Wednesday 19 February 2014

Picture a Wall


A magazine deadline looms, and in order to show off the Weidknecht Decauville to its best I have started to make a simple diarama. I decided initially to have a vaguely industrial background, and while looking up the transport museum at Pithiviers, France, on Street View, I happened on the 60cm tramway a short way up the Route D’Angerville.

It seems to me to be interesting without clamouring for attention over anything I put in front of it for photographic purposes (this will be a lasting photo backdrop). A little behind the camera position on the Google screen-grab is a braced telegraph pole that I’ll use in preference to the one in shot. Beyond the house along the road is an interesting crossing (60cm v metre gauge) which will have to wait for another time.

The wall is 6mm ply, and just visible about a third of the way up is a strip of Slaters embossed brick. The rendering is coving glue, pushed up at the bottom with a fingernail. Some Evergreen 3.5mm half-round strip, separated into 10mm pieces, is superglued to the top (yes, that’s not as wide as the ply, but that’s not visible from ‘normal’ photographic angles – eye level). Mostly acrylic paints are used a la Pendon, with Citadel wash, and there is very small piece of foliage at this stage which is out of shot but is ‘Poison Ivy’ from The Army Painter Battlefields range. More ivy will be modelled, and I’ll write that up separately and actually get it into the photograph!

The baseboard is to be a melamine-covered MDF shelf, as I decided not to spend a huge amount of time building something from ply and pine. I'm going to follow Gordon Gravett's Modelling Grassland and Landscape Detailing (Wild Swan) as I produce the grass embankment and roadside. Track will be soldered to PCB for the most part, although I may well model some 'exposed' sleepers at one end.