Philden Road Part Nineteen

 ...or the one about completing the overpass and setting the scene for the rest of the layout.

It's time for an update of how Philden Road is progressing. With a new layout rule in effect which states that neither line shall be placed out of service for more than 12 hours at a time, I've made considerable progress since my last update in November, all while still being able to fiddle-fart about with some small operating sessions to test that everything works as I'd envisioned. It's a case of so far so good.

One thing that I'm beginning to admire about my approach with this layout, is that I've become less afraid to rip out a scene or redo a feature if it doesn't turn out as well as I'd expected. Case-in-point was the namesake overpass that divides the two modules of the layout. After not being happy with how the first incarnation turned out, and taking onboard a fellow modellers advice, I removed the unloved span above the NSW North Coast line and scratchbuilt a new span to blend in with the Rix highway kit section I'd used to cross the QLD narrow gauge line.

Inspiration comes from somewhere, even for a fictious layout such as this. In this instance, I wanted to replicate the rock-proof screen gaurds fixed to the ballustrade of bridge overpasses from about the mid to late 1990's to stop vandals from throwing rocks at passing trains. I'd photographed the road overpass immediately to the south of the railway station at Coffs Harbour with such a screen in place, so used this image as inspiration for my Phills Harbour scene. It is only fashioned from some strip styrene and bits and pieces from my modeller's scrap box, but the end result is something that helps set the mood for the location and era I am trying to model.

Departing south from Coffs Harbour station, this XPT is ducking beneath the Campbelltown St bridge.

I rebuilt the left side of Philden Road overpass to blend in with the Rix highway overpass kit at right.

The rock-proof fence helps set the time period and establish a focal point for this scene.

Once the ballustrade was in place, I turned my attention to the roadway. To give the road a well-worn and patched up appearance, I masked off different squares at a time with blue painter's tape, and painted several different shades of grey. Next I weathered the surface with a few passes of the airbrush using three different mixtures of thinned-down acrylic paint; Model Master reefer grey, Vallejo black wash and Vallejo engine grime wash.

The road surface is going to be prominently visible, so I put a lot of time into making it a feature.

I masked of random squares of the roadway, and painted it in different shades of asphalt.

When dry, I removed the tape, weathered the road and added a concrete sidewalk.

The effect on the roadway is amongst the best finish I have achieved to date on a road surface, and left me glad that I pried my first earlier bridge section from above the NSW North Coast line and binned it. The completed Philden Road overpass instantly set the scene for how the rest of this... err, scene, would look.

A few locomotives soon to be retired from my layout pass beneath the new look overpass.

The next area on the layout I revised was my locomotive roster, and this is one area that has since been revised further after taking these few photos! Initially I wanted to capture the changing 90's era of operations on the New South Wales North Coast line. But 1991 to 2000 is a pretty broad time period to be modelling considering that National Rail was established smack in the middle of that. Even with the locomotives that I'd collected, it soon became obvious that you can't model everything. Keeping early 1990's NSW Government owned locos such as 442 and 80 class diesels on the roster meant creating a separate rollingstock roster of appropriately lettered goods wagons to run with them. Given the scaled back nature of this project, 8 locomotives seemed totally unnecessary for a 3 to 4 track Inglenook yard. I eventually decided upon a 1997 to 2001 era, and ruled a line through any locomotive or rollingstock item that didn't belong.

That leaves me with a fleet of 3 x NR locomotives and my 2 x Northern Rivers Railroad locomotives to cover my late 1990's era, (more on these in a later post), all of which are well suited to run alongside my Countrylink XPT set. For me, my whole NSW North Coast roster is about having some of the locomotives I remembered from when I was a young lad, still working alongside some of the newer Australian horsepower of the time. As for those NR class locomotives? They marked the beginning of a new era when they burst onto the scene in 1996, around the same time that I became a Dad. The NR's, (and my kids) are now around 25 years old! Where has the time gone?

I've just found that modelling an entire decade with this layout would have drained more money from my bank account than I was comfortable with. By moving on any item that doesn't belong between 1997 and the turn of the Millenium, I can now send some money back the other way.

Deciding to leave the cement plant off was a big dilemna... I'll miss this guy's face.

After returning from my summer holiday break with a pair of fresh eyes, the next scene-changer I decided to omit was the cement plant that I'd long planned to recycle from my old layout. As much as I like the familiarity of this structure, it really overpowered the beachside scene. I had to ask myself what mood was I trying to portray with this layout. Was it the industrial seaside scene we'd just seen at Gladstone? Or did I want to capture the fun beachside vibes from past family holidays? The cement plant made it a touch difficult to reach the ground throw beside the signal box anyway. So in the end the good vibes won out. I'll now pack the cement plant carefully away once more in a box, just in case I should use it on another small project in the future.

I guess these two photos can now reside in the Phills Harbour Museum. They can serve as a flashback to the Old Days before the Phills Harbour Foreshore redevelopment of the early 1990's, in much the same way as Coffs Harbour Foreshore was redeveloped following the closure of the railway jetty.

And gone! The final photo before the big foreshore redvelopment of the 1990's.

In its place a Fish n' Chips shop and a Fishing Tackle charter company are already erecting a new two story building. While the council has just completed a concrete esplanade linking the beachfront to the jetty and railway station. The whole project involved hours of marking out paper templates and cutting and gluing 6 mm cork floor tiles to create a seamless transition along the harbour wall. And ignore the foreign Victorian loco that seems to have popped up in the above photo. It was on loan while I measured train lengths and clearances for another top secret micro-project that I have in the pipeline.

I started on the Walker Models Fish n' Chips shop and drew a paper template for the foundations.

I used the template to cut a cork floor tile, and fixed it in place with white caulk, (No More Gaps).

The cork tile needed to be pinned in place while the caulk dried overnight.

The Walker Models Fish n' Chip shop can then be built alongside the beach.

So there you have it. The overpass is essentially complete and the scene is now set for how I will build the rest of the layout. Although I've glued the sub-structures together on some of the buildings, they're not fixed in place so that I can take them off the layout and work on them at a later date, (perhaps on a table in front of the TV when footy season kicks off again). I'm building a footprint that the structures will drop into so that I can keep progressing with the scenery.

I know folks often say stuff like 'next up I'm going to start work on... (insert whatever project here),' but with this layout I'm finding I can wake up on a Saturday morning, go to the beach for a swim and a coffee, and come back not knowing what I'm in the mood to do next. I just know that as long as I do a little something each week, the layout gets that little closer to being finished.