Mollington Road: Ground cover...

I've taken the time to focus on some more aspects of my industrial micro layout 'Mollington Road' over the past few days. The good thing is that despite it's small size, there are plenty of opportunities to work on different aspects...

Not pictured, work has begun on the last two structures, the shed building has had mortar added and the interior white washed. This needs a roof and doors adding, I'm thinking of a trio of doors, rather than just a pair, as that would make them shorter, one folding back on itself, perhaps also a small door within a door... Inside I'm planning a workbench, some posters and boxes and a false back to blank out daylight from inside the structure when taking photos.

The ground cover in the ditch is a mix of static grass, Woodland Scenics 'foliage' teased out, Greenscenes foliage and some sea moss. It's the result of a few hours going backwards and forwards. It catorues the overgrown nature of a ditch, but I think it may still see some more work to bring it to life a little more, but for a first attempt at using some of Gordon Gravett's techniques I've very pleased with the result.

I had planned on some lower security gating but decided against that after the evocative photos of the engine shed on the Slough Estates Railway that had a lovely pair of metal gates with wire mesh. These ones are from Ratio, I used a long gate and a short gate on both the road and rail access to the site. The nylon mesh was superglued to the gates, and then airbrushed with a rusty black brown colour so as to not over thicken the mesh. The gap between the gate and the concrete panel fence alongside the road was filled in with a section of Knightwing palisade fencing, potentially a touch too modern, but I didn't want to use any more of the mesh fencing, but wanted it to be slightly see through so couldn't do any more concrete panel fencing.

Despite the yellow tint in these photos, from the inside lighting and the photos being taken at night, and apart from the radiator background and unfinished structure, these photos show my little part of an industrial estate railway is coming to life, not quite as originally imagined, but in a format that still evokes an industrial setting that I had wanted to recreate.

Despite this being a personal project, I do offer a layout design and construction service - get in touch if you'd like to commission a layout using the contact form, Facebook or the forum messaging services. In the meantime, more soon...