Kensington Hill Stockyard platform done!

This week I spent modelling the stock yard platform for the Kensington Hill yard. Basically the same method as the goods platform with a plywood support covered in Scalescene's brick and bitumen paper. This was followed by two coats of Dullcote to hopefully set the paper's ink. Not sure if this works or whether I should have used a Matt Finish spray, but I am pretty sure that is what Dullcote is anyway!

While this was drying one night, I then took a Ratio Concrete Fence Posts kit and painted up 20 of the concrete fence posts, along with the gates, hinges, and some signs, ready for placement towards the weekend.

Friday night I drilled the holes in the platform to accept the fence posts. These were then glued in.

Saturday I woke up feeling RS as I had been progressively coming down with something from about Wednesday. Probably the virus that was going through the family and I was the last one to accept the baton! So while waiting for the doctor's appointment to come at 2pm I was fortunate to spend the morning on the model. While the children were conveniently watching a movie I spent an hour or so threading fine copper wire through the fence posts. These looked good but could be better as the copper colour wasn't right. I then remembered I had purchased a metallic silver paint pen ages ago. I painted this over the copper and it now looks right (like barbed wire). I then went around and touched up the gray of the fence posts. The gates were superglued to their posts. One set looks a bit skew if but I am putting that down to wear and tear on them! I then used a couple of paper staples bent to the desired form to use as the gate hasps. These were superglued on and then painted gray. Looking really good now.

Sheep were superglued in and the appropriate droppings painted on the bitumen floor. There was also a few plastic poos in the Ratio kit so these were added to give a 3D effect ;-)

Nothing else was done other than a casual glance at the Raspberry Pi forum and reading the MERG Journal.

I read over at Mr Mackie's blog that the Auscision 73 Class is due sometime in February but isn't DCC Ready. A bit of a disappointment and I may have to wait to see if he can hardwire a DCC decoder in or whether there is no room. If the later is the case, then I will probably not be buying one of these for the future Narromine layout.

Not sure what the upcoming week will be devoted to. Maybe solder up that MERG kit for something different.

Here are some photos of the stockyard (the Blogger problem with upload looks to be still there!).

Stockyard in position on the layout

Side view

Corner view

Close up of 'dodgy' gate with detail of hasp, hinges and 'barbed' wire

Aerial view

Position with respect to sidings

Another view

Reverse view

Side view with truck

Aerial view with truck