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.