For the first time I thought I’d give the ‘hairspray technique’ a try. It has been around in the military armour world for a few years now and allows a truly random distribution of fine rust spots than you could ever successfully paint on.

I washed over the top with slightly diluted Tamiya Light Grey acrylic (XF-66) using a No.6 shader brush. Once dry this let some of the Gunship Grey show through and gave the surface a quite nice faded ‘powdery’ finish.

Spraying the surface with a coat of cheap hairspray and working quite quickly, I used a small piece of sponge to carefully flick very small amounts of dark brown weathering powder over the top.

Once the powder and hairspray had dried I used a ‘OOO’ brush to pick out most of the spots with Burnt Umber Gouache.

Using an angled shader I washed downwards over the surface with water.

Once dry, I felt that the powder spots looked a bit too raised and decided to gently rub over the surface with some fine wet and dry paper.

Having cleaned off the surface with a large soft dry brush, I selectively spotted a bit more Burnt Umber gouache, this time with a tiny amount of black.

To finish off I used a small flat brush, in a downward motion to randomly streak the spots. I’m quite happy with the result and this technique would obviously work equally well when applied to rolling stock. The perfect excuse to order a couple of those superb Sealion YGH hopper wagons…

One of the things I love about urban railways are the cavernous spaces beneath bridges. Is there anything better than walking under one of these on a cold rainy day and hearing the dripping water and low rumble as a train passes overhead? I really wanted my underpass to capture this atmosphere (minus the slightly damp smell). Certainly no place send your nana, but back in the 1970’s she probably would have got to the other end just fine…

The first element that needed to be built was the road and pavements that run under the bridge. I simply mounted the double yellow lines and bus stop sections from my Road and Pavement kit on to some 1mm card. I did experiment with a slight amount of camber to the road, but to be honest it never seems to look quite right in 1:76 scale. The pavement was a fairly straightforward build, also using 1mm card. It’s certainly worth the effort to carefully score in between the pavement slabs with a scalpel and give it a light dusting of dark brown weathering powder, it really brings the surface to life.

2mm card and my TX02 Brown Brick sheet and matching arches were used to create the side walls. Disused and bricked up arched doorways, often long abandoned subways to station platforms above, seem to be a fairly common feature under bridges in the London area and they certainly add a bit more interest to the scene. Streaking and lime scale are always very evident under bridges and can be easily added by lightly working black and white coloured pencils over the surface of the print in a downward motion. These streaks were then toned back using Tamiya Weathering Master pack B.

The final addition prior to installation were working lights. I removed the posts from a fairly cheap set of US ‘Highway lights’ (Model Power No.497), hit the light surrounds with a coat of grey primer and then just drilled a couple of holes over the doors and held them in place with a couple of dabs of CA. Before the glue dried I also adjusted the lights so that the fairly over scale bulbs weren’t directly visible at a normal viewing angle.

Once the lights were in place I used Evergreen .5mm (No. 218) and 1.6 mm rod (No. 222) and 2×4mm strip (No.167) to create the electrical conduit, junction points and power boxes. Having been assembled separately on a flat surface, I gave them a coat of grey primer and carefully glued them into position. The very fine bolts and padlocks on the doors are from Brassmasters (Pack K).

The backscene seems to be the downfall of many an otherwise superb layout. How many times have you seen high quality modelling spoilt by a poorly painted sky in the background? Even as a professional illustrator, I have never been entirely happy with the backscenes that I’d created on past layouts, they always looked ‘painted’ now matter how well they turned out.

In the past five years the quality and cost of large format colour prints has improved out of sight. Combined with a similar trend in digital photography and panoramic ’stitching’ programs being readily available, why would you bother to paint your own backscene?

The key to a successful backscene seems to be to keep it simple! I was recently given access to a large format colour printer, so I stitched together a couple of basic sky panoramas in Photoshop for use on South Oak Road. I eventuality decided on the ‘grey day’ version and then overlaid the house backs over the top. Once output, I had the print matt laminated and then mounted it to the layout with double-sided tape, job done! Once the foliage and surrounding model buildings have been added I think it should look quite effective.

Please feel free to download and use these panoramas for your layout. Just click on the links below to download the images to your hard drive. Within each of the downloaded ZIP folders you will find a 1243mmx250mm CMYK 300dpi JPG image.

Click here for the ‘grey sky’ image.

Click here for the ‘blue sky’ image.

What better way to get things rolling again than to spend a couple of days wandering around the area that inspired the layout, namely the Camden, Kentish Town, Gospel Oak and Tufnell Park areas of North London. Rather disappointingly the weekend I made it to London, the normal selection of freight and passenger workings were no where to be seen as several sections of track were in the process of being relaid! The trip was still a huge shot in the arm for South Oak Road as it confirmed that I was on the right track with my depiction of the retaining walls and tunnels, though my version could certainly benefit from a lot more weathering, particularly lime on the walls (see image below).

Looking over the Highgate Road bridge.

The visit also allowed me to collect as many source shots as I could of those elusive small details that make or break a layout and determine if you properly capture the flavour of a particular scene. One of my primary areas of focus on this trip were the many arches and viaducts of the area. It was really important that I got these arches right as they dominate the front of the layout. Arches, like so many other structures that feature on model railways are very prone to cliches and assumptions. I was therefore keen to put aside ‘what I thought a set of London arches looked like’ and really record as many of the wide structural and colour variations that occur in even a small area.

A small selection of the images.

As illustrated by the shots above, my arches were certainly going to have to go beyond the neat line of uniform red brick arches that I had originally assumed would suit the scene if I was going to correctly capture the feel of the area. Each shot clearly illustrates not just that each arch is a patchwork of different brick colours, but also that it is layered with numerous small details such as ducting, pipes, brackets and railings, not mention the odd outbreak of vegetation.

Before I could even think about adding all this exciting detail I really needed to mock up in plain card several options to ensure that the arches sat well with the rest of the layout. A few versions later and I had settled on the basic structure; three arches, two with workshops and one just simply infilled and a plate girder bridge over a narrow road that disappears towards the ground floor of the low relief warehouse at the back of layout. To the left of the girder bridge would be a small subway entry to the main station.

The basic platform structure is formed using Scalescenes.com’s Platform kit. This is a fairly easy ‘box’ build though care needs to be taken at all stages to ensure that the longest coaches happily clear the platform edges (as detailed in the kit instructions). I decided to double the thickness of the platform side wall for addition strength. I also trimmed 2mm off the bottom of the platform sides to allow for the thickness of card ‘footprints’ that I had laid prior to ballasting.

Instead of using the supplied ‘cover strips’ to conceal the joins in the platform side I thought it might be nice to include a small bricked up arch, perhaps part of a long abandoned subway or ventilation shaft. All the platform needs now are a few cables running just under the platform edge and some weeds poking up here and there.

With the retaining wall complete it was into the tunnel. Building twin skewed tunnel portals into the same wall was certainly a lot harder than it looked on the plans! Using my longest item of rolling stock (a Mk1) as a guide, it took three plain card mock-ups to get the arches and tunnel shaft clearances just right. I used the matching Dark blue brick (TX27) texture sheet to create the longer tunnel face required to accommodate both portals and to add a couple of refuges inside the tunnel shafts.

To finish, I used a soft brush to lightly work some dark brown weathering powder over the most of the wall and tunnel surfaces especially working it into the corners. It’s a quick and easy way to ‘tone down’ the richness of the print surface. Inside the tunnel and on some spots on the retaining wall I also smudged white chalk pastel to simulate lime scaling. Once again a simple technique that really adds extra realism to the scene.

The back of the layout will consist of an imposing engineers blue brick retaining wall that leads into a single and double tunnel at one end. The above image of Kentish Town captures the feel of the retaining wall and tunnel that I want for South Oak Road. My first task was to cut out rough card tunnel portals and check all heights and clearances. With the height of the wall at one end established I was able to quickly begin shaping various insulation foam off-cuts to form the main topographic features. Leaving the top section of the hill as removable for track maintenance, all another elements were glued in place with PVA woodworking glue.

The ledge along the front will accommodate the various
under arch workshops and businesses.

To allow cabling to be fed through, two holes have
been cut to in the central I-beam.

Despite being aware that it was far from perfect I was generally happy with the basic structure until it suffered a ‘catastrophic’ structural failure that could be in part due to me drilling one to many lightening holes in the framework! The structure had also been severely weakened by my attempts to retro fit several ‘after-thoughts’. After a strong cup of coffee there was little more that could be done other than carefully remove what track and take the whole sorry mess to the dump! News of my latest layout becoming landfill only seemed to confirm to my wife and skeptical friends that I have a psychological disorder that prevents me from ever adding scenery to a layout.

Partly motivated by embarrassment, I was keen get to straight into building Mark II but my enthusiasm was tempered by the knowledge that I really needed to plan this new version out properly before I fired up the drop saw.

I previously viewed modellers who built ‘mini’ scale versions of their intended layout as having just a little bit too much time on their hands. Very conscious of the first failure, I was unsure were to begin. Though fully committed to the same track plan and basic dimensions as Mark I, I had to concede that creating a 1:10 cardboard prototype was the only way forward. Though roughly constructed, almost from the word go the 1:10 model pointed the way forward on a whole host of design and construction issues.

The invaluable 1:10 version cobbled together from card and foam.

Confident that I had worked out how the structure was going to come together, I began by cutting out a 950×280mm piece of 7mm plywood for the main baseboard. Having glued a sheet of 3mm cork over the entire baseboard I was ready for the track work!