Scenery Update

At last - some scenery. Very simple stuff, polystyrene insulation covered with plaster bandage and rocks cast in lightweight hydrocal (from Woodland Scenics).

The reason I model the Pacific Northwest is because of the dramatic scenery, the raiload infrastructure - cuts, fills, bridges, tunnels and the amazing undulations in the ground. Hopefully I've managed to catch some of this.

Jobs to do this month include completing the concrete bridge supports, reworking one of the baseboard joints and fixing & aligning the tunnel portals. I will also make a start playing with colouring the rock faces.

Below is a video on Youtube of the real Pacific Northwest, unfortunately it does not show the area of the gorge that I model. Still, 4449 running through the gorge looking wonderful in her daylight colours and then, shots of her running further north on the BNSF employee special (with Nightlight BNSF colours!).

Following on from the superb signals that I purchased from Scale Models Division last month, a quick mention of their latest laser kit for a tractor shed - looks wonderful.

The latest laser kit from Scale Models Division.

This month's SWaNs meet was at Nigel's house. Always good food, doesn't live too far away from me and fantastic O gauge in the garden. A big thank you to Nigel. I will soon have to join a different BR - NMRA subdivision as I am now working on the other side of London.

Had a catastrophic failure on my computer this month, my hard drive blew. The machine is nine years old though! Luckily I installed a second bootable, hard drive in it as a back up.

This then blew, but not until I had backed up all the important data. I didn't lose anything but have had to start using my laptop – with Windows Vista. Yuk.

And the Pinnacle video software that I have been using on my old XP machine won’t install on Vista. Double yuk. I have therefore had to use Windows Movie Maker to edit the scenery video - so not as good as the previous videos I’m afraid. Looking into buying the adobe suite with a teacher license, latest versions of Dreamweaver / Flash / Photoshop / Acrobat and Premiere (to name but a few) – but £850 though. A lot to think about!

Hope you enjoy the website.

Best wishes,

Ant.