Mosslanda: Denton Road - ballasting (at last)…
I love ballasting. It’s typically something I undertake fairly early in a layouts construction before real scenic work begins…
Denton Road has been a little different, its construction has meant I’ve wanted to work from finished structures back to front. Ballasting now is one of the last steps on this project. A glimpse from the end of the layout shows even more progress than you’ll find below, as I’ve also begun ‘greening’ things up a touch - but that can wait for a future installment!
The structures are glued in place, the backscene has been fitted, the track was painted in my usual shades, both sleepers and rails and the ground prepared by painting over the grey primer with brown away from the main ballasted areas… that was all shared last time. Since then I have added two shades of Woodland Scenics fine ballast - I used ‘grey blend’ on the relaid concrete sleepered section and ‘grey’ everywhere else, this contrast an important part of the story.
The texture, even if the ballast is a little coarse for N, is right. However the wide flat expanse of former trackbed looks wrong (above) and so the process of adjusting this visual noise will be described next time.
Instead, we’ll leave things stood at the end of Platform 2. Having made our connection and waiting to leave on the electrified routes east… until next time, more soon…
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That’s a great final shot in the pust, James… the ubiquitous red light about to change! On olivgrün forward to watching progress on this layout,
ReplyDeleteThank you Jonathan!
DeleteThat first image is quite remarkable. It really puts me right there. It feels like a forgotten corner of Birmingham New Street
ReplyDeleteThank you Ian. Wonderful little spaces these Mosslanda boxes
DeleteJust oozing atmosphere.
ReplyDeleteThank you… gritty.
DeleteI really like the plot of Denton Road/urban grit and love watching it materialise, James!
ReplyDeleteThought about the overhead line: wasn‘t there an end pole or gantry behind the buffer stop or to the side, where the imaginary catenary is attached to and/or tensioned?
It will be added once I’m happy the ballast is right because once I add the OHLE it will be a pain to clean the track!
DeleteMakes perfect sense. Foolish question.
DeleteNot at all… it would be easy to cheat and just have the mast in the station area, but I want to try and do it properly, at least!
DeleteThis just builds and builds, oozes atmosphere, countless times I have stood on an elevated platform in the Manchester area wandered to the end to kill time and felt that cold cutting wind or the baking heat of summer. Inspirational!!
DeleteEric
Thank you. I’m glad you find it so inspiring, I seem to have distilled something many of us feel a connection with in this small space.
DeleteExcellent close up photo James. I have a grainy photo of a class 90 at the buffer stops at Euston after a one-off trip to Wilmslow in Cheshire in the late 1980's and this picture took me right there. Growing up on the South coast between Brighton and Portsmouth meant a fairly solid diet of slam door units and not alot else. That trip to Wilmslow meant that I saw such rare beasts as class 31's and the AC electrics! I even saw my one and only blue class 20 at Crewe, sadly it was in store and being used as spares to keep the BR telecoms 20's in action. Great memories. Denton road is such a restrained, careful portrait of everyday northern railway life. Take care.
ReplyDeleteWonderful memories, from the sounds of it Tom. Yes, I saw a few 20s but not regularly, by the 90s. Plenty of 31s and 37s… wonderful times. Plus electrics at Crewe… Denton Road is more my uni years and the plying of the Transpennine route to and from Chester and Durham.
DeleteAbsolutely love how this little layout is coming together. The photos really remind me of travelling to Leeds as a small kid, especially with the Northern Spirit pacer!
ReplyDeleteThank you Jack… more progress this evening so I’ll do a write up over the weekend.
Delete