Goods shed surrounds

I've enjoyed the scenery work of late. So thought it about time to locate the Goods Shed base in its location. I've built the shed in two parts, sort of. What I mean is that the base is separate from the walls so that the interior can be modelled as well and especially to ease the pain of painting.


So armed with the base of the shed I mixed up some sculptamold to form the base around the shed. I slopped on the mix making sure not to get it in the area of the four corner posts. I built the shed with four posts in the corners exactly the same size, and the rest were 2mm shorter. I did this to take into account my poor cutting skills. I thought  it alot easier to site a building on four posts and mask the shorter posts with groundwork, rather than sanding a bit off this one, then that one...you get the idea.


I marked the location of the four corner posts and then formed the base around them. I pressed the base into the damp sculptamold leaving an impression in it of where all the posts would be located. 


After it had cured it was out with the paint as a base coat, then gravel for the area of unloading, and access road along the side of the line. I used more of the Chucks QLD river sand for this, it has a nice even tone about it and the grains are fairly fine. I normally put down the watered down PVA first then sprinkle the 'gravel over it so that it soaks up the glue. Then if I need to add more gravel then I can put more glue on top of what is already laid and it soaks through just fine.


All this work on gravel had me looking at the ballast on the front module. Time to make some progress here. The gravel is a mix of chucks N scale, ash (that's been ground down in my handy dandy Target $15 mortar and pestle, a little too coarse in its purchased state), and some pale coloured soil that I grabbed from a roadworks site some years ago now. I don't do anything too complex, just add a bit of this and that, however I do normally add a 50/50 mix of ballast and the soil mixed together rather than ballast on its own.  So down with the gravel/soil/ash and flatten it out and move it about with a 1/2 inch paint brush. Wet the lot down with a spray of 'wet' water then glue it down with white glue mix. 


I want to add a bit more into this scene so there is a side story going on at the same time as the scenery, that being detail bits. I don't know about you but I think there would be a fair number of you that have been collecting things 'for that spot on the layout'. You know the old drums, crates, timber, milk cans, brooms, bicycles, vehicles, carts, the list goes on. Anyway I pulled out a fair number the other day and got some undercoat on them so that they were one step closer to being on the layout also. 


That's about it, have a good week, 
Oorroo! Geoff.