Monday 24 July 2017

A between shows refresh


It's less than two weeks away from Philden's next public outing at the Pine Rivers Model Train & Hobby Expo on Brisbane's north side. So thankfully this weekend I completed a general refresh of my small layout's appearance, concentrating mainly on replacing the incandescent light bulbs in the station building with LED's, and adding some more LED light poles to the small yard. The photos above and below show the finished result. The warm white LED's not only rid the model of that bright "high-beam glare" that got the better of me back at the Brisbane Model Train Show in May, but being such a low voltage they don't show through the tiny cracks in the roof that developed where the glue had dried out from two days of constant use with the now removed incandescent grain-of-rice light bulbs. The LED's also make photographing the waiting room at the station a lot easier as you can see below.

The station building and waiting room are now fitted with low voltage LED lights for a better look.

I also added a pair of railway yard light poles alongside the tracks that double as marker points for where the locomotive is able to couple onto my stationary goods wagons. One can be seen in the top photo in the left of picture. I decided to use the other light pole as an excuse to add some extra line-side detail. As you can see below, the light pole is incorporated in a new fence line I built using a roll of silver mesh ribbon trim I bought from Spotlight fabric store. Compare it to an earlier photo I found taken from the same angle, and you can see that the simple fence gives my cement plant and steel unloading apron a bigger presence without obstructing the line-side view of the layout.

The new fence line is built alongside the abandoned siding and features movable opening gates.

Before adding the fence line, there was nothing to define the cement plant's property line.

For now the chain mesh fence can look like a newly erected fence that was built along the access driveway to Cement Australia's Philden Plant. The gates are also operable, I just hope the foreman remembers to lock them at the end of his shift, or rail fans might wander onto the property to photograph some trains.

I'll write up a small article on how I built a scene like this for under $10 after the Pine Rivers Model Train Show and submit it to our leading model railway magazine here in Australia. The next major refresh on my layout will be the remodelling of the siding you can see the louvred wagons, or box cars sitting on. Hopefully if I've the time, that will occur between the Pine Rivers and Gold Coast shows. But as usual, I'll let that be a story for another day.

See also; Exhibition #1 Brisbane Beginnings

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Thanks for taking the time to visit Philden. I hope you'll book a return ticket soon. Cheers, Phil