Progress....

It's been a while since my last confession, so here goes.

Some progress is now being made on the module. A backscene has been put in place and painted. It still needs a second coat. The first lot of scenery has been added, plaster soil, painted and covered in basic 'grass'. As well some minor changes have been made to the arrangement of buildings. The photo below shows the unpainted backscene in place with pillars in place for the overhead road/bridge. Notice the roads are still not 'in'! When the ground is complete I will then add lots more trees of various kinds as well as signs. I've also removed the cheap and nasty shiny plastic palm trees and replaced them with more realistic ones.

I have also bitten the bullet and started to build my D12E locomotive. This version will be the 'quicky' version (about as quick as the tortoise in the 'tortoise and the hare' I think!). I'm using a scaled down version of the card model, cutting out windows etc, and fitting it to the SW1200 chassis I have. Should look alright from a distance. This is a 'fudge' until I build a proper body in styrene. At least I'll have a locomotive!

Also notice in the photo above that I still haven't 'Vietnamized' the buildings. That's next on the agenda after the basic scenery (including the roads) is finished, as well as the completion of the overhead road bridge.

 

I know this sounds strange, but I've also been planning the next module. It seems to me that I need some sort of 'corner' module at the overbridge end. This would consist of a curved mainline, with the workshop/depot sidings branching off from this. Scenery would be much more rural I think. Rice fields etc. I might even move the pagoda there as it looks a bit odd where it is.

So what do you think so far. It's taken a lot longer than I thought but it is progressing.

Until next time.......

Slowly...slowly....

Things have been a bit quiet the last week or so. A bit of planning but not a lot of actual modelling going on. I'm sure everyone has these times where you look at what you've done so far and do some planning for the future but don't do a whole lot more.

I purchased a Bachmann 44 tonner. Lovely model and comes with DCC as well as the normal system, so not cheap for  such a small locomotive. I still haven't taken it's top off but the chassis measurement is around 60mm. If the Kato chassis are OK I might leave the top on and convert it to a New South Wales (Australian) 79 class, but your not interested in that are you.

I've also been eyeing off those  Japanese chassis you can get. They come in various lengths. The Kato 58mm one seems almost perfect for small locomotives. Unfortunately they only come with 4 wheel bogies can't be used for D18E's or D19E's etc.

I've also been updating my websites so what with time being limited (do you get the impression that they've changed the definition of an hour to 50 minutes?), I've not been able to put hobby knife to styrene.

I promise I'll try harder this week OK?