Sandy Shores - Disaster, rebuilding, and repainting

A close call!

It's fair to say that Friday and Saturday was incredibly stressful last week! But before we get onto that, my overall plan was to try and finish the mudflat and pond area before the show. To do this, the first step was to repaint the pond into more suitably muddy colours. As there were numerous layers of PVA applied to the pond over a year ago, it meant I had to find another method of applying paint; so I figured the best way would be to mix it with PVA to form a sticky layer that would have no problem adhering to the cured PVA underneath. The middle of the pond was obviously painted a shade or two darker than the edges to help with the illusion of depth. Here's a before and after:

And whilst I was at it, I figured the channel that runs from the pond and into the sea would need a gradient of the same colours, whilst petering out at the sea end:

And it wasn't long before the tidal area received similar treatment; the deeper parts being painted in a dark brown, with the shallow water was painted in a slightly lighter colour. This proved to be much trickier to do than anticipated as the emulsion dried very quickly, meaning I couldn't really mix a large amount. It didn't help that the paint dried a much darker colour than the mix! I got there in the end though, so here's another before and after:

Much better!
With that done, it was time to move onto other aspects of painting. Recently it was suggested that the kiosk and information board roofs, whilst in-keeping with the weathering on the rest of the layout, would actually be likely to be in better condition than the rest of the structures. It was thus a case of repainting the corrugated sheets in a darkish grey and dry-brushing highlights of cream over the top. I used our shed as inspiration for the painting here, which seems to have the top layer slightly coming off along the ridges of each corrugation (hence the whitish look). The posts were also given a wash of cream colour paint to try and lighten them a little bit (although it's not immediately obvious from the photos below:)

With show day being only 2 days away, for some bizarre reason I felt it a wise idea to try and create the water in the pond and tidal area water by using a resin product by Woodlands Scenics called "E-Z Water". Long story short, it turned out to be anything but easy! Not only do you have to heat it on a gas stove, but as I found out, you have to heat it up to a high temperature and pour it very quickly; otherwise the bottom cures before the top and it'll crack horribly. Whilst it suggests you might need to use a heating tool (gas torch or similar) to create ripples, in reality you will need to use it just to get it to level out.

This is when disaster occurred! Long story short, I poured the deep channel bit a minute or so before the rest, which actually was long enough for it to cure to such a degree that it all cracked and turned yellow. I guess there may have been some residual moisture, but I think the bigger problem was the curing of the underside. The result was a complete mess; and whilst application of the hand gas torch helped level out the resin, it did nothing to fix the cracking and discolouration!

By this point I was having a complete meltdown, especially given show day was 2 days away! After a while to cool off (both me and the layout!), I decided the only course of action was to rip up the harbour and start afresh:

The damage was actually nowhere near as bad as I was expecting: much of the original channel was left intact. That's not to say that it didn't need a lot of work in getting it back to how it was, but I had envisioned having to cut out the entire harbour (including the polystyrene foundation)! I mixed up some polyfilla, and set to work correcting the damage as sympathetically as possible:

So all in all, less than 24 hours after the disaster, the harbour was looking just as it did before; not bad going all things considered! This meant I could spend the last few hours doing some small jobs to get the layout ready for the show. First up was to paint all 12 flat wagons (that were originally designed and 3D printed by Mark Greenwood for my Old AGWI Rd layout). It's probably been 4 years that they've sat in my box waiting for paint, couplings, and wheels!

So, my usual wood painting technique was employed; a wash of black, a wash of brown, picking off various planks in a slightly darker wash of brown, and then a final waft of matt varnish:

I didn't have quite enough couplings for all of them, but I did end up with a very lengthy rake of goods wagons; almost as long as the layout itself!:

Aside from testing the track and fixing some loose connections with solder, the only job left to do was to reprint and attach a new control panel legend. As you'll see, the old one had faded to such a degree that it was almost illegible! In order to try and mitigate this in the future, I've sprayed the new one with matt varnish.

So there we have it, disaster averted, and just in time for Sandy Shores to make it to the RMweb event in Taunton! You'll see how I got on next time!