- Orphan Valley Model Railway -

The Artists Studio. Following on from the previous post about the artists residence, heres some construction shots of the the artists studio. Built out of similar materials to the residence, the trickiest part was the outside verandah. It was constructed from balsa wood and Mt Albert Scale lumber and some grandt line bolt details. I sort of had to ad lib a bit to make it fit the site on the cliff edge. The basic shell. Stone work scribed into modelling clay with various scribing tools. Theres about 3 hours work in that from scribing to painting. Make sure you have on an  interesting talk or enjoyable music to provide healthy distractions to the fairly tedious process. The floor mats are printed images of rugs from the internet. Paintings and easel are images printed on card and scribed to give the frame of the painting some 3 dimensionalness. The walls are scribed with brown coloured pencils. The stained balsa sheet for the floor boards in foreground read...

The Artist Residence corner scene. This model is loosely based and inspired by Hans Heyson's residence at Hahndorf in the Adelaide Hills, SA. I just love visiting the place. I've taken a number of photos, but also used NEARMAP to get some approximate dimensions across the front. The measuring tool on NEARMAP is a great resource. I built this model in S scale to help with the forced perspective of the scene. The artist studio to the front of the scene is O scale. The materials used where card stock, Grandt windows, modelling clay, styrene, VR corrugated sheets from Railcar, various brass tubing and wire and acetate for the glazing. I built this models over 4 days early in the mornings before the exhibition. It was at a stage of just pushing through to get the scenes built. CA adhesive and hair dryers really help. The building is internally lit with yellow glow LEDS and printed interior walls make up the inside detailing. Heres the process shots. The basic st...

The On30 Bachman Baggage Combine Modification The conversion of this Baggage Combine into a working member of the BR Railway roster involved pulling it apart and adding interior details, improving the lighting with LEDS and anti-flicker kit from DCConcepts, canvasing the roof and adding a new paint job. The article from the Sept 2011 Model Railway Hobbyist Online Magazine section "The Lite and Narrow" proved very helpful. Visit link to download.  So here goes on documenting my effort. Pulling the Combine apart required some prising apart of clip lugs and undoing bogie and floor screws. The roof came off first giving access to floor screws. The position of the interior light. Removing the window took some effort as they are fastened with some good contact adhesive. I resorted to using the Dremel and cutting blade and then the mult-tool to cleanup the glue deposits and broken window tabs. The wire for the lighting is screwed to the bogie. The front ...