in Sepsis recognition and treatment in nearly every multi-scenario course we do, and for a good reason. Sepsis is a killer. You can get secondary infection with Sepsis through just getting a cut, hell, in the last week as I type this, a chap nearly died from Sepsis acquired after bursting a spot on his neck. If that isn't enough to scare you, I don't know what is.

Here's my Public Service Bit, as the bought-and-paid-for NHS employee that I am:

Symptoms of sepsis - NHS

Bluntly- the signs of Sepsis; a rash that doesn't fade when you roll a glass over it (the same as you get with meningitis), high temperature, confusion and slurred speech, difficult or shallow breathing, pale or discoloured skin. OK a lot of the above can be mistaken for other medical conditions, so if you've had an open wound and notice any of the above in the aftermath, if in doubt, go seek medical help immediately.

As you can imagine then, replicating Sepsis (and the similar rash you get with Anaphylaxis, the allergic reactions to things like antibiotics or bee stings) is a biggy for us. And quite tricky to convincingly do on a mannequin made of latex.

Since I joined, the technique (developed by my predecessors) was a quick one, for the tight turn-around times between Scenarios. See, we do a scenario, then the candidates go next door for a debrief, which gives us anywhere from 5-20 minutes to set up for the next one. So we have to be a bit speedy, especially if they've left the place covered in equipment or meds to tidy up as well.

Classic NHS-Issue Single Ply Loo Roll (with all the comfort and softness associated with the phrase 'Government Issue'), dotted with red marker pen if you're in a rush, or fake blood if you remember to do it the day before. Trying not to make the spots too regular or small.

Slathered in Vaseline, which helps it go transparent, with the noticeable downside of making the robot exceedingly greasy and unpleasant to the touch. Plus, if you've done the 'oh hell, I forgot I needed a rash, where's the permanent marker' technique it can sometimes bleed-through to the skin.  I rather felt a more detailed solution might have been in order.

Being as we were somewhat blessed with better budgets when I started, the robots were still under warranty, which meant when they'd had yearly services, the engineers changed the skins. And thus, there were a couple of old, slightly worn and marked, chest skins just otherwise doing nothing...

Creative solutions to a problem- I needed the chest filled to work on, but didn't want it on the robot (both because Sim Man is an absolute Unit, and a bugger to move around, and also because I didn't want to clumsily splatter paint on him). Luckily we had a beach ball I'd donated into the props box at work, so out that came to fill the chest.

For the effect of raised blotchy spots, after some experimentation I settled on blobs of superglue (second only to duct-tape, and one slot above Philips Screwdriver, in the Essential Technicians Toolbox).

Should I ever wish to shoot a shower gel or shampoo commercial with Sim Man, I now know the solution. And knowing is of course half the battle.

If only there had been a dispenser with 300 or so gloves in the room I was working in. The fake blood doesn't half stain. I used a mix of this, and Citadel acrylics. The chap in Warhammer (Leeds) didn't half give me a look when I tried to explain to him why I was buying a dozen pots of 4 different shades of blood-coloured paint.

So experiment one wasn't a great success. The raised blobs took on more of a blistered look, though worth bearing in mind for a possible chemical burn scenario.

We aren't made of spare chests, so I had to painstakingly scrape off all the raised blisters. Then, it was out with the paint... again... to try doing it all with just paint this time, no low-relief effects. Experiment Two wasn't bad, but it also didn't quite work, as the splatters were a bit too dark.

Various washes and dilutions later, I'd successfully toned-down the darker patches. Applying the rash by spattering the chest with a mix of blood and paint worked a treat... and also meant I had to spend an afternoon cleaning a wall, two tables, the floor and the tissue-fridge door. Wamp-wammmp.

Worth it though. Two of us working in concert can strip the 'regular' chest skin off Sim Man and fit this one (4 zips and a slightly awkward slot and tab arrangement in his groin) in the same time it took to apply the patented loo roll version. Faculty seem happy with this one too, though I may come back to it this summer to do a little more work on it.

And again, for God's sake, familiarise yourself with the symptoms of Sepsis.