Work In Progress

With an excitable four year old daughter and all four grandparents staying, model making was a bit spasmodic over the Christmas holiday. 

The main clay dry building is progressing well requiring plenty of small additions pauses for glue to dry. The main building and dock are one piece with the embossed styrene wall coverings fitted. Current job is fitting coping stones and some other details. Once these are fitted, the dry will be put aside until the final details are added at painting stage. My aim is to get all the buildings built to a set stage and then finish them all off together. Hopefully making an homogenous scene as a result. 

Father Christmas brought me a very nice circular chimney to complement the dry which should make life a little easier in that regard. 

The fascia and backscene boards casing the scenic and fiddle yard boards has been completed. Though I may well add an arch at some point. The jury is currently out on the arch depending on what the final staging height will be. The layout will sit on a pair of adjustable trestles and I’m yet to decide what the final viewing height will be.  Being 6ft 3in tall I don’t want to be stooping under an arch if I decide to go for a slightly lower staging height as an eye level Leighton for me would be too high for most people. 

Some pieces of timber have been cut and screwed together to form a base for the layout to sit on completing the woodwork. Next stage is applying some paint to smarten up the appearance. 

Mickleover is now only a little over three weeks away and my thoughts are turning to the day. The layout was always going to be there as a work in progress. Whilst I’ve not progressed as far as I would’ve liked, I’m still impressed with how far I have progressed in the last three months. 

My intention is to make sure there will be enough wagons built (but not painted necessarily) to allow a train to be shunted around on the day. There are still some. Ore buildings to make and my current thinking is that I could work on the buildings during the day at Mickleover. It is a modelling day rather than a fully blown exhibition after all.