It's the little details that make a layout
Today has been a very productive day, and somewhat surprisingly it's all the small details that suddenly seemed to have make a huge impact to the atmosphere of the layout. Suddenly, it seems as though the layout has a firm identity. And speaking of which, here's another nameboard!
Yes, Sandy Shores finally has its own running-in board. I've been looking at the station area for a while trying to work out (aside from the marram grass on the dunes behind) what was missing. Two things popped into mind; one of which was the running-in board. Naturally, being on a shoe-string budget, the SSLR would likely have used whatever they had lying around; thus spare lengths of rail would form the main supports. In hindsight I think the rail lengths should actually be covered in rust rather than a slight streak as shown above.
Oh, and in case you were wondering, the lettering was made in Paint.NET and pasted into a word document before being reduced to the correct size. I was considering adding raised letters (hence the white text on the grey background), but I couldn't bring myself to try cutting out the letters! In hindsight, perhaps there could've been an extra bit of spacing between the words, but it's good enough for now.
With that little job done and installed behind the platform, it was time to tackle another small job; the concrete roadway. This is another area that I felt was missing something, and then I realised what it was; there are no expansion gaps. After some research into rough sizes of concrete roadway slabs, it was time to mark out the gaps, but information about what to do on roads that aren't straight isn't clear... so I winged it! I worked on the proviso that slabs wouldn't be curved, only angled; so I simplified it as much as possible. I'm sure it's probably wrong, but in worst case scenario I can sand it all down and start again. Anyway, after I was happy with the pencil markings, I scribed it; first with a craft knife, then with the blunt end of a dentists tool:
Two things to note; first, I now have a lot of the white plaster showing in the cracks which will need painting over, but also worth mentioning at this point is that either side of the tracks I left a narrow strip. And so, how could I represent the expansion joints? My idea was to actually use the mechanical pencil again:
It worked well, but was far too dark; and I didn't like the idea of painting thin lines with a more subtle colour.
My solution was actually to do a concrete colour wash over the whole lot, which served to mute and blend the whole roadway together. And what's more, due to an earlier happy accident with the pencil, I realised that I could draw a line and smudge it with my finger which created a decent representation of tyre marks:
Finally (at least for now), I added some sand to the centre of the roadway that is sheltered from the wind at the rear of the layout:
Happy with the roadway for now, I moved onto a glaringly obvious omission; a lack of paint on the water tank. I've been trying to find photos of heavily weathered rectangular water tanks for ages, but of the few examples I found, none were suitable for what I envisioned as they were all black or completely rust-covered; I wanted heavily weathered white. In the end I gave up searching, and went with my gut instinct. I of course used what little inspiration I had to come up with something which I hope is at least semi-realistic; severe rust on the edges, with patchy spots and streaks elsewhere.
The process was simple, and the two top photos below show the only two stages. The edges were done first in a medium brown. Doing the edges first meant that the brush naturally ran out of paint by the time I got to do the splodges and streaks, which is good; I only wanted a tiny amount of paint to do these bits. The splodges were dabbed on with the brush, whilst the streaks, as you'd imagine, were very lightly brushed downwards. I could then do exactly the same with a slightly darker brown, but still allowing some of the medium brown to show through.
Keen to continue adding details to the layout, I decided it was about time I used up the spare sleepers I have lying in a box. After having taken all the webbing off, it was then time to paint them. I absolutely hate the plastic sleepers; they're far too shiny to paint by normal means, which means I always use a spray can; in this case, a can of Plastikote Suede Tan (IIRC) which I've had since the very first iteration of Calshot, probably approaching 9 or 10 years ago by now!
So with the horrible shiny plastic muted with a base colour, the weathering could begin. Again, the simpler, the better! Just a quick brush with darkish brown; taking care not to paint the edges so that they appear sunbleached. It could probably do with a light wash to improve this effect in all honesty, but it's good enough for me.
Well, I think that's enough typing for one day; time to see what a difference today's work has made:
Surprising, isn't it?! Yet still, there is much to do (and I will get that marram grass "planted", I promise! To tell the truth, I've been putting it off because I believe it will utterly transform the layout; so I think it'll be a nice thing to do last.)
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