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I decided I wanted to have a whack at ballasting, and whilst I was at it, I may as well try out other scenic techniques. In the past I’d made some very bad ‘grass’ areas using the basic scatter material, so this time I thought I’d see if I could do better.

I had a Noch starter kit, which included scatter, static grass, a grass mat, lichen, trees, and other random stuff.

So I took a spare bit of Plywood, and started work.

First of all, I glued down a piece of spare track, and painted it with my airbrush. I used some acrylic Burnt Umber, which was lightened down a touch to make it look more rusty.

Next, I used the age old method of PVA and Water in a 50:50 mix, with some isopropyl alcohol to make it flow.

Next up I laid some static grass. On one side I painted the base first a brown shade. The other side I didn’t bother. I basically wanted to see if it made much difference. It seems it did to a certain degree, but I think the shade of brown I used was a bit too brown, and not sufficiently earth-coloured. The reasoning behind doing it was that it gave a nice base, and didn’t show through as much as just plain baseboard.

I also stuck down a section of Scalescenes road, and edged it up roughly with static grass. Plus I stuck a couple of trees in.

On the whole it looks OK, and makes a good starting point. As it stands, it’s a bit sterile, and needs detail. The details should make it look better.

Not bad for a first attempt though!

I visited the International N Gauge show last week. There were some nice layouts there, and one major thing struck me – they nearly all formed a continuous loop. I think this makes for more operational interest, and allows for more interesting trains. Freight trains can rumble straight through the station, as can non-stopping express passenger trains. I’d otherwise not really be able to do those in the space I have. So now the track plan looks like this:

Which I’ve done by using a small extension on one end thus:

Admittedly, since I’ve done it, I’ve re-laid that section of track, as it wasn’t great. It’s now done in two continuous pieces rather than the four I first did it in.

So now I have a nice continuous loop, and the trains run around it full tilt quite happily.

I think I could do with a couple more power droppers elsewhere, just to give a good supply, but even then there’s no dropouts, and I ran the Dapol 67 round on a fairly low speed with no problems.

The extension won’t be scenic – it’s designed to be removed when not in use, so I’ll hide the edge with a bridge or something. But it’s all good progress.