Philden Road Part Six

...or the one about the summer of painting the layout.

Well, Twenty-twenty is well and truly underway. And by that I mean the year 2020 and not the cricket variety. Although the KFC Big Bash is a welcome way to cool down in the evening in front of the telly after a day at the beach or painting some layout benchwork in the garage! Ironic then that the team I follow happens to be the Brisbane Heat.

This year's edition of summer in Australia has been hot. Days hitting 39 degrees Celcius in Queensland, and none that I can recal dipping below 30 degrees. Which is not a problem when you live on the Sunshine Coast and can be parked at the beach and in the water in only 10 minutes. But while we are still waiting on word of when the repairs to our house will commence following November's freak hail storm that I covered in Philden Road Part Four, at least we have a roof over our heads. Unlike many Australians throughout Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia who no longer have a home, thanks to the worst bushfire season I can recall. When you factor in loss of livestock, livelihoods and the complete devestation of some historic Aussie towns, the road to recovery for many communities is going to be a long one indeed, and it remains to be seen what impact the fires have had on our railway lines in the affected areas.

It was a slow process painting one side of each benchwork section at a time.

Back to my new layout news, and after returning from the beach this morning from my umpteenth swim of the summer, my wife helped me apply the final coat of paint to my benchwork frame. I had to enlist Denise's help with painting the layout on a sheet of cardboard on my garage floor on account of my knee still needing time to recover from the small procedure I had on it in early December. While I'm back moving around without any pain and with more range of movement in the knee than I've had for the past six years, bending down on a concrete floor for twenty minutes at a time was proving a painful exercise. Between us we'd paint one side of the leg frames and top sections, leave it standing against the wall for the day to dry, and the next morning repeat the process on the other side. It took two days to apply each coat of paint.

I used an undercoat when painting the benchwork frame, as I want the finished layout have a furniture-like finish.

I used a 100 ml can of White Knight Splashes water-based undercoat, and a 250 ml can of the White Knight Splashes water-based gloss white to paint the entire benchwork. I applied 1 coat of undercoat and 3 coats of the gloss white to the entire framework. and then took the time to lightly sandpaper the visible outer sides of the framework and apply a further 2 coats. The famework will now lean against our garage wall for the next week to harden before I re-drill the bolt holes and assemble the framework above my desk area next weekend.

The final coat applied to the five sections that will bolt back together to form the benchwork.

Finally after 6 months of frustration, I'll have a visual scope of the size that the new bookshelf layout will be. I can then get to work building the two separate modules that will sit on top of it. It might seem like going about things the long way, but if I ever decide to build another layout down the track, I only need to rebuild or replace one module at a time, and the free-standing framework will never need to be rebuilt. After retiring Philden from the exhibition circuit and stripping the layout bare, I think building the new layout this way will turn out to be a brilliant idea.

One thing I have been pleased with so far compared to when I built Philden, is that painting the layout has proven to be a whole lot easier than using a stain and varnish. There's no problem with trying to match stains when you're just painting it white to match in with my IKEA furniture that will stand beneath it.

So with holidays now officially over for me, and my knee now ready-enough to carefully return to work, I'm hoping the positive mindset of finally making some progress with the layout will continue throughout the year. Despite not getting anywhere near the amount of work done on the layout that I thought I would when we decided to holiday at home this Christmas Holidays, we're all safe and I'll soon have the skeleton of the new layout standing in our living area. Then I can roll out my plans and start cutting some plywood. I've spent the past 18 months assembling a new locomotive and rollingstock fleet, and can't wait to get them running on track so I can start shooting some photos of them for this blog.

Until next time, stay safe, and if you're not in a position to give financially to any of the bushfire appeals that are now running, then please keep our great country in your prayers. We've been coping with bushfires, floods and cyclones since before Dorothea Mackellar wrote the words 'I love a sunburnt country'. So no matter what your thoughts are on climate change, leaders and social media influencers whipping people into a frenzy... take a deep breath... and think of how you can lend a hand rather than where you can point a finger. There's probably quite a few model railway layouts in houses or back sheds that are sadly no more because of this summer. When the time comes, maybe you'll know of someone nearby you can help start over with their new layout. Trust me, it can be quite the rewarding feeling.