Wintry highland fields

Winter is here! At least in the Northern Hemisphere where snow at this time of year is just a part of life. Here in sunny Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, (best city in the world IMO), I'm going to have to settle for making it snow in model form. After all, Bryn Nadolig is Welsh for Christmas (Nadolig) Hill (Bryn), so it stands to reason that this art piece becomes something that resembles a postcard scene from a part of the world I've never even been to, while trying to model the white stuff that I've never even seen!

As it is only a couple of weeks until my wife and I take a short holiday to laze under the palm trees by the pool, (disgusting thought for those enduring subzero temperatures, isn't it?), here is a quick photo dump to bring readers up to speed with progress since last week's Artsy Cobblestone Platform post.

I had a stash of Martin Wellberg scenic mats saved for this project which mere a mixture of the Type G Forestfloor, Forest Verge and Wild Shrubbery varieties.

I started with the station precinct first and worked my way up into the hills.

For the track, I used Chuck's Ballast Martins Creek, which although an Australian stone material was simply leftover from a previous project and made a good enough base for me to later sculpt snow drifts and hand paint over.

Once the ballast had dried, I could start layering up several sheets of ice, frost and snow around the tracks and immediate surrounds ahead of adding the trees and structures.

At this point I could start thinking about some of the immediate surrounding details and begin adding them in the order of sequence that best suited me. It's a bit like starting from the ground up and adding each item once the ground beneath it was completed. It makes applying snow to things like trees, fences, coal staithes and work sheds that little bit easier compared to trying to winterscape the entire scene as a whole.

And while I normally go into great detail explaining how I produced each effect, (or give a shameless free plug on where to purchase one of my books), when it came to modelling snow, I experimented with several different techniques all without the pressure of documenting it step-by-step for a book. It was a welcome relief to just to be able to enjoy working on this as an art piece and it felt more like I was doing a 3D painting than simply shaking and gluing model products to a board. Maybe once the layout is finished, I might feel like writing an article for one of the British or Continental modelling magazines abroad. But for now, the end result looked like this...

With the wintry scenery complete, I can next turn my attention to the blank footprints where the village structures will be placed.

So, Bryn Nadolig has now come upstairs from the garage and my focus can now turn to the structures that will form the village. All the fine details which will establish this layout more as the Christmas centerpiece I'd promised my wife a year ago, can now be completed in the comfort of our air-conditioned apartment.

Seeing my little Welsh Highlands affair upstairs in our apartment, I now feel that I've made the right call to move on my Australian HO scale shelf layout. Having had a patient wife tolerating my model railway projects being permanently setup in our loungeroom across 4 different homes over the past decade, you just know once that time is up. To be honest, we're both a little excited at the thought of returning our loungeroom to a place of relaxation come next year, and Bryn Nadolig will happily be on permanent display in my study. Except for when Christmas rolls around, and it can come back out to be enjoyed in the living room hallway each year.

Now, I'd better get the track cleaned and some trains up and running once more.

See also; Cracking on with some modelling and Artsy cobblestone platforms