Back at it! (or "Onward from Port Dover!")

Workshop member Jim Martin sends this report on how he's starting 2016 back tackling the other end of the line...

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I won’t bore you with the details, but health issues the past year took precedent over the basement, so little had happened since my last entry on making grass from wig hair. Now that my mojo’s back, I took advantage of an unusually quiet Christmas holiday period to get back at it.

There is still much scenery work left to do on the Port Dover side of the layout, but in the meantime I have grown tired of looking at the flat, trackless sections across the aisle.

The photos represent work from the beginning to end of January (click on the images for larger versions):

An overview of the "other end of the line", taken January 1, 2016

A closeup of the turntable area at the start of the year.

The same area, one month later.

There is nothing ground breaking here. Everything you see here is a technique that someone else has done first, including the mirror trick by the late John Allen.

I am trying out some new (for me) scenery techniques from the Gordon Gravett books (see Trevor's blog entries on Gordon's work for details), including the use of fireplace ash sprinkled on to gloss gray enamel for road surfaces. I’m pleased with the initial result but will be weathering it with something. I will also be filching some static grass techniques from his book, but before that, I’ll be reaching across the layout to paint the backdrop.

There is also track work to complete. I have yet to draw a finished plan of what the entire layout will look like. It’s certainly easier to know the context of what someone is doing if you know where it’s being done. That said, I have a friend in New Jersey who has offered to do up a proper job for me so once he gets back from Florida we’ll get going on it. I can tell you that what you see here is a loose representation of the south end of Simcoe, where the tracks split for Port Rowan and Port Dover.

Work has stopped for a while so I can get some other stuff done for the upcoming Copetown Train Show*, but as Arnie would say, “I’ll be Bach”...

Cheers!

- Jim

(* As of this writing, the Copetown website is still showing the details for the 2015 show. The 2016 event is being held March 6th at the same location.)