Colour pigments

These posts seem to be coming fast and furious and while I am wanting to get back to modelling and the layout in place ASAP, I have done a lot of rethinking with the layout and especially the scenery and other detail parts, one thing with any aspect of our lives is how easy we realise that we coulda - shoulda done things differently.

One of the early mistakes I made was just plugging away with just getting things going without thinking beyond the basics, which often came back to kick me, but thankfully I had some excellent people to provide advice in the CCWN group that I was/am part of since the move from Sydney. Even on the first incarnations of Essence I met at least 4 people who were part of the group and each gave advise and help in a big way, one being the late Sam Mangion who would pick you up on the small things, and explain why to do it a bit differently, miss Sam heaps a great bloke.

One of the things he helped with was the plans for Essence, along with ideas with benchwork, and his coming over to make the lift bridge for access to the old garage layout.  At that time I worked on sections of the layout that was primarily involved with getting the track down, and scenery along with associated aspects would come later.

I had tried different items for making scenery, especially the hills and other raised areas, that included ordinary plaster, casting plaster and a product from the U.S, which the name escapes me, in the end I was told to use Cornice cement and add some disinfectant and dishwashing liquid to the mix as the disinfectant helped prevent mould in the more humid area of the Central Coast, with the dishwashing liquid helping to delay the solid setting of the cornice cement.  I found both great additions especially the dishwashing liquid as I could come back to the structures up to 4 days later give the structures a light spray with wet water and was able to sculpture the rock and hill aspects of what had been done.

As I progressed I got a chastisement for not putting any colouring in the mix, why? says I should I need it?  Well plaster and of any kind has a habit of chipping, and being a bright white once you scenic the area with colours and static grasses or whatever else you used there always seemed to be that white spot somehow come up and make the work look terrible, a dab of brown paint sometimes worked but it just meant extra work.

Thus the advice was to add brickies mortar colour powder to the mix or what was called coloured Oxide or pigments.  On the areas where I used that method, it really made things look better, add more oxide and you got a variation to a scene, same with less but add enough to ensure it was not too light and near white of the plaster.

The move to Raworth and working on the layout rebirth, meant I needed to search out some of the oxides that I thought I had, well going through boxes here and there, all I could find was a small amount left of yellow Australian Builders Oxide, in a 500gram plastic container, that colour is pretty strength so I have enough of it for repairs &/or replacement of scenery. However, I could only find a very small amount of a light chocolate brown which I know will run out and not really the darker brown I find more like the soils found in much of NSW which I use for the ground base and other scenery areas..

No worries head over to Bunnings to buy another container of it as its not that expensive especially as they sell 250g and 500gr sizes. Search as I may, there was no sign of the containers, some checking with staff and I am led to a single shelf that has around 7 1kg plastic bags of    Avista Cement Oxide each pack was around $16.00 and more than enough to do what I wanted, I purchased a bag at what I thought was good enough, but certainly when I used it, I was disappointed as it was not what I wanted, then came the search for the Oz Builders product.  After some searching I found the local Az Builders cement products factory at nearby Thrornton heading over I was again disappointed as they said they no longer produce that product and had no idea who else did.

Search as I may, only the Avista brand could be found, so onto ebay and other search engines, and find it can be sourced from China. what a surprise.  I decided to buy a pack of the brown which is dark brown but being in U.S dollars and conversion rates, a 500g back cost around $23.00, I ordered a packet and it arrived within a week, the dark brown is spot on, for those interested in the product here is the store, they now have AU$ price and its free postage.
https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/500g-1LB-Concrete-Multi-Color-Powder-Pigment-Cement-Mortor-Grout-Yard-Path-Decor-/263353220905?_trksid=p5731.m3795

I am more than happy with the product, its a bit more expensive than the Avista product but much better colour choice.

To finish the saga, I thought I had checked every box where I had packed layout items and models in, searching for another item, and there starring up at me from the drawer in a desk was the Oz builders oxide container near full.   At least I wont need to buy any more.

Welcome back, not Kotter but AJRM magazine

his morning I had to go to John Hunter for pacemaker check prior to surgery next week, as it needs replacing.  On returning by bus/train I got off and went to Barnes hobbies at New Lambton to get a couple of packs of styrene, primarily to replace damage to the scratch built Roundhouse on one side. There was no wood packs there but decided on Styrene instead when going to pay for it I saw on the counter a couple of copies of what I thought was old editions of the Australian Journal of Model Railway Modelling, a closer look revealed that it was a new edition, so the heading Welcome back AJRM.

The price has gone up as its now 8 years as Stephen Ottoway says in the editorial since the last edition, on the way home in the train I was able to skim through the mag, and gee its great to have it back, as it really is the best magazine for Oz modellers but there's also a lot in it that non Oz modellers will enjoy.

Stephen Ottoway mentions that over the years how the world of social media has consumed the hobby, and was wondering whether the magazine could survive (my reworking and understanding what he was talking about) but he felt committed to its production again owing to the amount of articles that had been submitted and they deserved to be printed, I agree.

Its been too long between editions and I have all the old copies and still refer to them at times, certainly I am glad to see it back.

The cost of the mag is $15.00 as against about $10.00 in the last one but more colour photo's now.

For those who want to model rather than just run trains, this magazine is very much worth every cent it costs.

Staggering second new steps.

Its been some time since the old Essence was pulled down, and over 2 years have passed since our move from the Central Coast.  Little has been done on Essence in that time, mainly some sorting out which it too played 5th fiddle to getting the house in some sort of order, and with 10 months now since the move into the new home a lot of work has had to be done to clear, clean and get the yard areas going. I would say that the outside is now around 95% finished with mainly the grass to be grown, and that will happen pretty quick with the summer warmth and some rain to bring the runners on.  I have chosen to simply use the native couch grass and get it to grow rather than spend money on new turf, glad I went this way as its the easiest grass to mow.

With that finished we want to concentrate and have one day per week for those terrible sorting out and chuck days, after too many years of accumulations.

Earlier when our youngest son was here for a few days he helped me get the largest base board up on its legs, and supports, this is the heaviest and overall the largest of the single section that has its place in a corner, the board is 2550, 100 mm wider than the original that allows for the increased radius track from 28 to 32." minimum radius, it also is where the depot is located, and my decision to get it up first is the best option for me.

Since that time, I lost some interest owing to the other work going on, today however 8th October, I put the extended section in place with Styrofoam set in place for the scenery to go over it., while not a huge job, it was a matter of working up some lost enthusiasm to restart the project.

While the move resulted in most of the items coming through unscathed, sadly the roundhouse suffered a wall breakage that will need a rebuild, not really looking forward to it but it has to happen, With it down I also noticed some of the styrene inserts in the flooring between the roads had bowed upwards, which meant some cutting down of the styrene edges, once the structure if fixed and the styrene painted it wont be seen hopefully.

One of the areas on old Essence that annoyed me as it did not look quite right was with the corners of the layout, being in a 6x6metre garage, the four primary cut corners, along with other largish supports in the middle of each wall, to me really made the layout look too sharp or something that I could never apply a right name for it.  Having one wall behind Moblayne with a commercial back drop, at one end the square cut corner finished nicely and I did my own acrylic painting on the extended side. Behind the loco depot it always looked too square, even trees and other areas of scenery to try and hide it barely masked the problem,  As a result I screwed and glued some thin ply and pushed it in to form a concave section to see how that looked, it was a test of patience as I was working on the top of the layout with foam and blankets over the tracks to prevent damage.  A lot of time was spent on it and I admit to being pleased with the results.  Other areas were not as successful though 

The above photo is early work that shows the curved rather than the sharp angle of that part of the old Essence layout behind Moblayne loco depot.  The following photo's show both one other section that I tried to get a better look along the side wall leading from Moyblayne to Akuna township. Its a slight improvement over the squared off beam but still ugly from my perspective.  Thankfully this will not be part of the new Essence, however, where that beam is, on new Essence there is a window meaning less backdrop, the same will apply to the rear of Moyblayne. 

The below photo is of the section that runs from Moblayne to Akuna, the obvious issue is the middle purlon that is around 25c, on both sides of the garage, to say they are ugly is an understatement, even with the MDF concaved cannot hide them.  The new layout will pretty well be the same, as well as the staging yard underneath, I have already taken the bits of plaster hills off that part of the section and filled the cut out where the purlon cut in, allows for a bit more and better scenery for that section. Other thing will be the aspect that with large windows the layout will come in only around 100mm under the window frame so minimal backdrops for those spots.

The above two photo's show the Akuna up end with the corner section being painted over, its not as bad as the middle areas, the pics are from early days, the top one shows the two oil sidings, with     the bottom one showing what was a road to a stock siding which may not be part of the future Essence as the entry to the room will be on the right hand side of this wall, to the right is the main line that goes down and around to the peninsular section and the crossing loop at Nullo Mountain, a timber siding is situated off the loop and will be interesting for some operators as to how they will work out how they will shunt to the siding.

The photo below is at the down end of Akuna along the wall from Moyblayne, the main is to the right and the track to the left is the silo road. That corner is covered up by trees and does not look that bad but like each corner on new Essence there will be curved backdrop fitted to take the sharp angle out.

Finally below is the opposite side of the garage showing the mid point purlon. very hard trying to make it even as obscure as the other side, but with trees in place it covers things to a degree. The tunnel mouth is the track that comes down from Akuna and into Nullo Mountain staff section and where the timber mill is situated,

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Hopefully in the next week or two I can bring some photo's of the first steps of the new Essence with the beginnings on show albeit small