Scenery
Coaling stage
Geoff had remade the 'confined-space' point actuator in the station. It's neater than the first version and has a chequer-plate top.
It was Laurence's turn to continue with the electrostatic grass application. As developed by Geoff, the process was - a coat of slightly diluted PVA (it helps to conduct the charge delivered through the brass nail), then a scattering of the scrub and shrubs, followed by a layer of the fibres shaken from the charged tea strainer.
Apparently, 80mm is the optimum height. However, there were a few loud cracks as the strainer shorted on the nail, but it stopped him falling asleep (to be fair, we all managed to do this, just not so often). We also noted that fibres on smaller areas seemed to be more upright than larger areas. We can see this might be a reasonable conclusion, but further investigation is required.
Once fully dry, the loose fibres will be hoovered up using a stocking in the tube to save them for another time. After the mound, the strip along the front was tackled by Stephen and Laurence.
Stephen started the coal stage discussed the previous week. Because it's in a dead-end beyond the head shunt, the stage needs to be quite long to cater for the varying lengths of loco's. The kink is required for the curve, and makes an interesting feature. Vertical sleepers will be added for the back and one end.
Stephen picked up a £2 'Days Gone' Austin A35/40 from the 7mm stand at the Swing show in Bognor that was identical in size to an accurate 1:43 version. It was in purple Cadbury's livery with logo's, which was all removed with Nitromors stripper. However, it also removed the plastic headlights!
The road infill surface was laid last week and is far from level, but rather than fill & sand it, we intended to use the indents to try out some more of Gordon's texturing techniques. We have been very impressed with the chinchilla dust and prepared a test sheet of base coats - PVA, gloss paint and a textured paint spray. We'll see the results next time, once they're dry and the excess removed, but all have merits. The spray looks exactly like a finer version of the dust and could prove very useful.
Stephen had remade the portable track with more accurate sleepers - 4 x 15ft, 1 x 5ft and a non-standard 10ft length to use up some lengths of rail.
