It seems there's been no progress since the last railway weekend, a good 6 months ago. Oh well.
This weekend we've put all of the effort into two apparently simple projects:
- Adding more backscenes behind Eastleigh and the first part of Portsmouth
- Adding a working level crossing.
The backscenes were quite simple. We use the Gaugemaster 12" high backscenes. A new complication though was a need to match the horizon height in a corner, and a need to join two completely different backscenes on a 15' run. The former wasn't too hard: we were able to get it roughly right, and there was already some trees in the corner on one wall. We then cut out trees from another backscene and superimposed them onto the second backscene. The result: a very nice clean join. The join from a rural backscene into an industrial one is a bit more abrupt: I suspect that a similar approach - harvesting a picture of a building or tree that can be superimposed - may be needed.
The level crossing took two days: I'm not at all sure where the time went. More details in this article.
At the end of all this: the railway now looks more the part, simply because of the backscenes. We've done some essential planning for how the corner between Petersfield and Eastleigh will develop, and added an animated scenery item. The general idea is, now I know how to do that I can go on to do more on my own....