Ballasting and Reality

The cab detailing on the Fowler has been hit by the reality of my work life. Not much progress on the small plastic parts to be hidden away in the cab. I have had more succes with adding some vegetation and ballast. Somehow I find it much easier to spend five minutes pouring out a little ballast one evening and then adding glue a few days later.

It's friday and the last train of the day has arrived in the Nystrup Gravel Yard. The Fowler locomotive is shunted by the little Lister. Probably for an evening check of a mechanical issue before the first train saturday.

The locos having departed through the building complex a few skips are now checked for oil in the bearings. Even though vegetation and ballast are now in place there is still detailing and weathering to add.

So despite a busy work schedule there's progress on the little Nystrup Gravel layout. I have begun to think it's realistic to have the entire layout fitted with ground cover before year's end. That is an accomplishment as my modelling speed can best be called moderate. I continue having high hopes of greater speeds, but I have to be realistic, as 1/19 scale Nystrup Gravel is only one of my railway endeavours. 

The different railway activities may sometimes limit each other, but mostly they actually add value to one another. And while some readers may wonder if there is a serious fault in the time continuum in Denmark the image below shows that Nystrup Gravel director Erik Holm is actually attending the world's largest railway exhibition Innotrans in Berlin later in september. I'm attending as well, and I have a few questions to ask if I bump into Mr. Holm.

Trade visitor pass to Innotrans for Nystrup managing director Holm.

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.

More Models in 1/87 Scale

Among my selected summer projects I have been working on some models for a future 1/87 diorama of a yet to be decided Eastern European location. My summer vacation has seen work done on the K-Model TU4 and I have also been cleaning up some Micro_Miners models and experimenting with Soviet concrete wall segments.

Four mine tubs and an overhead loading machine liberated from their web of printing supports before final clean up. Here seen in front of a 1/100 scale Siemens Avenio tram from Majorette. Each tub is 1,5 mm long and the loading machine barely 2 cm.

As described earlier, the Micro_Miners models arrive in small card board boxes on their printing support webs and plate hot glued to bottom of the box. Once released from the box each model or part has to be separated from the printing supports. With small snippits the job is fast over and the few remnants of the supports can be removed with a small file or sanding stick. The two part overhead loading machine was very fragile and I took great care not to damage anything. Despite that one of the brackets keeping the driver's platform on the machine's left side broke. It was quickly reglued with AC-glue.

Four wagons attatched to the bottom of their small card board box with hot glue.

The overhead loading machine's two parts still attached to their frightening maze of print supports.

Equipment from the underground workings of a mine ready for priming.

The mining equipment is planned to feature on a diorama in a Eastern European setting on the territory of the former Soviet Union. Quite where is still undecided but I'm leaning towards one of the three Baltic countries or Ukraine. The narrow gauge mining equipment with 6,5 mm. gauge isn't the main focus, but will add interest and a very clear indication of what's going on next to the 9 mm. gauge railway passing through the industrial location.

Currently I'm sourcing parts that are typical 'Soviet' in style. Despite the Soviet Empire being long gone at the time I'm modelling, buildings and road vehicles are still showing the Soviet legacy. There'll obviously be both Ladas and Zils as well as above the ground steam heating pipes. What is also an absolute must on any ex. Soviet industrial location is the ПО-2 (PO-2) concrete element fence surrounding military barracks, hospital compounds and industrial locations. Read the history of the PO-2 fence in depth here.

While the PO-2 fence is easily available in the military modelling scales 1/76 and 1/35 I had to search long for elements in 1/87. But the German firm PTL-Bahn have them as item 210051 'Betonmauerelemente'. I bought the two remaining bags of 10 elements each from the German trader Modellbahn-Exclusiv allowing me to build a wall 64 cm. long. 

Grouping of items for a future diorama: 750 mm gauge TU4, 600 mm gauge mine equipment and in the rear the ever present PO-2 fencing.

The stuff seen from above on a small piece of foam board testing viewing angles. The future diorama will be much larger.

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.

Summer Modelling TU4

Dedicated followers of this blog will probably recognise the checkered table cloth. A sure sign that I'm vacationing in the cottage and holiday modelling. And that's just what I am! For a change I have brought a 1/87 scale kit to assemble to the best of my abilities. The small size is perfect for bringing away from the house, but the tiny parts are quite challenging. Nevertheless I press on and hope to have the kit more or less finished once my vacation is over.

Assembly of the K-Model's TU4 in resin with etched metal details. I forgot my travel size cutting mat, but in the cottage we're never short of a scrap of wood to use as a substitute. 

The TU4-kit comes without instructions for assembly. Not the biggest of problems as the number of parts is pretty small. It is probably the placing of the tiny etched metal parts where the missing instructions will annoy me the most. The kit supplies parts for a static loco only and I'm keeping the model that way. No experiments with tiny H0e mechanisms this time!

TU4 bogies with wheels and gauge adjusting shims fitted. A small casting fault on one flange probably won't be noticed once the model is fitted on a small diorama. 

I began by sanding away flash on the parts from the frame and bogies. I then AC-glued the front skirts to the frame part and test fitted a pair of wheels on the stub axles on a bogie casting. The gauge didn't quite match 9 mm so I drilled and cut four shims to add on the axle subs. As I was away from my stash of all sorts of plasticcard pieces I couldn't find a piece thin enough to add on both sides of the bogie. The obtain a decent fit in the track, the shims were placed crosswise on each bogie. Once the bogie sides were superglued on bogie assembly incl. wheels I drilled chassis and bogies for M2 bolts for safe and flexible mounting. This will allow for realistically posing the loco on both curved and straight H0e track.

Two models from K-Model next to each other. The TU4 is still mostly unglued and only assembled to test how the major parts fit. The TU4 is 88 mm over the frame ends, while the PD-1 is 75 mm over the buffers. My 1/19 Baguley-Drewry is wider than the TU4 is long. Must get a photo of them together!

After removing flash from the upper body I closed the openings from cab to the two bonnets and installed very a rudimentary instrument panel. It's built from plasticcard and I'm not claiming any accuracy as it's all built from pictures showing only part of the construction. Not much will be seen through the windows anyway. The cab interior was primed and then brush painted a medium grey.

As I had the black primer out, I primed the bogies as well and brush painted them dark grey with wheels being given a layer of rust colour.

It's beginning to look like a TU4. It looks like I will have to build a gear box protruding down between the air tanks.

I have been working out the remaining assembly and painting process and next is some major work on the body. The upper body will be glued to the frames. A range of small parts must be attached, mostly photo etched parts of a frightening small size. Very interesting work coming up!

Landscaping Near Building

Long time followers of this blog will know that I like to model outside. Sometimes out in the open while the barbeque heats up or when weather and type of modelling project makes sense. During the last few weeks one of the two segments making up my Nystrup Gravel layout has been sitting on a pair of trestles under the roof of my double carport. A convenient place for many things (We usually only park the car there during winter). I haven't spent long evenings modelling, but 10 minutes here and there adds up.

Outdoor modelling in the carport a warm summer evening. I'm adding grass tufts in the point to the left as preparation for ballasting.

I have primarily been adding grass to the rear of the layout and around the relief building, building a wooden floor to the entrance area of the large wooden building and ballasting a point. I added static grass with my RTS Greenkeeper. Besides getting a tolerable cover of light green grass on the layout up against the backscene, I experimented with adding another layer of static grass on top of the first. I want part of the layout covered in tall thin grass and having the 12 mm static grass fibres stand 'on top' of each other creates visibly higher grass cover. Not 24 mm but recognizably higher than 12 mm. Detailed study of the results once the glue has fully dried will determine if the method works for me.

Adding static grass near the relief building and flooring at the entrance. The still wet glue is visible in the upper left corner.

Since the large wooden relief building was placed on the layout in 2022, I have wanted to add a wooden floor in the large entrance door. Not that much is visible when the layout sits in its usual place in my workshop/library, but I like that type of detail for close up viewing or photography. The floor was built from scraps of wood and some coffee stirring sticks coloured with dark grey stain dissolved in tap water. The scraps were used as a foundation to build up the floor area and correct length stirring sticks then glued down as visible flooring. A little gravel to make a smooth transition between floor and ballast as well as some light weathering finished off the work..

The complete flooring placed in the door opening of the large wooden building. Just some weathering before it's finished. The slight gap in the building's backplate over the floor can't be seen when the layout is installed in the workshop/library room.

Wood stain was applied carefully to keep the colour on the light and faded side. 

With the layout segment set up easily accessible from all sides in the carport I finally got round to ballast the first turnout on the layout. My last session with ground covering work had reached the turnout, where quite a lot of work had to be done. When I laid the track on the layout in 2021 I rebuilt the standard Peco points with wooden sleepers. For a minimum of risk I decided to keep the plastic sleepers in the frog section. To achieve some kind of uniformity between wooden and plastic sleepers the black Peco sleepers recieved a layer of acrylic medium grey paint and a thin wash of raw umber oil paint before any other work started. My layout is built from light materials and due to the plastic sleepers' height a lot of ballast would be necessary potentially challenging my idea of a light layout. As a weight saving measure I added strips of left over 2.5 mm foamboard between the sleepers. This allows me to use a much thinner layer of sieved gravel to achieve a realistic ballast profile - and keep the layout comparatively light. Before ballasting I added a number of grass tufts in the track. I ballast my track in the old fashioned way of adding gravel dry, adjusting it with a soft brush and then flooding the ballast with a thin mix of water, PVA glue and washing up liquid.

Close-up of a Peco turnout partly rebuilt with wooden sleepers. For a minimum of risk I kept the plastic sleepers in the frog section. The sleepers are painted medium grey with a thin wash of raw umber oil paint. 

As a weight saving measure I'm inserting scrap pieces of foamboard between the sleepers. The Peco plastic sleepers are higher than the wooden sleepers in the hand built track, requiring more ballast. Ballast weighs a lot in 1/19 scale and the light foamboard acts as a filler saving weight.

Ballasting in progress. The ballast to the right has just been flooded with a mix of tap water and white glue. The dry ballast center has been roughly levelled with a brush and will now be dressed with a mix of small stones before being glued.

With the layout back in its usual place I could enjoy a layout with two thirds of the surface covered with a kind of realistic cover rather than the painted kitchen rags that have making up the surface for far too long. Maybe the layout will be completely covered (not finished!) by year's end?

The left end of the layout is soon looking like more like a semi-finished model railway than the naked landscape of painted kitchen rags. Still a lot to do adding more vegetation and small details.

In this view from the newly ballasted turnout the wooden building towers over the small train. Just as it is supposed to!

My vacation is fast approaching and I will probably be taking a small modelling project or two with me in our summer cottage. If I will make any progress remains to be seen.

Terrible Modelling

This is not about terrible modelling quality, but of modelling a terrible prototype: Human beings being gassed to death in a death camp. The model is not just any model, but a model exhibited in the Auschwitz I concentration camp near Krakow in Poland. The model is built to illustrate the process of assembly, undressing, killing and cremating over 1 mio (in Auschwitz alone!) Jews and people that the Nazi regime didn't like. A broad group of e.g. homosexuals, communists, trade unionists, Soviet POWs, Romas and mentally ill, but primarily Jews. 

In white the whole industrial killing facility is understated and the figures are anonymous. Yet it is easy to imagine yourself and your family waiting at the entrance of the undressing room. A pile of Zyklon B pellets is located in front of the diorama.  

How anyone has picked up strength to build a detailed model of the underground undressing room and gas chamber filled with struggling and dying humans is beyond my grasp. The cut-away building showing the crematorium is almost peacefully horrific compared to the other two heartbreakingly gruesome scenes. 

The diorama is L-shaped measuring approximately 8 by 5 meters. Scale is 1/15 and the diorama contains more than 300 full figures and even more modelled in relief and half hidden in the depths of the constructions. The figures may be partly built from commercial parts, but most are individually made and posed (as far as I could see through watery eyes).

I have mentioned historic models and dioramas before and the Auschwitz diorama is probably the most terrible model I have ever seen. No builder is mentioned on the display, but the modeller is Mieczyslaw Stobierski, who made the large diorama in 1948 for the Auschwitz Museum. Much later three copies of the diorama were made for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., the Deutsches Historisches Museum in Berlin, and the Yad Vashem Museum in Jerusalem. On this website a detailed description of the diorama can be found. 

At the 'Neue Judenrampe' at Birkenau a single G10 goods wagon stands as a symbol of the thousands of railway wagon that brought people from all directions in the German occupied territories to KZ and death camps.

Apart from the museum at Auschwitz I, I also visited the huge Auschwitz II (Birkenau) extermination camp. Despite have read a lot about the location, I hadn't imagined the size to be so overwhelmingly large. I think that only a visit can truely give an impression of the utter evil committed here.

If you have the chance, visit the Auschwitz Museum. It's a terrible experience, but sometimes that is just what is needed to beef up one's humanity - so easily being chipped away by fake news and confrontational social media.