Selly Oak lives!

 

Long term readers will remember my Selly Oak project - a commission from Rapido during lockdown, that gradually became a burden to me, rather than a joy. When I delivered it to them, and then the person whose garage it was in left the company, I assumed that would be the last anyone would see of it. 

But no! Looking in the latest newsletter, there is a Fleetline bus posed on the model. 

It seems that the layout is now safely in Kent, and should be seeing more bus action later in the year. 

Selly Oak goes to work

Selly Oak has appeared in public for the first time in a Rapido advert for their Leyland Fleetline. 

Nice to see it doing it's job and really nice to see the new bus in position. There's a definite whiff of 70s nostalgia for those of us at a certain age. I know I've travelled on one many times!

Selly Oak sails away

Time to wrap up the Selly Oak story as the model has now been delivered to its new owner. 

The sharp eyed will notice that there are a few jobs still to do - laying the track being the main one. However, I've hit a really wall with the project and reached the point where I simply couldn't continue with it. I've never felt like this before with a project as far as I know, and it's not a whole lot of fun. Even admitting this isn't easy, but I know people will wonder what happened if I simply never mention the model again do I'll 'fess up to my failure. 

The guys from Rapido have been exceptionally kind and considerate about this. Fortunately, the model is at a stage were it can perform it's main function - acting as a background for model buses, so it's not a complete failure. Since you can't see the track from bus spotter eye-level, perhaps things are quite as bad as I think.

I'm happy with the modelling I did manage to carry out. There are several nice views to be enjoyed thanks to the complexity of the different levels. The general late 60s to early 70s griminess works - so the background won't detract from the model placed in the foreground. 

Lessons learned? 

1) I must never, ever take on a commission. Not a loco, not even a wagon, and certainly not a layout. I don't have the time or the stamina. My life is busy enough with toy trains without the added pressure of a build someone is expecting. 

2) Don't do long term projects. The only other layout I recall feeling this way about was "Melbridge Town" which suffered from lots of hard work that became a slog. The two aren't the same in many ways, but I gradually ended up resenting them both. Anything I build needs to be completed reasonably quickly or I just get fed up with it. Maybe this makes be a bad person, but we can't all have Peter Denny's commitment to a single layout. 

Anyway, the model is someone else's now and I feel better for passing it on. 

Birmingham bus stop

A few weeks ago, I mentioned that Brummie buses didn't stop at shelters looking much like the Merit concrete version. Birmingham had it's own spindly metal design, which appeared all over the city. 

As far as I know, none still exist in the real world, and I'm not going to tour the bus routes to find out, but Wythall transport museum does have one, and I've taken some photo and measurements. 

 A few detail views too, in case I want to try and make one. 

The shelter seems to be a mix of steel and fibreglass - for the roof panels. It would have been a revolutionary material when these things were built!

For modelling purposes, I can only think of etching. There's no other way to achieve the strength for a model that will survive, and delicacy of the window bars etc. Maybe you could cut it by hand, but I doubt the result would be particularly neat. 

The measurements for one bay (the stop photographed has two) are below in scruffy notebook form: 

I'm not planning to build one at the moment, but it's useful to have the information - and this post might help someone else!

Rusty bridge sides

 

A bit of gap filling on the high-level rail line. Using some Wills Vari-girder bridge components, fairly heavily hacked around, I've joined the bridge parapet to the canal bridge at last. 

There's some very heavy hairspray weathering going on as I wanted something very rusty, so nearly all the topcoats has been scrubbed off. It took a lot of toothbrush work though, possibly because I left the hairspray for a few days and it over-hardened. I do like this technique though. Even with limited skill, the results look (to my eye anyway) great. 

I'm now thinking the canal bridge side needs to move a bit so it doesn't stick out as far, but that's for another day.

Big posterboard

 

 

 

Photos show a pair of large posters in front of the wing wall on the Selly Oak bridge. After a little measuring up, billboard poster being standard sizes, I worked out that my modified version could only accommodate a single board. OK, one and a half, but that's not very helpful. 

Details are sketchy, but boards tend to be pretty simple, it's all about the poster after all, so I made up a simple frame around the display area and allowed a kickboard at the bottom to keep it off the ground, as per the prototype. 

"Dinka pinta milka day" is a cracking design. Strictly speaking, it's mid-60s rather than late, but I'm going to stretch things a little because it looks so good.I have a photo of a Brummie bus passing one anyway, so I'm not totally mad. 

Around the back, there's not much to see, as this side is against the wing wall, but some supports will be visible from certain angles, so a little made-up detail is called for. The whole thing is Plastikard and quickly made. 

 

Wires fitted in the supports will anchor the model in the pavement - I considered extending the "legs", but would have to drill oversize holed in the pavement. This will be neater I hope.

Book Review: Birmingham Buses - Route by Route 1925-1975

This is the book that made me abandon my bus stop. A book, chock full of high quality photographs showing Brummie buses in action all over the city, much of the time during my lifetime, or at least not much before it. 

Lets start with the basics: A4 size, hardback, 175 heavyweight, glossy pages. 

Price is £25 and it's one of those books you handle and know where the money has been spent. It feels quality.  

Rather then focus on the machinery, author Malcolm Kelley takes us on a tour of Birmingham by bus route. This is a cleaver idea as many people reminiscing about buses remember a specific route they took every day and the sights they saw along the way. 

I remember helping out on the Rapido stand at Wythall bus museum and while the quality of the model bus was important, the route number was the clincher. If it was the one you travelled on, then that made a big difference. 

I'm fascinated by the views of bits of Birmingham that I know, but have changed a lot over the years. Often, I can recognise the basic buildings, but the details such as the signage are completely different today. A good example are those shots showing buses by the town hall - a pedestrianised area as long as I can remember, and one only now admitting trams to the street. The city has changed. 

All the suburban shots are interesting too. We have a world where not owning a car was common, and two car families were rare. Streets are traffic-free and showing the care lavished on the homes and gardens. In many pictures, there is evidence of late 60s development with clean lines and concrete - stuff that didn't age well, but at the time spoke of a new optimism. 

I'm sure there will be people picking captions apart, but not me. I'm not even really looking at the buses, I bought this for street scene inspiration for Selly Oak, and as such, it's proved invaluable. 

If you like buses, or love Birmingham, a worthwhile addition to your bookshelf.

Buy Birmingham Buses - Route by Route 1925-1975 from Amazon (Affiliate link)

The wrong bus stop

 

I thought the bus shelter at Selly Oak would be pretty simple. Pre-cast concrete would be the way to go. Utilitarian and ugly would be perfect, and handily Merit produce something that fitted the bill. 

The only snag is that my pavement slopes, so the legs need to be extended by 3mm at one end, but that's not a too tricky with some plastic and ABS strength glue. After that some Precision Paints concrete colour - weathered followed by a wash of new. 

Finally, a wash of black emulsion added staining and engrained dirt. Blu-tacked in position, I was pleased with the look. It sits in the scene very nicely. 

Then I bought a book on Birmingham buses, and realised that in the period modelled, the corporation had bought a job lot of spindly metal shelters. So I need something different after all.

Posters

 

Under the Selly Oak bridge, there are some billboards. Looking at old photos, these have always been there, so they provide a welcome opportunity to add a bit of colour to what is a very grey scene. 

My problem is that we need to cover the late 1960s to early 1970s, and advertising design changed a lot in that period. A fair bit of time was taken finding images that would look OK in all period before printing them, out to fit the boards I have built. 

These aren't anything special - just pictures printed on normal paper. I wound the colour saturation back by about 35% and then gave them a good coat of matt varnish. This last step will protect them from fading (I hope) and mutes the colours a bit further so they sit in the scene rather than dominate it. 

Annoyingly, when I took the photos, I realised, one board had slipped while the glue dried, so will need to be removed and re-fixed. I'm happy with the effect though and it's helping to bring the scene alive. Good thing too - as there are two more boards to erect and the big beer advert on the front of the bridge to come.

Replacing road markings

 

I'm still at cock-up corner, but this time it's an old mistake, I'm not making new ones for a change. 

Placing the pavements on the road, I realise that the dotted line for the bus pull-in is in the wrong place. I've joined up the walls, and of course, I should join up the corners of the pavements. 

Once I decide I really can't leave the lines and pretend they aren't wrong, the challenge becomes how to fix them with the least amount of damage. Method one, a scratch brush, is quickly ruled out. I'd hoped to be able to polish the white paint away, leaving the great. No chance. 

Out comes the paint remover, this stuff from Deluxe Materials, applied with a cotton bud. Again, I hoped to remove as little paint as possible, but the dark grey basecoat still comes through. 

In the right place, this effect would be quite good. Modern road markings are burned away, and this doesn't look bad if you want to model that effect. Sadly, I don't, so it's out with the grey primer and weathering pastels to try and rectify the damage. 

After that, the lines were put back in, and of course the making didn't work as well as I would like, so there's some cleaning up of the edges with a damp brush, followed by more powder and generally messy scenic work. 

However, the pavements are in - a job I've been putting off for a long while. Next, I need a bus shelter and some street furniture. 

Cockup corner, Selly Oak

 

Back at Selly Oak, I'm reminded of one of the more valuable bits of advice I've gleaned from model railway magazines. 

In an article on building an N gauge display layout with some Z gauge forced perspective was the statement that when building something, if what you make isn't right - discard it. If you don't, the less than perfect item will always niggle you no matter how good the rest of the model. 

I had a bit of a bad day when attempting to finish the pavements. 

Attempt 1 - I marked out the flagstones incorrectly and ended up with them twice as long as they should be. The marks should be every 6mm, not 12. Then when you scribe every other length so the slabs are correctly staggered they line up. 

Attempt 2 - Then I realised that I was also marking them out at 90 degrees to the direction they should run to match the rest of the model.

Fortunately, this is only a small piece of pavement, so it wasn't too painful to make this bit three times. A bit annoying though....

Return to Selly Oak

 

After a couple of months break, Selly Oak is back on the workbench. 

The first job is to write a to-do list. The project have become bogged down, but I need to finished it and the best way I think to make this happen is a checklist so I feel there is progress to keep my enthusiasm up. 

Off the top of my head:

• Finish pavements
• Install bus stops
• Fill the gap in the bridge sides
• Lay some track
• Add a pipe bridge to cover the ugly joint in the canal
• Adverts under the bridge
• More scruffy green stuff along the front edge
• Sign for the station

That will do for the minute, I'll add to it as I go along.

End boards

Selly Oak needs to vacate it's worktop for a few days which prompts me to do an important job - make up the end boards used to transport the model. 

The principle is simple enough - the baseboards face each other to protect the scenery, and a pair of 12mm thick slabs of MDF are bolted at each end to hold the boards apart, making an open-sided box. It's a technique I've used for every layout since Melbridge Dock, and has served me well. 

Obviously, it helps if the boards are roughly the same size - they definitely need to be the same length, but then that's how my layouts get built. It reduces the model size for transport down to a minimum, and there aren't piles of carrying cases cluttering the place up. 

Of course, when you go to pick up the wood and realise you measured the height of the model and then forgot to double it for the end board measurement, you feel a bit silly. Still, I'm sure I can find some use for the scrap MDF...

Waste ground

  

In front of the station side road, there is a section of ground with no real purpose. Literally "waste ground", and since this sort of land was quite common in the 1970s, that's exactly what I've decided it will be for now. If I come up with another idea, just like the prototype, it can be redeveloped. 

Several colours and lengths of static grass were laid on the "mud" and once dry, scrubbed away on patches with the toothbrush to reveal the earth colour. I'm quite pleased with the look this gave the model, especially considering how easy it was to do. Like hairspray weathering, the technique seems to produce a natural finish almost automatically. 

After that, it's more Forest in a Box around the corners and a couple of clumps in the middle. A bit of grass and perhaps some smaller undergrowth using scatter over poitin in the future, but for now, I can leave this bit. 

I'm tempted by a burnt out vehicle, but wonder if that's a bit cliche. Dunno. One to consider later.

Really thick undergrowth

 

For the embankment at Selly Oak, I wanted some really thick, scruffy undergrowth. More texture than static grass alone could offer. The sort of horrible, spiky bushes that self-set in ground no-one cares about, forming a thick and impenetrable barrier if you try to walk through them. 

After a little bit of pondering, I decided to use lots and lots of small pieces of "Forest in a Box". Green Scene supplied me with a box marked "S" which contained shot, but dense material. All I had to do was cut it up even smaller, dunk in PVA and press home on the embankment. 

After that, watered down PVA was poured everywhere to ensure the stuff stayed put and then using hair spray and scatter, the bushes were given their leaves. 

What should have been a quick job took more time than expected as the Seafoam needed to be cut into small pieces and quite a few of the less dense stalks were discarded. It looks nice though, in a horrible, wouldn't want to have to retrieve my school cap from there* sort of way. 

Bad primary school memory involving a rose bush.

Tidy up the sides

 

This is one of those quick jobs that makes much more of a difference than I had expected - covering the sides of the hill with some nice, tidy plywood. 

In our stock of wood is some LitePly about 3mm thick. More expensive than normal ply, it has the advantage of being cutable with a heavy craft knife. Since I wanted the top to follow the contour of the hill, this seemed worth it. Besides, I wasn't looking at big chunks of the stuff - and anyway, there's no point in buying these materials if you keep saving them "for a special job". 

Anyway, the hill had to be trimmed back to allow the ply to be fitted, but I clamped it in place with a wodge of filler behind it and then tidied up the top (yes, I should have cone this before working on the mud) for a neat job. 

It looks stupidly good. Eventually, I'll paint it grey. Matching the colour of the rest of the boards won't happen so a contrast will look a lot better. 

As well as looking good, the ply will protect the polystyrene from knocks as the model is moved around in the future - another win!

Building a hill for a model railway

 A quick step-by-step guide showing how I made a hill on the corner of my Selly Oak project. 

The basis of the hill is expanded polystyrene blocks fixed together with PVA glue and then carved to shape. Ideally, you do this with a hot wire cutter, but a less smelly, if considerably messier, method is to use a bread knife. 

To give the hill a hard shell, pieces of plaster impregnated bandage, often sold under the trade name Mod-Roc, are dipped in water and then laid on the hill. By overlapping them and then smearing around the wet plaster with your fingers (another messy job) the whole hill is covered and left to dry overnight. 

I like quite a thick "crust" on my hills and while I could achieve this with extra layers of the plaster bandage, using some DIY store wall filler is cheaper. Apply it with a palette knife or one of these spatulas used for icing cakes. Wet the tool as you work, it makes the filler go on a lot smoother. 

Once the hill is covered to 2-3mm, leave it to dry overnight. 

You might be better at plastering than I am, but generally, the surface needs sanding to get it smooth. 

We're not looking for perfection, just to take the worst lumps and bumps out of the surface. Imagine you are a scale person standing on it and then think about a real hill. They might have the odd crevasse or cliff edge, but generally the land is smooth thanks to years of weather and erosion. 

This is another messy job. Have a vacuum cleaner to hand and use it constantly. You really don't want this stuff in your pointwork. 

 

 

Unless you are modelling s now scene, your ground needs to be mud coloured. I use emulsion paint to give me a basic shade. If you mixed your own filler for the previous step, it's not a bad idea to put a dollop of it in there, but I cheat with ready-mix for time and mess reasons. 

If the ground is going to be exposed, I'll spend more time on the next coat of mud. 

Finally, it's time for greenery. This is the first coat of static grass. I'm just giving it a base colour as the greenery will be more detailed with extra layers of grass and some scatter to replicate weeds. However, this makes a big change to the look of a layout, so even if the detailing is a way off, it's worth doing to show progress and inspire you to carry on. 

I hope this quick guide has helped. Don't forget if you want to know more, you can always Ask Phil.

Mud, glorious mud

 

 

There's quite a lot of scruffy ground on Selly Oak. My normal method of reproducing this involves lots of Wilco "Nutmeg Spice" emulsion, but I wanted to up my game this time, so added "Chocolate dream" and "Earthy Hue" to the palette. 

Mixing the three on the model gives a much better effect - but still too smooth. 

Not to worry, sifting some fine sawdust into the paint does the job. The stuff doesn't sink in, you have to work it with a stiff paintbrush. 

I know there are "proper" modelling paints for this sort of job, but they cost a fortune for the amount I'd needs, and I'm not convinced they are that much better. Maybe if you build a 1/32nd scale tiny diorama, but for a layout where most of it will be covered with undergrowth, stick to the matchpots.

Bigger adverts

I've mounted an adverting hoarding on the Selly Oak hill, but looking at photos, the realisation dawned that it wasn't big enough. Looking these things up online, I found this handy guide. 

Basically, a 48 sheet poster (so called because it's made up of 48 bits of paper) is 20 feet wide, bigger than the Wills hoarding and as large as I could fit in the space. 

Scratchbuilding something suitable in plastic wasn't that hard. I could see half of the prototype in a photo and guessed most of the measurement. There are some billboards near our local station that provided a bit of inspiration. Since they are on a junction, I've spent many hours looking at them while waiting for the lights to change.

The problem came when trying to find a suitable poster. I didn't want anything for a film as this sets the date of the model very precisely. Trying to find anything suitable for the late 1960s to early 1970s though - nightmare! There are a few modern ones around, but nothing for my era. Those I found tended to be portrait too. Oh, and although it might be authentic, no cigarette adverts please.

Two hours later, and thoroughly frustrated, I decided the Internet was rubbish and dug out my copy of Advertising the Beetle 1953-1978 and had a look through. VW advertising of this era was iconic, and since the basic shape of the car didn't change much, it should work for an extended period. 

Sadly, the adverts tended to be magazine ads, but there was something for a local dealer that looked like it might work. Scanning in the image (good for 1968 onwards) and matching the fonts, I mocked an advert up for a local garage. I'm no designer, but the end result looks OK to me. 

Most importantly, it doesn't stand out. I'll use coloured posters under the bridge where there are more hoardings, but this muted version will fade into the background in photos. 

In an effort to make the advert removable, I set a couple of tiny high-power magnets in the supporting posts behind the hoarding. The idea was that I could mount adverts on a piece of tin, and hang them to vary the scene. 

Utter failure. The magnets aren't powerful enough to grab anything. Good idea. Hopeless execution.

Making pavements

 

One of the jobs I've been least looking forward to on Selly Oak is laying the pavements. I'm not sure why, it's just a task I can't work up any enthusiasm for, but know needs to be done. 

Progress has been slow, but I have managed one side of the road. I'm using 2mm thick Daler Board cut to size and then scribed for the paving slabs. A home-made ruler marked out in slab sizes speeds this job up a lot. Even more if I didn't lose the ruler each time so I didn't need to make it up again.

This is sprayed with grey car primer and then painted with Precision weathered concrete paint. 

Years ago, I bought some very cheap packs of grey pastels which can be scrubbed on a very coarse file to produce powder. This is rubbed into the surface with a mucky finger. Dampening the digit helps the stuff stick into the scribed lines - although it seems to cling to the card pretty well. 

I'll use the same powder on the road eventually to add variety to the colour, but that will wait until the pavements are all down.