Easy Living - Vacation

After a week in Germany my vacation has now settled into the slow rythm of doing very little in a slow pace. Giving my house a little paint, interrupted by watching the olympics and generally enjoying life with wife and family. A little train running and a start on the cab interior on the Fowler diesel has been added to the few things accomplished. 

Running the Fowler back and forth on a short temporary garden line in front of my garden shed. Very relaxing!

With the help of images and drawings from an article by Bill Strickland in the November 1980 issue of 'Merioneth Mercury' I've begun making interior details for the Fowler cab. I'm just getting started on the brake installation and sand boxes. It's fiddly work and I hope it will be worth the effort. Work on the driver firgure is also under way with intial adjustment to feet and head to fit the cab.

Covering the added exterior details with paint has helped to make the model a little more finished although there is still a lot of work left. I used Vallejo 'Black' to cover bolt heads and profile additions on the frames and an ancient (most likely early 2000's) tin of Humbrol enamel 195 'Dark Green Satin' on the body details fitted. Where I had fitted metal parts I was carefull to prime with enamel paint before the acrylic colour was applied. My experience is that enamel has a stronger 'grip' on bare metal than my favourite acrylic paints.

What a difference a few brush strokes makes! All the exterior detail additions have been painted. The loco will continue to develop in the coming months.

One of my vacation projects actually got finished: the Modelu fox and it even got some publicity on the Modelu Facebook page. The guys at Modelu said nice things about my modelling and provided their audience with a link to this blog. Things like that boost my modelling confidence. Hopefully it will also help the producer to boost sales something we all will benefit from. Notice that I'm no influencer type receiving gifts in return for mentioning producers. My blog is way too obscure and I'm a proud full price paying customer when I shop for my hobby.

My first Modelu animal lifted from the Modelu Facebook page.

Nystrup Fox

So far the only animal having been seen around the small gravel line in Nystrup has been a shunting horse. The railway yard wasn't a natural habitat for many larger animals, but a fox or two made regular appearances straying from the nearby forest. That's why I had a pair of foxes in the package from Modelu last time I ordered figures.

Always on guard a fox cautiously approaches the open ground next to the lorry loading ramp. The fox measures 2 cm. over the shoulders and 7 cm. from nose to tail.

The fox from the Modelu set 31101 was intially removed from the maze of printing supports and with a sanding stick I could remove the few attachment points remaining on the figure. A few unnatural looking indentations were filled with model filler. After priming with Games Workshop 'Chaos Black' I stippled on a covering of acryllic paint: Humbril 113 'Rust', Vallejo 818 'Red Leather' 70.983 'Flat Earth' (the paint's name makes you think, doesn't it?) and 70837 'Pale Sand'. The stipple method gives a slightly rough surface and a random application of paint allowing underlaying paint to partially show through. I found it extremely difficult to choose colours for the fox and to add depth to the animal's fur.

Once resonably satisfied with the painting, I added a faded mix of Red Leather and Pale Sand to the fox's upper back and a dry brushing of the rest of the animal. When dry I gave the red areas a wash of heavily diluted rust coloured oil paint. Eyes and mouth were added with black oil paint. Finally the nose was topped off with gloss black paint.

Painting the fox was part of my summer cottage project portfolio accompanying the 1/87 scale TU4 locomotive. 

Something has obviously caught the attention of the fox. It has remained stationary and vigilant for a long time. The workers have left the area so the fox may have found interesting prey?

It's nice to be able to begin adding some of the fine detail to the layout. The fox from Modelu will be moving around on the layout in the future to add a little life.