Maybe the threatened bad weather had something to do with the reduced turnout. Andy, Alistair, Alisdair, Graham, Chris, new member Stuart, and curious visitor Jack met at the usual Almondell venue for a show-and-tell session. The ESME clubroom was snug and warm in spite of the hard frost outside.
The group diorama is making progress: most of the track is down and the final turnout - on the coaling bench siding - was to be laid today.
Chris has been working on his Raithby 4F. The boiler is now attached to the frames.
Andy has been prepping his old N gauge layout for the forthcoming Further North open day. The N gauge has been torn up, Easitrack has been laid, and ballasting commenced. He was working on turnouts.
Stuart, who joined the Association at the Glasgow show last weekend, showed us his first attempt at a model building, and very impressive it was too - a mill from the Calder Valley ... no, not the one in South Lanarkshire, the Calder Valley in England deep in L&Y territory.
The exterior walls overlays are from 1.5mm mounting board, with stomework scored on with a knife.
The overlays are then used as templates to locate the window openings on a shell of 1mm clear acrylic sheet covered with a white film which is cut away slightly smaller than the template (by drawing with a point slightly offset from the overlay cutout) to represent windows with reveals.
Glazing bars are then drawn on by ruling pen in dilute acrylic paint. The walls are joined with pipe welding cement from Screwfix. The base has an extra couple of centimetres depth so it can be sunk into the surrounding scenery. Pretty impressive for a first structure model!
Graham talked about 3D roof design and printing for Jim Watt's impressive Caledonian Railway 12-wheeler Edinburgh-Glasgow coaches.
Alisdair explained how he built a stone bridge destined for Laurie Adams' Yeovil Pen Mill layout. The dressed ashlar slabs are represented be SE Finecast styrene sheet, chopped up and laid in strips to overcome its rather obvious step-repeat pattern. The voussoirs (Alisdair speaks French to impress us when Scotstoun is out of earshot, but apparently these are the stones in the arch outside face) are in raised relief formed by applying drops of life-expired thick Easitrac glue with a cocktail stick to the centre of each hand-carved stone. Three or four coats are used with ten minutes between each - just time to have another cocktail.
It has to be said it's a nice model. How will we keep Alisdair focused on the Highland now he has discovered the Great Western?
That's it for this month, thanks for reading.
