Christmas has come round again and that means it's time for a railway!
For the record I have suggested not doing a railway for the tree but get shot down very quickly by my wife and teenage boys so I must be doing something right.
Not so much a new railway this year but hopefully an improvement, at only 600mm x 900mm its not the biggest but we don't have the room for anything bigger.
For the last two years I have spent an age gluing down some loosely packed white felt between the rails and on the rest of the baseboard with a glue gun to mimic snow.
Whilst initially it looks ok, after a while it becomes tatty and is a magnet for Christmas tree needles which don't seem to want to let go, so each year before getting packed away again I spend another age removing all of the felt and glue residue.
This year I thought I'd try something a bit different and use DAS modelling clay followed by sanding it smooth and finally painting. I did consider using some scatter material as well but the cost of getting a good decent level of coverage was too great, maybe next year.
First experiment with DAS clay, 500g doesn't seem to go very far but it has promise. The random hole in the baseboard is for the top of the Christmas tree stand to poke through.
Another 1kg of DAS clay just about covered everywhere it need to, a little more would have been nice but not worth going out and buying some. This was before sanding the clay smooth or painting.
Not the best of transitions from snow to tunnel but good enough for now. After sanding and a couple of coats of paint it looked a lot better.
The use of solid couplings instead of chain helps a lot due to the tightness of the curves.
Another improvement was to wire in a 5v USB cable instead of using up loads of batteries for the lights in the rock face and tunnel.
The railway backs onto a glass window so can be seen from the back, for this reason the tunnel is lined with slate and a wooden framework to give a rough look of a mine tunnel.
It kept my two year old niece happy for ages watching the train for Santa pass through the tunnel so well worth the extra effort.
Plenty of toy deliveries going on as the sleigh waits patiently in the siding.
A daft idea to begin with but now seems to have become a bit of a Christmas tradition, one that I am certainly not complaining about.
For the record I have suggested not doing a railway for the tree but get shot down very quickly by my wife and teenage boys so I must be doing something right.
Not so much a new railway this year but hopefully an improvement, at only 600mm x 900mm its not the biggest but we don't have the room for anything bigger.
For the last two years I have spent an age gluing down some loosely packed white felt between the rails and on the rest of the baseboard with a glue gun to mimic snow.
Whilst initially it looks ok, after a while it becomes tatty and is a magnet for Christmas tree needles which don't seem to want to let go, so each year before getting packed away again I spend another age removing all of the felt and glue residue.
This year I thought I'd try something a bit different and use DAS modelling clay followed by sanding it smooth and finally painting. I did consider using some scatter material as well but the cost of getting a good decent level of coverage was too great, maybe next year.
First experiment with DAS clay, 500g doesn't seem to go very far but it has promise. The random hole in the baseboard is for the top of the Christmas tree stand to poke through.
Another 1kg of DAS clay just about covered everywhere it need to, a little more would have been nice but not worth going out and buying some. This was before sanding the clay smooth or painting.
Not the best of transitions from snow to tunnel but good enough for now. After sanding and a couple of coats of paint it looked a lot better.
The use of solid couplings instead of chain helps a lot due to the tightness of the curves.
Another improvement was to wire in a 5v USB cable instead of using up loads of batteries for the lights in the rock face and tunnel.
The railway backs onto a glass window so can be seen from the back, for this reason the tunnel is lined with slate and a wooden framework to give a rough look of a mine tunnel.
It kept my two year old niece happy for ages watching the train for Santa pass through the tunnel so well worth the extra effort.
Plenty of toy deliveries going on as the sleigh waits patiently in the siding.
A daft idea to begin with but now seems to have become a bit of a Christmas tradition, one that I am certainly not complaining about.
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