John - yep - I love the research. About a half an hours drive from us is the Chertsey book barn. Chertsey is a tiny place - a few houses and a pub and that's about it. But right by the railway lines is a huge old barn chocka block with books - typically for around $2. Over the years I've found some real treasures there. Just as well I now have my own barn to store them in!
Mike - thanks! I try very hard not to get side tracked. There is always so many interesting tangents in this hobby. I just try to look down those paths, but resist the temptation to walk down them! Not always easy!
Carl - thanks! There are so many amazing scenes in these two books I have its easy to find enough material to fill in the blanks. The problem is what to leave out! I do really enjoy the planning stage. There will no doubt be a number of changes as I move into the mock-up stage, but I want the ceiling and back-drop painted and the lights installed before I start on that - and for that I need my back to be better.
Frank - thanks. The back is definitely improving, but I can't load it yet.
Dave - thanks. The two books are very inspiring to me. Its also quite a thrill when you zip around on google street view and find so many of these old homes still there and in really nice condition. Often they are even painted up in historic colour schemes. They also sometimes even look better in real life. Of course you can also view from different angles, and zoom out to satellite view to see how they fit in context.
No doubt about it being spring here, but its probably tomorrow as well! It certainly will be as I write this.
Here is one of my own photos of a great NZ mill I plan to use as part of a large complex. This will no doubt end up in the area between the peninsula and the original L-shaped layout. I plan to pair it with the Downtown Deco structure I was kit bashing out of some boneyard castings, and add some sort of shop - along the lines of a South River Modelworks complex. Just one of many ideas tumbling around in my head.
Yes, lighting will be included. I made the ceiling 200mm (8") wider than the bench-work to make sure the very front of the layout will receive good lighting. On my diorama and the Fault Lines layout I used fluorescent tubes that came in 1,2,3 and 4' lengths and could plug into each other. They worked really well, but are no longer made. So I'm checking out LED's, which have a similar range although without a 1' tube, and also strip lighting. Things are still a lot more expensive with LED's, although coming down in price all the time. I have a fellow modeler who is a lighting expert, so a consult might be on the cards.
Yep - for a small country we seem to have been hammered of late! The Darfield quake of 2010, the Christchurch quake(s) of 2011, and then the Kaikoura quake of 2016. At least they say things come in 3's!
Well, I've been playing around with some planning ideas for the peninsula. I started with a bit of a plan based on some of Wellingtons streets (posted previously) which featured some of my favourite scenes out of the two sketch books I own. I then photographed all my favourite scenes and structures from the books and uploaded them to the computer where I manipulated them to try to get them approximately HO in scale. I printed these off and cut up blocks of polystyrene to attach the trimmed pictures to. I grided the peninsula bench-work after covering in sheet polystyrene and then plotted my plan on it using coloured paper. I then mock-ed up the buildings.
There is still a long way to go. Everything is still in 2-D at the moment. I need to add the grade to the roads and blocks for the structures to sit at the correct height. Next will be to make 3-D mock-ups of the actual structures.
The peninsula will be view-able from three directions, so a lot of thought will need to go into things. Foreground buildings viewed from one direction will be background buildings when viewed the other way.
Here is a view looking down showing some of the roads.
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