Starting the North Hill

I ventured into the trainroom yesterday armed with a gluegun and cardboard, and before you know it, had bodged up one of the two 'big' hills on the layout.

This one, at the 'northern' end of Wassen, sits above the church and big 'middle Meinreuss' viaduct.

Bounded by a freshly installed backscene, the hill hides a spiral of track that allows for some elevation gain on the model between the middle and upper Meinreuss bridges.

The backscene (white) has been cut away and both it and the hillside support each other, providing good access to the hidden trackage of the spiral and also the staging yard below for cleaning, maintenance and to deal with any incidents! 

View from the Wattinger end.

Moving at double-time

Its been almost six months since something moved on this layout - I was trying to show my brother a train moving over Christmas and found that the soldering of wires from my two transformers into the block switchbox are a bit flakey and of course there was scenery in progress everywhere, so little movement was had.

But since I was helping a local fellow out with getting his layout moving yesterday, why not do the same with mine.

It turns out that one of the transformer input pairs is fine, so half an hour was spent cleaning tracks and running a pair of locos around. A small tweak needed to be made to a section of track in the yard where things would sometimes pop off, and some scenery had to be trimmed back for more clearance for the uphill track at the Wattenger Tunnel portal and at a bit of glue-shell scenery covering part of the upper spiral.

But soon enough I had a pair of trains running reliably - one up and one down:

I suppose a vid should have been taken of them crossing, but we might save that for another time. 

Some findings:

1. The locos still sound like English Electric diesel locos.
2. On the plus side, it still works, despite the incursion of scenery around the bottom track.
3. The trains run really well (again despite the above).
4. Its generally a mistake to push the trains through tight curves as the couplers complain.
5. Some of the wagons are light and temperamental unless at the back of trains. A shame that I can't add weight because:
6. There's no way to run the length of trains I'd really like to today on these grades - the stock locos don't have enough weight.
7. My two BLS locos run at quite different speeds, despite being based upon the same Marklin model. Must keep running them in and might have to use diodes to slow the fast one down (although the slow one is really quite slow).

RES-uming Service

Its been several months since I did anything productive in the train room, being busy with travel and life of late. However, today I did venture down into the cave and figured that weathering a couple of wagons would be a quick an easy project for an hour.

As a result, here are three newly 'olded' wagons for the freight train - an RES flat with a couple of old sleepers in it, and a pair of telescoping-top SHIMMNS steel wagons. * As always, those wagon type codes are approximations only.

All were weathered with acrylic washes and a touch of chalks afterwards. Hardly works of art, but they look ok from the requisite distance.

I do have a third steel wagon in brown that I must turn into this bluey colour that SBB uses. In time it would be quite nice to have a whole train of them, but that might be quite a way off as I'd need to find or make another 7 or 8...

BLS 486 Alpinist - 4

After re-assembly, a few pics were taken at Wattinger taken with the big camera (so they are even in focus for once). No wonder the trainspotters up by the curve are looking thrilled at progress to date.

There are a few more things I'll do to finish these locos at some stage, but that will have to wait for a future installment. In the meantime, the blog will be taking a short pause for two weeks while steamier quarry are hunted in mysterious eastern lands.

BLS 486 Alpinist -3

After the painting was completed it was time to start applying decals.

This all went swimmingly. Mr Mountaineer man went on fine, as did the various texts. As on the real locos, the wording differs each side - one in (Swiss-?) German and one in Italian - "Die Alpinisten" and "Gli Alpinisti".

An added detail-decal that I had printed previously (but didn't use on the 485) was the various details on the very bottom of the sides - various classification numbers and little black square doors and hatches. This was lifted off an image in photoshop and all came out rather well even though you can't read them.

After a period of setting, the shell was dulllcoted which briefly threw a spanner in the works, as the Testors Dullcote lacquer spray melted the Tamiya acrylic silver on the left 5mm of one of the ends, which started to run over my Alpinist. This was fairly easily mopped up with a paintbrush and repainted, so no harm in the long run, although it was an unusual thing to see. Maybe I sprayed too much on in that spot... who knows.

BLS 486 Alpinist -2

Onwards with the Alpinist...

First painting spree:

As with the 485, the green flashes were easy to paint following the contours of the model shell. I then scribed a fine line with my knife above the headlights and painted with red below the line down to the front stepsills.

At this stage, I also added the little foot steps (black) down in the notched front corners. These were borrowed from an old leftover N scale tank car chassis part collected many years ago and contact glued into place. These were done only at the designated 'good' end that will lead the train.

The last piece of green paint that needs to be added is a small panel on the sides. As with the 485, a square was masked with Tamiya masking tape. As long as you burnish any overlaps or detail contours (I used the edge of a knife blade to press the corner overlaps down) the paint won't seep underneath:

 Removing the tape:

 Success!

One final touch before putting down the brush was to slop some white paint where my mountaineer's head decal will go. As this decal was printed by a laser printer (which can't print white) onto clear decal paper, I wanted any light parts of the image to get a boost from the white paint below.

BLS 486 Alpinist -1

You could probably see this coming...

I've mentioned previously the appeal of a BLS intermodal train on the layout, and one of the reasons is a very cool series of locos that imply that "we climb the mountains for you".

My personal favourites are the series with a mountaineer's face (for rivet-counters, actually there are two subtly different versions of the Alpinist).

One of these locos is pictured below leading a Zebra:

I figured that one of these would be a good partner for my recent BLS creation.

Compared to the 'Connecting Europe' loco, the 486 has a different front end with a lower lip.

Like the 485, I started with a matching Hoyer top and quickly lowered the wee section above the grilles (by the pantographs) before modifying the front end by notching the lower corners and adding the lower extensions in the corners with white plasticard:

To fit these bodyshell extensions on the chassis it had to be reduced in width at the corners (the right-hand example here, notched behind the buffers):

Hard to see in the next shot are the little horizontal stepsills at each corner below the main headlights:

The following picture (crassly stolen from the internet) shows the difference between the 486 'Alpinist' and the flat bottomed 495 "Connecting Europe' loco:

Around Wattinger Bridge

This rather convoluted episode will cover a number of different storylines around the Wattinger bridge. The real scene is pictured below. Forgetting about the building which we'll get to later, note the arched bridge, cliffs, distinctive stepped tunnel portal, river and foliage (albeit seen in autumn/fall here).

For the cliffs, I am using an idea seen on a Youtube video from "Marklin of Sweden" who shares some nice model rail tutorials on his channel. I think he's in HO scale, but they are full of good ideas and he's well worth a look for quirkiness value.

In his waterfalls video (which contains a number of interesting tips), he suggests expanded polystyrene foam for rockfaces, so given this is a lightweight layout, that might be worth a try.

I found some of the white bubbly stuff and made a big mess on the floor by slicing vertical lines at various angles and thinning the back to be left with this.

 Which was glued to the cliff face and pinned in place:

 And painted gray. As you can see, this actually happenned before the ballast went in...

Some thinned black paint was washed on board and a little white drybrushed on the pointy edges later on.

But in the interim, I found a fairly side-on pic of the bridge (taken from the upwater side) and photoshopped it into this:

One of these bridge sides was cut out, glued onto thin card, and pinned in place in the below pic. Printed out, they are a little redder in shade than I'd like, but this might have been my doing in Photoshop. Next time I'd probably try to add a bit more depth/texture contrast in luminosity.

As can be seen, with the ballast in place, a tunnel portal was cut out of a sheet of Slaters roof tiles and added into place. Almost all layouts need to be condensed down from the real thing, and here is no exception - you may note that my bridge needs to be almost S shaped to kink the track back around before the edge of the layout.

 A bit of foliage to conceal things and its looking OK:

A few other items of note: 

• I haven't modelled the underside of the bridge arch (the real one is concrete with stone facing apoplied on the sides), but the area 'under' the bridge has been painted quite dark, and dark foliage used.
• The previously mentioned blue-green pines have had a splash of a more yellowy-green shade applied. 
• The previously mentioned brighter green trees which looked a bit like saguaro cactuses have all been beefed out by putting a second tree 'inside' the first one to give it more branches.
• Darker bushes and tones have been used down in the shadows by the bridge and tunnel.

I still need to wash some light shading onto the tunnel portal to give it more texture, finish off a little more scenicking around the portal and decide what to do about further track weathering.

Ballast and be damned

Some people hate ballasting, some people never do it, but I reckon it's one quick thing that begins to transform a toy train into a model.

In Z scale, the work seems no different to any other scale, and I wrote a more detailed post on ballasting here (on N scale track) a few years ago:
http://motoriseddandruff.blogspot.co.nz/2013/03/getting-stoned-ballasting-101.html

For Wassen's lower level, I was pretty finicky about getting the stones all laid out nicely before glueing, used isopropyl alcohol to pre-wet the ballast, and use plastic pipettes to apply this and the diluted PVA glue.

I used a JTT ballast that has a slight green/blue tinge to it - mainly because it was available from a local purveyor, and it was reasonably priced.

I've done a 'fair' job and have tidied up a few bits since these pictures.

Might have to weather the tracks when everything has dried, but in the meantime this feels like a milestone in terms of scenery on the lower level.

Catenary...

I don't intend to model catenary wires in Z but may might (under duress) make some etched brass wire-holders in time (although that will make track cleaning difficult).

I definitely want the masts as a minimum though, and will need them to be in place before the track is ballasted.

Using a method used previously, I soldered these up using some H-shaped brass attached to a small foot that can be glued to the layout and then scenicked over to hold them down.

Some Plastruct could be used for this but the brass has the benefit of being subtly bendable (if its vertical angle needs to be corrected) but stiff enough to resist accidental bumping which might break plastic ones.

As can be seen, these were welded up on a bit of firewood, and then painted with some light grey before being attached.

This is actually an "alternative fact" (phrase of the week), as most of them were foolishly not painted after being added to the layout...

Train Nerds at Wassen

I added the big farm shed above Wattinger last week, built in similar fashion to the previous one I made. It's obviously scaled down a lot from the real thing and I probably should have used the stripwood boards 'skinny side on' rather than using the flat sides to plank the walls which would have made the thing look a little more detailed and in scale.

A pair of goobers with cameras were also added in homage to the formerly famous Wattinger Curve photospot. The standing guy is carrying a big white Canon lens on a big DSLR around his neck (made from part of an N scale loco horn) and the guy sitting down has a tripod made from brass wire topped with a video camera.

The real shed is in the back left corner of the following picture taken from above the curved-tunnel mouth on my final visit here. The pic is similarly populated with railfans on the perch overlooking the famous curve.

BLS Re 485 Connecting Europe - 3

On the roof, an additional power thingy was added, and the Marklin 'hole' that holds a screw-switch to select catenary or track power was boxed over.

These additions were painted, the thing was given a shot of Dullcote lacquer and a little weathering added on top. In general, these things tend to stay pretty clean in service.

Windows were re-installed (what a pain), as were the pantographs (likewise). The real thing has 4 pantographs to deal with the multi-country voltages but we'll deal with that at some later stage. At one end I managed to put in some sunblinds under the front windows that are visible below.

It could do with some underfloor detailing, but for now, this will do.

BLS Re 485 Connecting Europe - 2

Crikey. To think that this morning I was staring at a stripped Hoyer shell....

This evening I managed to get my ALPS printer and attached XP desktop ("take a step back in time...") plugged together and working for the first time in four years. It's made two international trips since it was last used but printed out the 'connecting europe' decal reasonably well on the second go. Appropriately enough, I used the 'Raleway' typeface from 1001 Free Fonts website. The 'bls cargo' decals were done previously on a laser printer during the habbiins silver box wagons saga.

USB plug for scale...

Compared to the prototype, the white Raleway lettering is 'close enough' but not quite perfect. I made this worse myself and only figured out why after I'd applied them: its been such a long time since I used Microsoft Word that I misunderstood one of the 'font' formatting options and ended up making the letters wider rather than the taller I was trying for but didn't notice what I'd done at the time.  A few other placements and sizes are a little off too, but it's not too bad unless you happen to be looking at the comparison picture that I have foolishly provided below.. 

Incidentally, this is one of the few shots I took with one of these leading a train. I have a feeling these locos are really light grey rather than silver, but in sun vs clouds they look quite different, and when I used light grey the whole thing looked a little flat, so I'm glad I went with the silver.

The loco number '006' decal on the front that you can't really see on the model pic was borrowed from an N scale 'Santa Fe repaints' set from Microscale.

BLS Re 485 Connecting Europe - 1

I mentioned in one of my first posts here that an intermodal train powered by BLS Cargo locos might be nice.

BLS has its origins in the original Bern–Lötschberg–Simplon railway and also runs trains on the Gotthard route in conjunction with DB. They have a mix of locos including the Bombardier TRAXX leading the train above at Wattinger with a slightly newer Railpool-leased but BLS-advertorialised Re 486 unit. The BLS owned class Re 485 locos were painted in a striking 'Connecting Europe' livery when introduced a dozen or so years ago.

I've always liked this livery and thought it might make an interesting model, so picked up a Marklin Hoyer class 185 fairly cheaply on ebay a while back. These have the correct-shaped cabside windows and general appearance with the main difference being that the BLS loco is a multisystem job with 4 pantographs.

Pulled to bits (everything covered in Marklin oil inside):

Sprayed light gray.

Meh...

Sprayed silver:

That looks a bit more peppy even though the silver I have sprays a bit lumpy.

Partway through brushpainting some green on:

The square was masked with the Tamiya tape I used on the habbiins wagon a while back and brushed.

More to come...

Have a Cow, Man

There are quite a lot of cows in Switzerland, and a few of them inhabit the hills across from Wassen. It's surreal to hear their bells ringing - just like you'd expect from the movies or strange dreams.

I bought a pack of six Preiser 1:220 cows and installed one on the layout for a pic of my cow shed from a few days ago. They're typically black and white, like many cows are...  Alas, most Swiss cows that I've seen are not.

So I painted some over with a light brown sheen. With a white nose, white ears and a black dot for a nose like proper Swiss cows. Hard to see in these awful phone pics. Must find my proper macro lens.

Need some bells for them now.

Going Green

The banks of my river turned greener this week with plantings of some rather odd looking trees.

Starting with my bright green grass from recent postings, trees were planted.  The glueshell is quite strong and resilient, so a hole was poked with a pushpin and then enlarged with some pointy pliers:

Note from the above that I like to lay some darker 'stuff' on the base so that when you look through the trees and bushes you don't see bright green grass underneath. This is primarily Peco dark earth scatter material that looks like old leaves and rotting wood.

Trees are then planted. I had grand plans to order some more refined items, but in the meantime have come across a few JTT editions in stock locally. These pines are a little blue in colour for my liking.

With a dob of PVA on the trunk, they are installed and assisted into a vertical position if required - there's nothing worse than leaning trees...

I like to layer my scenery - the Woodland Scenics foliage mats that can be teased out are really useful for this, and on top or around tends to be placed lumps of coarse ground foam or their Fine Leaf Foliage.  There are also a few Silflor grass clumps added, even though Switzerland itself doesn't seem to have invented long wild grasses yet. The idea is to mix it up in colour, texture and heights so that from a distance it looks natural than it does up close. All of this scenic martial is from a large box of the stuff recovered from previous layouts. Some items have seen service on three or more layouts over the past 20 years.

 And thus:

The JTT trees are reasonably priced, but I'm not crazy about them (well, not in a good way). The pines are too bluey a shade of green and the light coloured things look like cartoon cactusses. But it's a good start and doesn't look too bad from a distance.