Philden Road Part Seven

...or the one about the blank canvas phobia

Wow. What a difference a week has made. Having a few spare hours in the middle of a work day, courtesy of one of our clients who are yet to return from their Christmas break, meant I was able to assemble the finished benchwork for Philden Road above my work space area. As you can see in the above photo, choosing to paint the timber with white water-based gloss enamel has matched the framework for the new layout perfectly with my existing IKEA furniture. The only thing left for me to do is replace the borrowed dining room chair, with a white and birch office chair from... you guessed it, IKEA. I can then get onto building the two modules that will form the new layout that will sit atop the benchwork. Perhaps.

I say perhaps, because as I stand back to admire the benchwork that my wife Denise and I painted over our summer vacation at home, all those second thoughts regarding final trackplans, levels and making it all fit start creeping into your head. I call it blank canvas phobia.

To outline what I'm intending to do for the sake of those who are new to this blog, over the course of 2019, I effectively dismantled a 2.7 metre long x 320 mm wide bookshelf layout that had graced the cover of Australian Model Railway Magazine, and began the task of replacing it with a 3.3 metre long x 450 mm wide multi-level bookshelf layout. The layout needed to be able to fit into the back of a mid-sized hatchback or SUV, and so was designed to break apart into two 1.65 metre long sections so as to not limit our choice of vehicle when it comes time to updating our car in the near future. The two modules in turn will rest atop the seperate benchwork that you can already see in the above photo. The benchwork itself comes apart in five sections and is held together by just 7 bolts with wingnuts. It takes less than two minutes to erect and will be a huge timesaver when I take the finished layout to a model train exhibition sometime in the future.

I haven't shown the trackplan for the new layout yet, as I have three such versions drawn to 1:1 size on rolls of paper. With my plans calling for a Queensland narrow guage layout to co-exist with my planned New South Wales standard guage North Coast line, a split-level approach as opposed to a multi-deck layout seems to be the order of the day. Occupying an end each, the two lines would cross in the middle, both under and over Philden Road, before disappearing behind each other's backdrop. The key requisite here is that my NSW North Coast line needs to be able to both accommodate a 5 car XPT set at a railway station platform, and still have the room to make it completely disappear from view at the other end. Hence the reason I needed to build the layout to a length of 3.3 metres.

From this point, it becomes a bit of a conundrum with what layout elements I need to omit. Add one element to the NSW end, and I need to omit one from the QR end, and vice-versa. While on one hand I'm itching to get started, until I do its easy to get lost in that beautiful moment where everything seems possible. Once those pencil lines go down on the sheets of plywood however, its a different story. Trackwork, the rise and fall of the landscape between levels, structures and the feeling of space and seperation that you need to place between each element will demmand at least one or two hard calls. For now, everything just looks good on paper.

A flashback comparison to the original Philden layout with the same IKEA funiture squashed beneath.

I guess the best way to appreciate the space I now have to work with is by comparing the photo of the new benchwork at the top of the post, with the photo of my old layout above. Not only do I have an extra 600 mm of length to play with, but I have much more leg room around my desk and work space.

The finished benchwork in place ready to begin constructing the two removable modules that will rest on top.

So while the State of Origin mind wars continue with the positioning of elements on the HO layout on top, with a spare weekend, and a small stash of timber and plywood at the ready, it may well come down to the flip of a coin to decide which end I begin working on this weekend. Either way, until you splash the first bit of paint on a blank canvas, just staring at it can be a daunting prospect. I guess you'll know which State wins out based on my next post. But as usual, that'll be a story for another day.

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.

Philden Road Part Three

...or the one about getting the benchwork right before thinking about anything else.

Its all too easy to get carried away with thoughts of what you're going to incorporate into a new layout without first drawing some kind of plan. Blindly knocking a frame together may seem like a great place to start, but without knowing the length of layout area you have to work with, any track plan you conjure up can easily become a waste of time. Before I dared draw a plan or cut a length of timber for the new layout, I had to first work out how much room I had to display the layout and more importantly how I would transport it if I were to ever again take a layout to a model train show.

Despite having more room in our new surrounds than the small waterfront apartment that Philden once occupied, we are planning to upgrade our car in the coming year, and the last thing I wanted was for the layout to dictate what size car we could buy, or the car to dictate whether the layout could ever be taken on the road. You see, Philden was 1880 mm long, with another 800 mm of staging that later became the Beach Extension, making for a total length of 2.62 metres. Taking Philden on the road called for the front seats to be moved forward to fit the 1.88 metre long section in the back of our Ford Mondeo, making for a less than comfortable trip wherever we took the layout. Chances are that the new car might be shorter than the Mondeo.

Incorporating two distinct scenes on Philden Road called for the new layout to be longer and wider, while still being able to fit into the back of a mid-sized car with the back seats folded flat. Working on the premise of the boot access of any half decent mid-sized car being at least 900 mm wide and 1.65 metres long, I settled on building the benchwork for the new layout in two 1650 mm x 450 mm sections, giving me a total layout length of 3.3 metres and width of 450 mm. While it is longer and wider than Philden, the new layout will be much easier to fit into our current car, and less of an issue when it comes time to shop for its' vehicular replacement.

Its funny how the settled dimensions of a new layout then have a ripple effect on the rest of the decision making process. The trackplan then has to fit the active scenic areas of the layout, the active scenic area then determines the length of your sidings, and the length of your sidings then dictates what length trains you can run. With the benchwork construction progressing nicely, I could get back to thinking about everything else; the rollingstock, the structures and the topography of the scenery I wished to create. Even with more layout space to work with, surprisingly there still isn't a swathe of space to fill with structures or sidings to fill with rollingstock.

The still under construction benchwork for Philden Road is taking place in the garage.

I suppose what I got from that recognition, is that I didn't need a large amount of wagons to fill out the roster on the new layout. In fact, I still had a little too much in terms of the amount of same-type, different-numbered wagons. Which is fine by me, as I could just list them on Ebay and turn them into some more cash.

What getting the benchwork dimensions right highlighted, was just how much of our living area would be taken up by this and my Candian Canyon N scale layout that will ultimately rest beneath it. Plans for any other small layout projects I was conjuring up would honestly only be a waste of time.

I think it goes to highlight that no matter how grand your plans may be, its more important to get your benchwork right before thinking about anything else. Its strange how the new layout now seems to be taking on a less is best mentality. Fewer sidings, fewer structures and fewer rollingstock. What it does allow for, is leaving more scenic areas between key scenes, something of which I've been studying a lot of lately on other people's layouts. But until I finish sanding, painting and assembling the new benchwork, I'll let that be a story for another day.

Completing the Beach Extension

The lights are on, the beach extension is finished. Inside the wide spaces of the Phills Harbour Travel Centre, the cleaners are seeing to the finishing touches ahead of the grand opening celebrations this weekend for the arrival of the first Countrylink Xplorer service from Sydney's Central Station. The glass is fingerprint free, the platform clean and the toilets smell lemony-fresh. The air-conditioning is keeping the waiting room at a refreshing 22 degrees Celcius while outside the humidity lingers in a sticky evening that still lurks around 30 degrees. Its the peak of summer in Australia, and soon holidaymakers will be arriving on the New South Wales North Coast by the train load.

I test-fit and sanded the edges of the perspex smooth before removing the protective wrap.

A year ago to the day, I posted my first blog entry regarding the start of construction on my new Beach Extension. Three-hundred-and-sixty-five days later, I'm ready to run my first train. The past week has seen a flurry of activity take place on Philden, as I made sure I had everything finished ahead of this May's Brisbane Model Train Show. I began with getting the 3 mm perspex panels cut from ASAP Plastics here in Caloundra. The perspex for this little project cost me only $15. The main front panel will be removable the same as the main body of the layout. This will enable me to slide it out when operating, but also slide the perspex back in place once finished so that my layout stays undisturbed and dust-free until I next use it. The side or corner panel however, I glued in semi-permanently. While I built the extension to allow for a further extension, I don't see any more space magically becoming available in the next few years. By gluing it in place with some shower screen silicone sealant, it can stop my trains from running over the edge for as long as is needed.

I semi-permanently affixed the corner perspex panel with some all-purpose silicone sealant.

The thin panel will stop trains taking a dive from off the layout, but also allows the possibility to expand in the future.

The removable perspex front matches the rest of the layout and will ensure it stays dust-free when not being used.

With the cabinetry of the layout now looking complete, I had to turn my attention to what I find is the most dreaded part or this hobby. Wiring! Fortunately, while simultaneously working on my slightly smaller N scale layout over the summer, it is something that I am beginning to conquer. Armed with a new soldering iron, I just decided to get stuck into it, and ended up giving the underside of my layout an overhaul from end-to-end, complete with new LED's where a couple had stopped working, and of course installing the new lighting on the Beach Extension.

I next removed the perspex panel and backdrop to work on adding lighting to the modern station scene...

...and gave the entire wiring beneath my layout a good tidy-up including adding these self-adhesive wiring clips.

While adding lights to Phills Harbour, I also removed some from Philden and covered the holes with some grass tufts.

Before flicking on the Beach Extension's new lights, there were a few repairs to make on Philden courtesy of taking my layout on the road four times and moving house over the course of 2018. Despite being extra careful each time the layout is taken apart, there's always the risk of a hand catching on one of those tiny wires when loading it in and out of a hatchback. There was also one area where one of the lamp posts beside the signal box shone too brightly on my newly installed backdrop. So the lamp post came out to replace another which had stopped working on the platform at Philden. Another lamp post beside the goods shed had a wire broken from the layout's last outing, so I just took the sucker out altogether and patched the holes in the layout with clumps of stick-on grass tufts I had left over. Problem solved.

The photo above also shows the area between the signal box and the gum tree where I have something else planned for after Philden comes back from this year's Brisbane Model Train Show. By keeping some small projects in mind for the future, I'm finding my layout still feels fresh and exciting two years after it first went on public display. I won't say too much about what will go here, other than it will involve one of Craig Mackie's famous Hills Hoist clotheslines and another of Stu Walker's model train buildings kits, so stay tuned.

Lights on at an empty station, but all that is about to change this weekend once the first train arrives so stay tuned!

Finally I plugged in the accessories lead and stood back to admire the end result. From the warm white LED's inside the Travel Centre to the cool white LED's on the platform lamp posts, the scene was bathed in the kind of atmosphere I was aiming for. Only with no-one hanging around the station to witness it. Take a good look at the above and top photos of the Travel Centre. It will be the last time you see it empty. Arriving in the post last week were 100 scale figurines, all of whom will soon be standing at the platform and inside the Travel Centre waiting to board the train to Sydney. I may have to take a few more shots of the empty platform and waiting room for future references. They might help paint a story in pictures of some timetable nights I plan to run.

So this weekend is shaping as an important milestone. Not only will I populate Phills Harbour with a throng of waiting passengers, but I should also complete the final wiring for the N scale layout which is taking shape beneath it, and get the first train running!

The as yet unnamed and undocumented N scale layout is proving to be a great accompaniment to what has begun as a fantastic 2019. I should have the N scale layout finished by year's end to replace Philden on the exhibition circuit in South East Queensland for 2020.

Also causing a growing sense of excitement, is the pending arrival of Auscision Model's 442 Class locos that I've been looking forward to since.... well, probably not long after I started building this layout. The CFCLA JL Class and the Northern Rivers 422 Class which should follow not long behind it will probably be it for me. Very soon I will sit down to finalize some kind of operating sequence for Philden & Phills Harbour, and my only fear is that I may have too many wagons to operate freely without having to rotate rollingstock on and off the layout, (which is about as much fun as packing up after a model train show). If that ends up being the case, I think I'd be happy to let some items go on eBay to free up some money for my next QR 12mm gauge project.

But if I had to say that there is one more NSW HO scale item that has tempted me from day dot, it has been the Auscision XPT. I know, I know, it is a 7 car set counting the XP power cars which is waaayyy too long for my layout. But my favourite train to photograph is about to be retired in the coming years, and to have a model of one to remember it by, even if it is more nostalgic than practical for a 9 foot long bookshelf layout, is still an enticing proposition. But $1200 for a model that I'd only be able to run up and back as a 4 car set at most.... that's a big ask. The kind of when I win lotto scenario. Still, both Countrylink State Rail era sets are still available, and if I indeed do move on some other items, and perhaps a few of the XPT carriages that I won't need as well, then anything's possible. It would make for one helluva last addition to my layout!

I guess that's the thing about model railways. Like the trains themselves they're always coming and going and somehow managing to stay fresh and interesting. I suppose the next thing is to see how Phills Harbour copes with opening day. I'd better get those tweezers and the super glue ready!

See also: Beach Extension Part One: When paint doesn't match

Capturing memories in miniature

Model railways are really just about re-creating memories in miniature. Whether its childhood memories of trips on trains, a working recreation of a railroad's good-old-days, or in the case of my beach extension, simply capturing the look and feel of era you remember fondly. So fresh back from my Christmas holiday break down south in Coffs Harbour, New South Wales, its time to unveil the final stage of my year-long project to turn my two track staging yard... into a two track stand alone scene.

Grafton Railway Station on the NSW North Coast line was the inspiration for the brickwork on my new station.

The far North Coast of New South Wales can be a lonely place for train watching. Most of the steel and intermodal trains either arrive or depart from Brisbane at night, leaving only the Brisbane XPT as the sole train to make a regular appearance in daylight between Coffs Harbour and the border. The Murwillumbah Line is largely overgrown since last seeing a train in 2004, and the Pacific Highway now bypasses many of the towns you once slowed down to drive through. Grafton was always the one railway town you could rely on to spot a train south of the Queensland border while making a highway stop at McDonalds. Not anymore. My last two stops at Grafton have yielded no sight of a train at the sugar silo or station, and once the next 155 km Pacific Highway upgrade between Ballina and Woolgoolga opens in 2020, Grafton will lay well off the highway and Maccas stops will become a thing of the past. So the station building became the first point of inspiration on my station scene. Those memories become part of the scene thanks to my copying the brickwork pattern on the modern railway station.

A flat roof needs something to add some detail, so I added this row of air-conditioner units and a skylight.

With the brickwork and station interior finished, (right down to copying Grafton Station's two strips of dark coloured brick), I found some catalogue pictures of some Daikin roof-mounted air-conditioner units, printed them out, covered them with some clear adhesive film and glued them to a strip of styrene. The mounting brackets are simply unpainted 1/16" styrene rod. I also added a skylight using a painted window frame I salvaged from leftovers from my cement plant I built 3 years ago, proving it pays not to throw anything out.

I next cut and glued the clear styrene windows into place where I'd intentionally left the grey spaces unpainted.

Before giving the roof its final treatment, I sealed the edges so that no glue would ruin the inside detail.

The inspiration for my roof came from our holiday accommodation at Pacific Cove Resort, Coffs Harbour.

I went with something different for the roof of the Travel Centre. Referring to some previous holiday photos from our family trips to Coffs Harbour, I wanted to copy the stone roof effect that is used on the Wyndham Terraces apartments in the Pacific Cove Resort at Coffs Harbour. This was our fifth family holiday to Coffs Harbour and our first one was back in.... you guessed it, 2005. Perhaps this is another reason I chose to set my layout in the 2002-2005 period, and it become the second point of inspiration for my station scene.

The roof stones on the Travel Centre are the same Woodlands Scenics coarse light grey ballast I used on my mainline.

I quite like the finished result. It makes you stop and think, 'where have I seen that before?'

Coffs Harbour Railway Station's large sign, flat roof and air-conditioning structures were my next point of inspiration.

A lot changes in a decade without you realising. Although Coffs Harbour Railway Station on the NSW North Coast Line still looked pretty much the same when I called in over my Christmas 2018 holiday break, the giant Countrylink station sign out the front that I'd photographed above just 4 years earlier in 2014 was gone, replaced by an orange sign with a simple 'T' for train, (as if we didn't already know). It shows how the things we take for granted today can become interesting modelling points for tomorrow. The sign became my third point of inspiration. I simply had to model the blue Countrylink sign on my beach extension.

I made the signs following my own instructions on my post Adding Railway Station signs from back in 2015.

I also added some MIND THE GAP stencilling alongside where the doors of my 2 car Xplorer will pull up.

There is just enough room for me to add a model of a Countrylink road coach when someone decides to release one.

The finished Phills Harbour Countrylink Travel Centre complete with platform and signage.

Trying to photograph the now complete station and platform quickly showed up something I didn't like. Where the backdrop of Coffs Harbour meets the painted blue sky at the end of the line seemed to detract from the overall scene. Revisiting my own post adding the layout backdrop from 2018, I figured I could extend the backdrop scene by matching the mountain line of the photo I'd used as the backdrop on my beach extension. Fortunately, I had a lot of photos I'd taken of Coffs Harbour on that same day, and decided to use one that featured a scene of the Coffs Harbour Marina in the foreground. Returning to Officeworks, this time it cost me only $6.50 to print my re-sized photo on the EZ-Tac adhesive.

The EZ-Tac print was measured, cut and test fit before removing the adhesive backing and pressing it into place.

The extended backdrop instantly improved the scene, but something need to be done about that corner join!

I used these hops plants that I'd purchased from Modellers Warehouse at a model train show.

Gluing them to the height of the tree on either side of the square channel that holds the backdrop in place worked.

The lower waterline on the backdrop makes the railway line look like it ends on a wharf above the marina.

Looking back towards the mouse-hole. I've now turned what was a plain staging shelf into this nice little scene.

So the cleverly named Phills Harbour (coughs) is now complete. The only thing remaining to be done is to add a few lights, to the station building, platform and subway tunnel leading to the beach, and some passengers waiting on the platform and inside the air-conditioned coolness of the Travel Centre for the next train to Sydney. Compare the scene above to the view below of what these two staging tracks once looked like. The two tracks essentially do the same thing they've always done, provide a staging area for trains while I operate the main area of the layout.

Flashback to when these two tracks were simply just staging for my bookshelf layout.

The finished beach extension, ready for opening day!

If model railroading is really just about capturing a memory in miniature, the only person who can really judge the end result is the modeller themselves. Although there was really nothing wrong with the original two track staging shelf, what rebuilding this end of my layout has done is provide my small layout with a lot more memories. Memories of chasing trains along the north coast on the way to our holiday.

See also; Phills Harbour Travel Centre and Adding the layout backdrop

Adding the layout backdrop

Finally, thanks to a realistic backdrop, I have transformed my 9' foot bookshelf layout into a slice of outback New South Wales. Gone is the plain blue sky that has been a staple on Philden since the layout first made its public debut, and in its place is the photo that my wife Denise took while travelling back along the Kidman Way past where the rails end at Rankins Springs.

But, as often happens whenever I've tried something different on this layout, it didn't go quite to plan. Thankfully in this case, not being happy with the first attempt pushed me to try again. And as you can see in the above photo, the end result was worth the extra perseverance.

Remember my photo taken at Coffs Harbour?

After preparing the photo backdrop in my previous post, I started first with the background photo I'd taken at Coffs Harbour. This was to replace the blue sky backdrop for the beach extension, that in turn had replaced the simple two track staging shelf that was shown when the layout was featured in the August 2018 edition of Australian Model Railway Magazine. After cropping and sizing the image to have printed at Officeworks, I positioned the finished photo alongside the existing backdrop panel to work out the area I would need to trim.

The bottom of the scene needed some of the wharf detail to be trimmed away.

This photo was taken from the top of Mutton Bird Island, looking west across Coffs Harbour Jetty. As such, it had a lot of detail scene of the jetty in the bottom of the picture that I didn't want showing.

The remaining 1 cm at the bottom would then disappear when slotted into the recessed channel that holds the backdrop.

Knowing that the bottom 10 mm would not be visible once the backdrop was slotted back in place, I left only the tips of some of the jetty light fixtures showing. The idea was to preserve as much of the residential and commercial scene that surround Coffs Harbour Station as possible. When applying the printed EZ-Tac adhesive film to the painted blue backdrop, I used scissors to cut only the bottom and left hand edge of the image. I then had Denise help peel back the film backing as we worked left to right, being careful to be sure the bottom of the image lined up perfectly with the bottom of the backdrop surface. I then turned the backdrop over and used a sharp hobby knife and some scrap board to trim the image flush with the backdrop edge.

I slid the finished backdrop into place on the beach extension for a perfect result. So far so good.

Then I hit a snag with the outback scene that will complete the main layout area. There was some confusion with the sizing chart on Officeworks' website, and my idea of printing 2 x 915 mm x 305 mm sized prints to join together on the 1830 mm long backdrop soon proved to be a disaster. Not only did the two sections look odd on account of the colour difference in both the sky and grasslands from one end of the image to the other, Officeworks' printer actually added a 5 mm white border around the entire image, meaning that the two combined sections were 25 mm too short in length by the time I had applied them from left to right. I know I could have experimented with adding trees or some other kind of structure to disguise the join and the blank area where the image was too short, but being a bit of a perfectionist it just looked horrible.

The first attempt of using 2 x 915 mm length prints to complete the 1830 mm long backdrop was a failure!

Look at the above backdrop join, and you'll appreciate the meaning of the phrase "miss by an inch, miss by a mile."

To this point, the layout backdrop had already added up to $125. Once again, there was some confusion with the online pricing calculator and the in-store costing. A quick explanation for this is that the costing and sizing was for pre-set print sizes, (in much the same way as a K-mart or prints ordered over the counter at a photo lab), but by using a 600 mm wide film they could custom print to my required length of 1830 mm. So long as I factored in the 5 mm white margin that the printer added. I then re-worked my photo to a single image that was 1840 mm long. While some of the foreground took on a slightly blurred look as a result of being re-sized to such a large file size, I was able to mirror-flip the image using Adobe Photoshop Elements 8.0 to enable the open grasslands area to stand opposite the cement plant, while the blurry foreground bush in question then tucked in behind the railway station building out of view.

The extra work was worth the reward. The finished image printed out in a single length of 1822 mm, and despite the printer claiming more than the 5 mm border margin, I was able to cut along the bottom of the picture and simply apply the backdrop from left to right using a 4 mm indentation at either end. Each end of the finished backdrop, (plus the bottom of the image) sits inside the 10 mm deep channel anyway. I then turned the backdrop over, and trimmed the top of the EZ-Tac print flush with top of the backdrop board. The end result? Perfect!

In a nutshell, what I really did was use this formula...

+

 

=

&

The two completely different scenes are separated by the mouse-hole through the underpasses that define each module. While the backdrop colours from my wife's photo taken out-the-back of Rankins Springs match beautifully with the scenery dirts, scatters and grass tufts that I used when constructing Philden, its' the little things that make this backdrop work so well on my finished layout. Details such as aligning the height of the horizon with the brick overpass beside the station, making sure that the height of the foreground trees were above the level of the horizon and the lack of any structure whatsoever on the printed backdrop. While I say that my layout represents the far northwest of New South Wales, and the photo was taken between Hay and Rankins Springs in the far southwest of the state, it is purely a fictitious layout after all. In just wanting to capture the essence of a far-flung corner of the New South Wales Railways' network, I think I've done it well.

The finished backdrops both add an element of depth to my narrow 1 foot wide bookshelf layout.

The beach extension is another thing altogether. It is effectively just a two track staging shelf for the rest of the layout. Only instead of keeping with the black painted shelf with the decorative Countrylink coaches sign that the layout had when it debuted, I have replaced it with a separate scene. After toying with the idea of building this extension as a suburban scene complete with overhead wires or modelling a different era altogether, I settled on building another fictional scene. This time it is Phills Harbour (as opposed to Coffs Harbour), although the backdrop of Coffs Harbour and the much-shortened station or Countrylink Travel Centre as it was known, will be a working reminder of one of my favourite holiday spots.

Although it would have been cheaper for me to have used a commercially available backdrop, (thanks in part to the extra cost of reprinting the larger of the two), I now have a unique backdrop that my wife has contributed to my layout.

The downside is that the cost of printing the backdrops have blown a hole in my model railway budget for the remainder of the year. With the track plan for my next HOn3 1/2 layout still bouncing around from one configuration to another, any work will have to wait until after I return from our Christmas holiday in Coffs Harbour, (yes the real version). Aside from some pre-ordered locomotives I am waiting on (the NSW 442's and 422), there have been a lot of other enticing announcements trumpeted of late that now appear shot to pieces. With the backdrops having transformed my layout, there are a lot of newly announced locos and wagons that I would really like to see running on Philden. I could name four off the top of my head that now appear out of reach if I'm serious about building a second QR narrow gauge layout. But as always with life, there just seems to be too much to do, and too little time to do it!

See also; Preparing the photo backdrop