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Hogwarts Express, Scratchbuild, 1/48 Scale


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Hmmmm.  Moorland. You got any sheep knocking about, or deer? Oh, and you need Midges, just a few million would do.

 

Show this link to BBS

https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=Rannoch+Moor&atb=v144-1&iax=images&ia=images

 

She seems to like symbolism - anything to do with magic?

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 Beautiful photos! Looks a lot like like some of the areas I used to kick around in in New Zealand.

 

Definitely no sheep! As a kiwi living in Australia if I start putting sheep in dioramas it will be the end of me.

 

Happy to say that BB and I have done a lot of work on this today and it’s now looking much better IMHO.

 

Am hoping to post again tomorrow night.

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18 hours ago, Bandsaw Steve said:

Hmmmmm..... 🤔

 

Hadn’t thunked of either of those options. 
 

At one point I suggested to Baby Bandsaw that we have the train emerging from a tunnel. We could then make the first quarter or so of the first carriage that would only be seen if someone peered into the tunnel.

I thought that was a brilliant solution but for reasons unknown  she vetoed the idea. I think  probably because the train never goes through a tunnel in the films.

 

Would it help persuade her to know that there's tunnels on the Mallaig line used for filming?

 

Wait a minute - forgot BB is a teenager now so no, almost certainly not...

 

It's looking pretty good even without carriages, hopefulyl she's proud of what she's made.

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How about a culvert?

 

As per recent discussions in this thread, Baby Bandsaw has been adamant from an early point in this build that this diorama will not feature a tunnel. When I suggested that we could incorporate a bridge she was equally determined that this should not be included.  Why she should be so opposed to such infrastructure no-one knows. Anyway this left us with a problem because the river / stream is running from one side of the track to the other and the water presumably has to get through the embankment somehow. How about a culvert? I suggested.  What's a culvert? she asked. 

'A large underground pipe that water runs through, often with a sort of dam at the start and finish to reinforce the ground'

'Not a bridge then?' she asked...

'No' I lied 'Nothing like a bridge at all...'

 

BB had loads of homework this weekend so I'm sad to say that I did all of the work on this thread.

 

First pick a couple of lengths of balsa wood that are the same length and thickness etc and then start carving them to match the contours of the ground that they will have to key into. Ideally this whole job should probably have been done before the landscape was made but since BB has a 'thing' against bridges I had to wait until she was out of the shed to do this sneaky bit of work.

Ra3d5D6.jpg

 

There! Job underway.  As I have said on various occasions I am now using balsa much more than I used to. As it is a material with it's own unique characteristics it should not be discounted as a useful medium when the application is correct.  I think problems with balsa only arise when people try to use it for everything

sIeCGh1.jpg

 

Here I'm drilling the first culvert with a spade bit - and yes - I'm using my bare hands to get the hole started, this does go to show just how soft this stuff is.

mEf92lI.jpg

 

Eventually I reverted to an old egg-beater drill. I think that this one once belonged to my grandad. He was a carpenter by trade and some of his tools have trickled down to me. He's probably highly insulted that they are now being used to work balsa!

fVOq7uU.jpg

 

Now get a black biro pen and draw / press a suitable rock construction texture on the surface of the dam.  The second one I did even had a stone arch drawn around each culvert's entrance, but this was my first one and I hadn't thought of that idea at this stage. 

O4ybXVz.jpg

 

Now take a pointy file and deepen the gaps between each stone.

S68yNdK.jpg

 

See - its nothing like a bridge.

dBoslVc.jpg

 

Smother each dam with this clear resin liquid surface reinforcing stuff.

um8GQK6.jpg

 

Once the resin dries spray the whole thing with grey primer and go over all of the rock outlines again. In this case the shapes aren't very convincing, they look more like pillow-lavas, but I gave a bit more thought to the second one and it looks a bit better.  Should have used that one as the example I suppose. 🤔

Hg6f8rD.jpg

 

Then I sprayed it with a second coat of grey primer leaving this.  Looks OK I think.

9bPcV7D.jpg

 

The only problem was it still wasn't embedded into the landscape properly so I took this chisel (another one of grand-dad's I think) and smashed up some of the ground around the bridge - sorry 'culvert'.

HZFtDBh.jpg

 

Then I slapped some glue on the ground and smashed a couple of nails in to hold the whole thing in place.

gd0f7Uh.jpg

 

Same deal on both sides.

nyb9zna.jpg

 

About now Baby Bandsaw took a break from homework and came out to see what had been happening in the shed...

ff4OAHm.jpg

 

'Wow!' She said - 'Is that what a culvert looks like? That looks really cool - but I think next time maybe we should make a bridge!' 

 

🤬

 

Anyhow, next time - and it should be posted very soon - Baby Bandsaw is back in the shed and she's sticking vegetation all over the place on this base. I don't think I'm promising too much when I say it comes out looking really good!

 

Bandsaw Steve

 

 

 

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17 hours ago, Bandsaw Steve said:

'Wow!' She said - 'Is that what a culvert looks like? That looks really cool - but I think next time maybe we should make a bridge!' 

Aahh, the old "I'm turning it around on you" trick... Probably with some "I never said that" mixed in there.... yes, I know it well. 

 

It can work wonders if you do it right 😉 

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Yet more Ravenscar Moor

 

Here's where we left things.

 

Looking promising. A bit bleak and foreboding; a bit swampy and spooky, but still looking very much like a bunch of painted polyfilla.  To fix this we need some vegetation.

 

ff4OAHm.jpg

 

Having looked at numerous dioramas (and having built essentially none) In my view there are a few pitfalls with vegetation that one must be careful to avoid.

 

Firstly, painted surfaces never represent grass well. So in this case we must do something to make that vast green painted surface look grassy. 

Secondly, I have often noted that in dioramas - just as in landscape painting - there is often a tendency for folks to make their greens too 'GREEN'.  It is very easy to use an oversaturated shade of green and this must be avoided.  Shades of green in nature are extremely diverse but green is very rarely a loud or completely saturated shade especially when viewed from a distance so I tend to look for something that's a quiet sort of shade.  Something a bit olive green or brownish green.

 

This stuff looks ideal to me...

D2FIHsp.jpg

 

Thirdly, in nature essentially nothing - colour, texture, moisture - is truely homogenous. We humans tend to live a manufactured world where the paint is an even hue all over a wall or the Formica table-top is completely uniform in shade and shine.  Consequently there is a tendency to model -or paint - nature as more uniform than it actually is.  I therefore consciously try to admix colours, shades and textures to add inhomogeneity. Here BB has interspersed some some yellowish 'fine turf' in amongst the dominant green.  I think that looks about right.

 

 By the way, to make the grass stick,  we just sprayed some of the same photo adhesive we used at the start of the build to hold the paper onto the wood and then just sprinkled the product on top. It worked fine. 

losVmWn.jpg

 

With a layer of fine grass on the scenery we turned to these brilliant products - manufactured tufts and strips of long grass.  I should probably learn how to scratchbuild this stuff one day but for now this stuff, bought from the model train section of my local hobby shop is a boon.

JZJH3rG.jpg

 

See - just stick it down where you think the long grass should go.  Think about where it might grow long - here protected by the culvert - and keep experimenting until it 'looks right'.  You'll know when it does.  We also scattered some dark green ground foliage and shrubs around and held them down with aquadhere.  Things were looking good.

lWiTKuw.jpg

 

The culvert looked a bit too 'brand new' though. We wanted it to look like it had been out in the weather for at least a hundred years. As I am a Geologist by trade I get to visit various geochemical laboratories and can sometimes take pulverised rock samples home specifically for the purposes of weathering models.  Here I have a small tube of 'Whaleback Black Shale' from a Pilbara iron ore mine.  It works a bit like powder paint pigment but is less sticky. 

sySeamg.jpg

 

Just pour some on and brush it off. It always leaves a thin residue.  Repeat the process until you get the shade you want then lightly spray some matt varnish over the top to hold the dust in place.  This is a nice slow and relatively foolproof way of weathering just about anything.

iVIrWpx.jpg

 

I think we still managed to overdo it a bit though...  🤔

 

S4GtDzk.jpg

 

Anyway, here's the current state of play.  I'm very happy with this as is Baby Bandsaw. Even Mrs Bandsaw said it looked really good which was a rare treat; generally when it's sitting on the sideboard like this she just asks us to get 'that thing' out of the living area.

jx9BF1c.jpg

 

Here's the view that someone - or something - lying in ambush might get!  💀 ☠️ 🐍

KqRxwV6.jpg

 

Next job...

That stream needs some water in it.

Will be posting again soon.

 

Stay Safe Folks...

Bandsaw Steve and Baby Bandsaw

 

 

 

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1 hour ago, johnlambert said:

That's some nice scenic modelling.

Thanks. 👍
I am conscious of the fact that at the moment we are drifting away from ‘Vehicle Modelling (non-military)’ into ‘Diorama’ territory. Soon we will be working on ’Fantasy Figures’. 
I hope we don’t outlive our welcome here among the Ferraris and Aston Martins.

In any case this must all be wrapped up in less than six weeks because this one is destined to be entered in the West Australian Scale Modelling exposition at the start of May.

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Gidday BS and BBS, I think you both have a gift for model landscaping. When I used to visit the model train show aeons ago (well, seems like it) I used to enjoy the dioramas as much as the trains themselves. What you've done above looks very good. And I thought the bridge oops culvert looked rather too clean also. It looks much more lifelike (is that the correct word for an inanimate object?) now.

     So, water and primordial creatures next?

And regarding WASMEx, I realized last night that I have a week less than I thought I did. I've got to get a move on too. Regards, Jeff.

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Just checking this out Steve after your "heads up" in my loco thing !... I'll go thru it from the beginning later .. 👍

 

Update..just looked thru it all, absolutely brilliant !....in the early stages it reminded me very much of the old fashioned pull along locos made from wood, then it became more and more 'sophisticated' !

I'm sure Baby B must be v.pleased with all her fine work..And, she's retained all her fingers too..Result ! :)

Edited by Pig of the Week
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A touch miffed...

 

Hi folks.  This post is generally fairly self explanatory - pretty basic stuff really - so there's not much narration through the post but if you read to the end you might find some comments regarding why I'm a touch miffed at certain (non-britmodeller) people.

 

Here we are at the end of the previous post. The landscaping is drawing to a close with the only missing element being water in the river bed. She's looking a bit too dry for Scotland.

jx9BF1c.jpg

 

First we stuck some grass clumps into the river bed for some underwater interest and then just poured  high-gloss resin into the river bed...

LB7CeF7.jpg

 

spread it around with a brush...

4KsV2Li.jpg

 

and let it dry.

ici3bF9.jpg

 

Waiting... Waiting... Waiting...

9YSEzmx.jpg

It turns out that Eze-Kote resin, which really is brilliant stuff when used in thin layers, takes a few days to fully set and fully clear when poured in a layer 5mm thick.  In the picture above, the top 1mm or so has set nicely and has made a clear firm skin but the cloudy white unset resin underneath was taking forever to clear.  To speed things up I pricked a series of holes through the suface skin so that the uncured resin below would be exposed to air.  This was a bad idea.  Soon after pricking the top layer a series of fine cracks formed across the resin linking each of the pricks into a spider-web network of fissures. The resin beneath cured quite quickly after that but now we had a sort of 'crazy paving' surface on the water.

 

So for 'round two' we turned to Liquitex Gloss Medium - which is what we probably should have used in the first place but I didn't have a whole lot of it available at the time.

yy63L10.jpg

 

This stuff is great for this application - just paint it on with a slight wavy texture on the surface.

33PaNyB.jpg

 

very simple really.

Xg7siBH.jpg

 

Here's the result. 😀

HVNz8NR.jpg

 

And from the other side. 😀

vfx28fO.jpg

 

So - the landscaping is now complete and we now have a bridge over what will soon to be very troubled water.  Trouble is coming to Ravenscar Moor...

QqF1bts.jpg

 

 

Meanwhile - on a separate note, forgive me but I'm a bit miffed.  And now I'm going to vent to my Britmodeller friends...

 

In a nutshell. A few weeks back I went to a certain group of people involved with the running of the WASMEx (West Australian Scale Model Exposition) competition that Baby Bandsaw and I have been preparing this piece for. I was seeking guidance on whether this should be entered into the 'intermediate miscellaneous' category (as BB is under 17 years old) or whether it should go into the 'Senior Diorama' category.

 

The initial guidance was that, because I (a senior modeler) have completed some of the work, this model would need to be entered into the senior category.  This I have no problem with at all and neither does BB. She genuinely has done most of the work but has had a fair bit of assistance from me and we don't want to 'steal' any prizes from an intermediate modeler who has genuinely completed their project alone and without assistance.

 

However subsequently this decision has been revised. The new guidance is this piece is disqualified.  It cannot be entered into any category because more than one person has worked on the model.  The model cannot even be entered into the senior category under my own name because I did not complete 100% of the work myself.  It seems that the assistance I have had from my 14 year old daughter (12 when we started this project) would give me an unfair advantage over other senior modelers. It seems that there is no flexibility on this rule.  One model, one builder, no exceptions.  There is no recourse to 'the spirit of the rules' or the 'spirit of the competition'.  There is no room for the judges to show any judgement on this matter.  There is definitely no recourse to common sense...

 

I'm a touch miffed. 😠

 

Baby Bandsaw is a bit miffed too - 'I just wanted to see how many public votes we would get...' she said. 

 

Yours miffed,

Bandsaw Steve

 

 

 

 

 

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23 minutes ago, Bandsaw Steve said:

'I just wanted to see how many public votes we would get...'

I presume she is aware of the international fame and adulation that has come her way through this thread - it continues to be a tread that is a delight to read and follow.

 

As to a coach - a challenge would be to emulate this long running saga:

 

 

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I would say that over 18,000 views on here is recognition for her hard work.  As to clubs & rules, well Groucho Marx springs to mind.  I wouldn’t want to be a member of any club that would have me as a member.  They are the ones missing out

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Steve, I'm sure there is probably more than one Aussie expression for people like that. Personally I would go with the Anglo-Saxon variant.

Their loss, not yours, or BBS's

Us oldies want to see the hobby continue, and the attitude of the committee is not exactly helpful.

I think it's brilliant work, and getting BBS into proper modelling is perhaps reward in itself.

 

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I've got to say that that doesn't seem a decision likely to encourage new people into their club. A crying shame that BB has put all that effort in aiming for a target only for it to be pulled away from her just as she nears the finish line.

 

On the bright side though, she's (nearly) ended up with something which she can be proud of, and that's ultimately what counts (second to having fun building it).

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The "Rules is rules" people may think they have won, but in reality they have lost big time, and will continue to do so as they will deter other youngsters from taking up the hobby.

Such a shame - their loss in the short run, but our loss as modelers in the long run.

Personally I think there should be a new category added  - the BBS category for new modelers under guidance!

 

Ian

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Don't you just despise little Hitlers like that eh...some of those "club" type people are well up their own ar$e IMHO, one of the reasons I don't join clubs tbh !

The young lady has made a great model, that's all that matters, look at all the likes and comments in this thread, must run into a very substantial figure, that's quite a fan club !!

Hopefully BB will be onto another build asap, I'm sure all of us here are very keen to see her next project unfold 👍

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