These walls are looking good. its amazing the area you can cover quite quickly with the scalescenes walls etc. look good. toto
Another update. I decided that the retail units I've built will cover too big an area in the station / car park area so have changed their location on the layout. As they will now be at the edge of the layout I first cut them to 'low relief' style buildings, adding pieces at the rear for strength and squareness: The roofs were then cut to suit, modified units with roof just placed on top I wanted to add some interior detail, so started with flooring: Then some detail such as shelving with goods etc. Before finally placing on the layout I will add some interior lighting. Roof was then glued in place and time to look at guttering. I chose the Auhagen kit: These were cut to size, primed, painted black and fitted to the units: More to follow.
Hi folks, been a while since an update on the layout. Her indoors decided in September that she fancied moving home, so I put a hold on the layout construction. Mid October we found a new property that SWMBO fell in love with so we put ours on the market and it sold at full asking price to the first couple that viewed, this was within thirty minutes of it going live on the internet. Our offer on the other property was accepted so we are now waiting on all the legalities and contracts to be sorted. This of course meant the end of "Fleetwell" and 10 days were spent dismantling and packing away the layout. Luckily I'd kept all the majority of the original item boxes so that was good. I've had to compromise with the new house and will have a room within the property rather than the garage, where we want to put the car in future. It currently looks like we won't be moving till just before Christmas because of solicitor delays so any construction of the new layout won't be until next year. Malc
Best of luck with the house move. You were well on the way to a very impressive looking layout, you're work on the platforms and viaduct quite inspiring, so I'll look forward to work recommencing in the new location. All the best Graham
Hi folks, Just a quick update. Our house move is on hold at the moment. Unfortunately the people buying our property had to pull out as the gentleman contracted this dreaded virus just before Christmas and is very ill in hospital. This delay meant we lost the house we were intending to buy. Currently there is nothing on the market that we like enough to make an offer on, ours has sold again and the buyers are prepared to wait a while we try to find another property. It's frustrating as I'm not able to move forward with a new layout and 'play' with all the goodies I had for Christmas. I am however designing a new scene/theme for the layout and hope to post some pics when it has progressed somewhat. Malc
House move on again, new scene for new layout.. We've been lucky that our new buyers have been prepared to wait to move while we try and find a suitable home for ourselves and fortunately a property came back to market a few days ago. Our offer has been accepted so were on the move again. I've thought for a while that Fleetwell didn't have much scenery other than the container terminal / dockside. The other half's son, Ross started his own business in July last year and I've been giving him some assistance with all his paperwork (invoicing/expenses/VAT returns etc.) which has helped stimulate the brain cells. I've decided that I would use the idea of his business and add a biomass depot scene to the new layout. I've spent a few hours on eBay looking for suitable vehicles and have purchased a few Oxford diecast 1:76 scale Stobart Biomass walking floor trailers and cab units that I'll convert to his business. The Scania comes in a plain white which is perfect, the Volvo is the Stobart livery, so I dismantled this, removed all the plastic fittings, the windscreen and interior then attacked the cab with nail varnish remover and cotton buds. About twenty minutes later the cab was back to it's original white colour. More to follow..
Conversion of trailers Following on from the last post, I found a seller on eBay who offers overlay decals for the Oxford diecast trailers so I messaged him and he kindly produced some bespoke overlays to my design from the logo and details I provided. I removed the walking floor body from the chassis, then added the plain overlay sheet which does a great job of hiding the original decals. Measured and cut the overlay sheets and affixed to the trailer, really pleased with the results. On the overlay sheet there were some additional decals / logos which I added to the white Scania cab. The trailer body was remounted on the chassis and the Scania hitched to the trailer. Malc
UPDATE : Been a while since my last post. Our second time of moving all came to a halt when our buyers lost their buyer. Again, we lost the property we were buying and there was or has not been anything on the market that interests us. So, no more searching, we've decided we are going to stay here and later this year or early next look to do the improvements we had planned to do before we thought about buying elsewhere. Excited - At last I can make a start on a new layout. I began by painting all the garage walls Dulux 'First Dawn' blue emulsion to give a sky backscene around the layout. When I dismantled the previous layout I kept most of the individual frames so this weekend I started building the new framework. The baseboards will be higher than before and I'm waiting for the timber for the new support legs to arrive to continue. To be continued...
Now the framework is complete I wanted to complete docks area for the container ship and started with the sea surface. I downloaded a seawater surface and printed a couple of copies. The printed finish was too matt so I laminated one of the sheets and thought the glossy / reflective surface was ideal. I'd found a piece of PVC cladding left over from the garage doorway, this I cut to size for the docks area and printed and glued laminated sheets to this. After leaving overnight I fixed the PVC strip in place on the layout. To be continued...
Thanks Andy, Paul. The boat is the Scalescenes T030C Container Ship download card kit. Took me about 40 hours to build. It's 940mm long, 105mm wide. I have about 100no 40ft and 20ft containers I've built as well. I hope to add some lighting to it.
Great updates...loving the scratch buildings and your brick arches...looking forward to more progress. Cheers for sharing.
The baseboards are now in place, not yet fixed to the framework so I can do the initial track laying. There is an option in SCARM to print a 1:1 (full size) copy of the layout, only 80 sheets of A4, not too bad. The pages are numbered sequentially so it was simply place them on the baseboards along side each other. I found it extremely useful as I could position all the curves and points in the correct places and add any standard length straights. This just leaves me the task of measuring and cutting the flexitrack pieces to suit. to be continued...
Hi guys. I can't believe it's been almost three years since I last posted, have been on the site many times to catch up on others progress but nothing to report on my layout. We never did get to move, but demolished the garage and extended our bungalow, doubling the size of the kitchen, adding a utility room, master bedroom and en-suite. This has meant that our old bedroom is now my new layout room, approx. 3.4 x 3.m. Over the months of the build I spent many hours on Scarm designing a new layout and finally decided on a layout. After redecorating the room and putting additional electric sockets and new lighting I began on the framework using the same method as before. When the framework was complete I added the track and accessory bus wires before fitting the baseboards. Then I printed a full size copy of the Scarm layout and laid the sheets to see if the design was suitable - this photo shows the TMD, engine sheds and fuelling depot area. More to follow..
Hi Malcom, I like that sea surface material, where did you download it from, I need something like that for my docksides, Jim