Almost all of the retaining walls that keep the sandy dunes from spilling onto the track or into structures are built. The only exception being behind the station shelter. The photo below shows two of these old standard gauge sleeper built walls - one propping up the sand dune in the foreground, and one behind the water tower.
With that done, the time had come to bring the layout out of its snow covered hibernation, and into a summery state! Out came the external masonry paint and suddenly the dunes were much more obvious. I didn't take a photo of the transformation per se, by the time I had finished it was too dark to distinguish the golden yellow to the white plaster that still remains. I actually used a different paint from the type I used last time (seen on the left in the photo). The new paint is much closer to the colour of the play sand (you can just about see the new colour top right and all around the track in the photo below).
Realising the stark difference between the black sleepers and the colour of the new paint reminded me that I ought to try something that I've not done before - painting the sleepers and rails. A mix of gunmetal grey and brown stone from the Vallejo range was mixed together to form a colour suitable for the sleepers. This is the same shade (ish) that I use for weathering the wooden structures. The rails were painted just with straight brown stone. Using reference photos, it seems to be not too far from prototypical colours. Although even that varies a lot! Anyway just doing the 8 sleepers in the photo below took forever, so this is going to be a labour of love to do the whole layout.
The next two photos were taken on my DSLR because I just couldn't get my ageing compact camera to play ball with the fading light. You'll notice that the dunes have had their first layer of play sand added. and unlike the test dune section I did, I don't think I'll bother painting over it. I'll just add another layer of sand on top to hid the gaps.
I'm hoping you might also have noticed that I've tried to replicate the weathering on old railway sleepers.If you look closely you can see the streaks of rust on the sleepers where the rails and chairs once were. I might also make slight holes to suggest where the bolts would have gone through.
The photo below shows all these components coming together - the sand dunes, the railway sleeper retaining walls, and the painted track. It has all made a huge difference!
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