trial fitting the bridge

The scenery is pretty much done, I blended the edges in last night, and this morning sceniced the areas in question, It's come up pretty well so far, I dragged the module outside, fitted the bridge into position and took a few snaps.

Fixing my mistakes

Nothing like doing things backwards, made up and added the end plates.  I also made up the quintessential 3mm contoured side pieces, trouble was, in my haste to scenic everything, I plum forgot I need to blend all these pieces into one neat package.

I'm assuming as all the scenery is only a few days old, blending it all in shouldn't come up too badly, well I'm hoping so anyway.

As I walked inside after taking these shots, I thought, "I wonder what else I stuffed up".   The observent people will notice I've forgotten to drill the holes for the track power... sigh!

At least it's only a simple module, If it was the 2.4mt yard modules, I'd be very unhappy.

Second Layer

Adding some of the trees (perhaps another 15-20 to go, and still require some weathering to tone them down), side panel pieces etc, the white PVA blobs under the trees should disappear, the first colour layers of the river has been added, I envisage 3 or 4 more goings over until I get the colour definition I'm looking for, then some 3 dimensional layers, followed by Envirotex for the water.

I suspect I'm doing a lot of this backwards, and probably making it harder for myself, but, I guess we learn from mistakes, and fortunately not too much has caused a major issue.

One of the issues is, I've forgotten to add the end plates to the module, which should be perhaps one of the first things to do before scenicing, hopefully I can fit these up in the next few days without too much drama.

First layer of scenery

Using a scenery method used by Chris Pearce, the "wet on wet" method, In around 30 minutes, I've come up with the first layer of scenery, essentially just ground colour and light ground covering, but the effect is starting to take shape.

The bridge

I spent a bit of time looking at trestle bridges on the internet to get a generic feel for what they look like, in particular the decking section, while I'm not 100% happy with the results, I feel I've tried pretty hard to make it look far better than a plastic kit example, the trestles themselves are made from scale timber, weathered to a greyish colour, the base is made up from a 19mm wide strip of 3mm MDF with 3mm strip hardwood veneered to the sides with a further strip of 1.5mm timber, weathered and stained and glued to give the stepped appearance of the prototype.

Starting the module

When I decided to attempt an exhibition style module, For some reason, Maffra sprang to mind, the yard is quite large for a regional area, At one stage the railway serviced Nestles, a dairy co-op, a large sugar beet factory and cattle.

My building skills are not that good, so before tackling the large yard area, I decided to build the trestle bridge section on the up side of Maffra and incorporating a section of the MacAlister river.

With the assistance of Chris Pearce and his well equipped shed, we started work on a 1100mm x 600mm module, the standout feature of this area is the long bridge spanning the river and the floodplain beyond, In the real section, Concrete was used for the piers, I decided to use wooden trestles as they were prevalent along the line, and still exist less than a kilometer from the site modeled, (and I like the look of them).

Maffra, The real thing

Maffra was a major station located in the town of Maffra, on the now closed Maffra railway line railway line in Victoria, Australia. It was 212 km from Southern Cross station. The line was opened in 1887 and in 1889, a branchline was constructed from Maffra to Briagolong. Rail passenger services between Traralgon and Maffra ceased in 1977 and regular freight trains ended in 1983, when through services from Orbost and Bairnsdale were routed via the parallel Traralgon-Sale-Stratford railway.
The rail line between Traralgon and Maffra was closed in stages from 1987, with Maffra station continued to be served by freight trains from Stratford intermittently until 1993. A number of special passenger trains visited Maffra on occasions, including a steam hauled service from Melbourne hauled by locomotive K153 in August 1990. The station remained staffed by a station master until the final closure and the rail tracks were removed over the next two years.