Photo Plank - The Bridge

[Scubaidh Dubh]

I've felt for a while now that as I need a proper scenic setting to display weathered stock on. Additionally, I need to do some layout related project. St Clements is all well and good but the loft isn't perfect for all year round operation in these parts, so taking a bit of inspiration from John and his Rosehearty project I thought it would be nice to do something small that could fit in the spare room. I prefer working in daylight in any case as much as possible as the nights are long up here in the North East and as a result, during the lighter parts of the year, I feel driven to maximise my exposure to daylight.
As a means to an end I have made a start on what is essentially to be a scenic photo plank but is going to be produced with a view to becoming a section of this layout idea.
So far, it's a basic sheet of 9mm marine ply with a frame of 2"x 1" softwood.
I've made accommodation for dowels and electrical connections should this idea proceed further. The length is approximately 50"; I used the section as it came without cutting as it looked useful enough in the dimensions it already possessed.
It's probably over engineered tbh, but I'm just jumping in with the intent of learning as I go; the best way really.

With the basic form produced I'm starting to experiment with the configuration. I have long imagined a scene with a rural line crossing a small burn or river on a bridge with a nearby stand of Scots pines.
I'll do some sketches in due course but the basic idea has been in my head for forty years!




The centrepiece is the bridge of course which was attained very cheaply (£11) on that well-known online auction site.
I may yet replace the deck but I haven't decided for sure yet.
Anyhow, this is the current favoured configuration although I may move the siding/headshunt to a more convention position with a mind to the potential for it to connect with another board.
Anyway, feel free to chuckle and snort at my abject lack of building and design expertise.

Davy.

 

[AdeMoore]

Interesting start Davy, watching.

 

[Scubaidh Dubh]

And a year land more later, nothing really has happened although I have been busy in the garden this last few weeks and last year and the spring have seen me in a completely unexpected new job which I probably mentioned elsewhere when I started last year. All of this means my focus is elsewhere for now but I'm trying to edge back in to some modelling.
Not especially helped by the fact that I don't really enjoy using the loft which I think is down to the awful fluorescent tube. I've never got on with it although I recently acquired a rather nice led strip that should help if I can find a tame sparky.
Meantime, I need to get the greenhouse finished first but I'm waiting for two bags of sand for the concrete shuttering and some slate chips to turn up and thereafter get the glazing in to finish the job.
Anyway, I have been pecking away at jobs in the house and garden over the five years since I got here, done at a snail's pace gdue to circumstances, but all those fronts seem to be converging at last and like the famous quote about revolutions, it's been a case of "slowly then quickly".
Anyway, here's the completed half of the greenhouse job!

Modelling has been fairly quiet of late, perhaps understandably, but I have been pecking away at a 25 year old Bachmann WD which arrived a few years back with age related lameness and a lousy weathering job.
I have been fiddling around with it to produce a not very wonderful firebox, handrail and clack modified ScR version. Not a variant Bachmann will ever cover given the very small number and the fact that the BR standard clack conversion was a bit of a Cowlairs special.
Nevertheless, you really can't model the ScR freight scene between 1958 and 1967 without at least one. I'm pretty certain there was an odd one or two at Thornton that had the clacks but original firebox but I haven't been able to nail them.down so far, possibly 90117 at some point late in the day.
Still a work in progress as is the wee SouWest signal box in the background..
No idea what I'm going to do with that; just another example of my utter inability to settle on an area for a layout. It'll probably end up on a diorama, but I digress.
Anyway, here also is a not very good image of the WD!