A winters day (part 1)…

Last year I enjoyed exploring the possibilities of using an IKEA Mosslanda shelf in my Wrecsam project. The options these pre-formed wall shelves give you allow for a scenic area about 9cm deep and 55cm long, perfect for a HiFi micro…

The wind never lets up and it is truly miserable. You’re here to feel alive.

It was in many ways inevitable that with my meandering thoughts of an art installation, blended with the curiousity I harbour for single line branch terminus that it became a format I revisited. Let me introduce my latest HiFi micro, ‘A winters day, Traeth Hafren’. Heavily inspired by the Severn Beach landscape, in this small study I was keen to experiement with portraying a cold, bleak winters day.

 

The scheme, as suggested above, called for a small halt and some vestige of former industry but I felt that in the space available I would focus on just the natural elements. The two key things to make this scene work were fidelity in the winter trees and a cooler light temperature.

The usual box was constructed from a mixture of 6mm MDF and 3mm hardboard just glued together. The base in this instance saw the track bed raised from the base for two reasons. It would allow me to create a laminated spine for the fiddle stick, and the contrast in the height of the land with the railway would better tell the story of an estuary location.

 

Basic landform was mocked in with some off cuts of balsa for speed and blended in with sculptamould before painting in an earth shade if emulsion. The track was laid, painted, weathered and ballasted. The grass, choosing largely short wintry shades was added, all within 24 hours.

The journey of creating some believable winter trees was documented in a seperate post last week. These 12 specimen were formed with an improving understanding of nature and the method using some fine copper filaments and their fine form, when intertwined on the layout has been a huge success. Small holes in the sculptamold allowed them to be planted with a dab of PVA, deliberately overlapped and the branches woven together to create that mess of tangled branches I was keen to represent.

We’ve all stood beside the sea, or on a bleak estuary. Imagine being back there now in the depths of winter. Little shelter to speak of the cold air seems to carry a sadistic quantity of moisture, almost invisible but whose purpose is to soak you through and force you back inside. The wind never lets up and it is truly miserable. You’re here to feel alive, and to feel the benefit of getting on that train, in that car or into the warm lounge bar of the local pub.

This is the feeling I wanted to imbue in the piece.

The back scene started out as a slice of overcast sky on a ID paper backscene that felt suitable wintry. Added to this was a slice of the Severn estuary faded and subdued, carefully cut and stuck with Prit-stik to the bottom edge. This has just a hint of the river along its base and has worked even better than imagined. 

N scale is often about a balance of fidelity and neatness, I decided the distinctive post and wire fence could be represented using a combination of 1mm styrene for the concrete posts and wire for the metal strips, and this has worked very well indeed. Providing a man made vertical order to the natural environment and giving a boundary to the railway. 

The lighting however was still too warm. I used my usual natural white LED strip, I wondered if I could tint a number of the LEDs in the strip to alter the temperature. Adding some blue Sharpie pen proved the concept and by altering how many I coloured in, and where in the strip, modulated the cooler look I was after. Mistakes could be adjusted with a brush dipped in IPA. Sadly the Sharpie appeared to burn off and fade after half an our if the lighting be8ng on, so a more permanent solution was sought in the form of Tamiya clear blue. This worked a treat, as we will see in part 2 next time.

This project has been a great deal of fun and produced tangible results in a short period of time. It may not have huge operational interest, but for me, it is driven by an artistic interpretation of the prototype rather than running trains. In addition, it’s an opportunity to practice or hone new skills away from my other projects and customer work, this ‘sharpening the saw’ has been a real discovery in recent years and I thoroughly enjoy creating these smaller works, test pieces but conceived in a manner that they can be traditionally ‘complete’ in relatively short order. Until next time, more soon…

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