Weathering the track

When I was satisfied that the track on the layout worked as it should, both from an electrical and an operational point of view, the next step was the weathering and ballasting (in that order). 

The first job was to remove the plastic webbing from between the sleepers on the C&L plain track. With the track already glued down, the only practical way to do this is to use a very sharp No. 11 Swann Morton blade on a scalpel handle. To me one of the key features of bullhead track is the fact that there is normally some air space between the top of the ballast and the bottom of the rail. It is much easier to achieve this if the plastic webbing is removed, but don’t do this until the track is glued down, otherwise the sleeper spacing could be compromised. Removing the webbing also helps considerably when it comes to ballasting.

Having vacuumed the track to ensure that it was clean and free of dust and other detritus, I then masked off the plastic sleepers on the C&L sections and spray painted the rails and copperclad sleepers with a  primer (Halfords aerosol). When that was dry, the rails were sprayed with an all-over brown 'base' colour.

The next job was to weather most sleepers individually with a mix of matt enamel paints. Some of the most useful Humbrol colours to mix are track colour, leather, white and grey. Humbrol No. 42 'leather' is a useful colour for mixing with white and grey to get a light grey-brown so typical of old weather-worn sleepers.

Some sleepers will exhibit the ‘just laid’ look of fresh timbers soaked in creosote where spot re-sleepering may have taken place, although most will have weathered to a mid-browny colour with a tinge of grey. Other timbers may have a tinge of green to represent moss growth. I cannot deny that this takes a long time, but I feel the results are worth it when the trackwork is finally completed. The best way to be sure of the correct hue on wooden sleepered bullhead track is to go out and have a look at a branch line or preserved railway.

When I finished weathering the sleepers and point timbers, I re-painted the sides of the rails individually using a mixture of enamels such as 'sleeper grime' and 'leather'. This gives the light yellowy-brown shade where brake dust has merged with general rust. Longer term rust on areas such as sidings is depicted using a darker shade. Where locos stand various deposits are dropped, which can give the track a dark oily sheen. Check rails on pointwork tend to weather to a darker rust, so less of the 'leather' is used here. The same colour applied to the rails is also painted on to the chairs in which they sit.

I feel that I should have fitted some cosmetic fishplates. Brassmasters make some good examples but I have not got around to fitting them yet.  

I added point rodding on Bleakhouse Road, but made the mistake of having virtually finished the rest of the track and scenery before doing so. Point rodding is best added at the stage when just the track has been laid and definitely before ballasting or adding any scenery. The rodding is cosmetic only. I used Model Signal Engineering cast whitemetal guides, with M.S.E. and Brassmasters cranks and compensators and 0.45mm brass wire from Eileens Emporium or Alan Gibson for the rodding itself. It's definitely worth consulting prototype photographs or going out and observing the real thing. There is a useful article on making 4mm point rodding actually work by Steve Hall in a past edition of Model Railway Journal, which also gives much useful prototype information. 

Ballasting

With all painting done, I moved on to the ballasting. This is another activity where I believe that you need to take your time to achieve the best results. Most railways in the 1950s and early 1960s still had labour- intensive PW gangs every few miles so could afford to maintain the formation in good condition with neat ballast shoulders. 

I have tried most methods of ballasting 4mm track in my time and strangely enough, for me at any rate, the most successful method is also the most time-consuming. Having earlier removed the plastic webbing between the  sleepers using a sharp Swann Morton No.11 scalpel, the next stage is to carefully paint white PVA glue with a fine (but ultimately sacrificial) 00 or 000 paintbrush in between the sleeper bays about 3 or 4 bays at a time. Having already prepared a mixture of ‘OO’ and ‘N’ Woodland Scenics ‘light buff’ ballast, this is now sprinkled onto the glued area. The buff coloured ballast is more typical of the area that I model and is certainly better than the grey 'Meldon' stone which turns green as soon as it gets damp.

It is not advisable to paint more sleeper bays than this in one go as the glue tends to start to go off fairly quickly and you will find that the ballast will not stick properly. I usually found I could treat about one foot of track in one sitting before I felt the need to go off and do something else! When the glue has dried (leave it a few hours or overnight if possible), the surplus is vacuumed up and you should be left with neatly ballasted track. If you are careful, you can salvage the vacuumed ballast from the vacuum cleaner, but I tend not to bother and try not to be too extravagant when laying it in the first place. 

If there is a ballast shoulder, this method needs the cork underlay to be chamfered and shaped exactly to the shape of the ballast shoulder. If there is no ballast shoulder, then just lay the ballast in the required area. The sleepers on C&L and SMP flexible track are quite thin and equate to one layer of ballast using the above method. Deeper sleepers, such as those used by the P4 Track Company, who's products I am using on Callow Lane Goods, may require different methods.

One scenic feature that can be added when ballasting are any weeds growing up out of the ballast. I have used a variety of ground foam scenic products from the likes of Heki, Greenscene etc.,  together with strands of bleached and dyed carpet underlay and Heki or Noch ‘puff’ grass, more of which anon. Individual strands of moss from my front lawn were also used to represent some of the larger weeds. 

I like to get the track and ballasted areas as complete as possible before serious scenic work starts around it as it is easy to damage nicely grassed areas adjacent to the track if you are only at that stage starting to ballast the track. 

One area to sort out before ballast is laid, though, is the cess. This is the term for the walkway or path for railway staff adjacent to most running lines. It is generally sufficient to leave a linear space approx 8 – 10mm of cork underlay next to the track for this purpose. If you need to depict a deeper ballast shoulder, the underlay should be trimmed at a 45 degree angle and the actual surface of the baseboard can be used for the surface of the cess. 

In real life, the cess was usually made up of very fine chippings laid on bare ground. It was often so flat and even that you could ride a bicycle along it. I usually use very fine ground up foam, scattered on a bed of smooth PVA glue, or very fine dust from the bag that the Woodland Scenics ballast comes in. You could also use ash or sprinkle talc or similar onto a painted or glued surface. 

Trees 

Most of the medium size trees on Bleakhouse Road are made up from pieces of ‘Sea Foam’. This stuff is also sold under other names such as ‘forest in a box’. Whoever you buy it from, it certainly has great potential to make delicate, realistic looking trees. 

I usually find that I need to assemble a tree from various sprigs of ‘Sea Foam’. The raw material tends to come slightly (or significantly) curved, so some doctoring will be required to get a proper tree shape. It is best to experiment until you arrive at something that you find pleasing. There will probably be one larger piece that you can use as the main trunk and to which you will add sprigs for branches. 

Where I join pieces of ‘Sea Foam’ together, I strengthen the joints with fine brass wire. Additionally, it is often necessary to give a greater girth to the bottom of the trunk. This is easily done by winding a few pieces of irregularly torn masking tape around the trunk and sealing it in with a mixture of Polyfilla and PVA glue. 

When the whole tree skeleton is structurally complete, it is advisable to give it a quick spray with a dark grey/brown colour from a suitable aerosol. When the paint has completely dried, the foliage can be added by spraying the skeleton with extra firm hold hairspray and dipping it into an old margarine tub of fine ground scenic foam of your desired hue. Alternatively you can apply foliage matting from the likes of Woodland Scenics, Heki, Green Scene etc. on top of the Sea Foam skeleton. 

If possible, plant the ‘Sea Foam’ tree on the layout permanently. This is again aided by the use of a small length of brass rod (1mm would do) which is glued into the base of the trunk and a small hole pre-drilled in the ground. 

Whilst the ‘Sea Foam’ is very delicate, it is sufficiently flexible to withstand the odd brush with a careless hand or wrist. Some recommend preserving or hardening the ‘Sea Foam’ and this may be a good idea if you can find a suitable substance with which to do this, but I have not had any trees go brittle on me just yet.

Most of the trees on Engine Wood are removable and are based on Woodland Scenics whitemetal tree skeletons. These have been augmented, especially at the base of the trunks, with an addition of the Polyfilla/PVA mix to thicken up the trunks. They are painted in a variety of grey/green/brown shades, after which the foliage is then added. I initially used clumps of rubberised horsehair, teased out and then sprayed with 'Display Mount' adhesive and dipped in an old margarine tub of mixed Woodland Scenics or Heki fine sponge flock material. This was the method recommended in Barry Norman's book. However, since then I have used other methods on Bleakhouse Road, such as 'Hekiflor'. This is a foliage mat, which gives a finer overall appearance and I have since gone back and changed some of Engine Wood's trees to this type of foliage.

My preferred method for removable trees is to construct a metal skeleton from copper wire and cover the main trunk and branches with a mixture of Polyfilla and PVA. The finished skeleton is painted in the same way and clumps of foliage glued on afterwards. It is possible to get a very fine, delicate foliage appearance by using teased-out theatrical hair and the very fine foliage scatter. 

Other scenic effects include bushes and hedgerows, made in a similar way to the trees. Wild flowers can be reproduced by planting short strands of sisal string and painting the tips or applying a small amount of coloured fine foam and vacuuming the rest away when the glue is dry.

There is a fair amount of clumped long grass and weeds sprouting through the ballast or at the bases of buildings etc. This is old fashioned carpet underlay (which you can now buy in model shops or at exhibitions specifically for scenic use) or Heki puff grass.

Other scenic features 

‘Bleakhouse Road’ is set in a flat landscape, so there are no major hills or mountain ranges to model. The Peat Works private siding and the two sidings in the B.R. goods yard drop slightly below the level of the main line. As the baseboards were generally open frame, a sub-base of plywood or card was glued under the gaps at a lower level. The ground level was then made up by gluing corrugated cardboard formers between the frames and screwed up damp newspaper between the formers. Old newspaper or ‘J’ cloths soaked in a mixture of woodwork glue and Polyfilla were laid on top to form the ground surface. When that lot had set hard a further layer of glue and Polyfilla mix was painted on top to give added strength.

The crossing keeper’s cottage at Ham Lane has a ‘Pendon style’ sub-base, so the ground level was built up to accommodate this. Both ‘Ham Lane’ and ‘Station Lane’ level crossings have card surfaces, painted a weathered grey to represent old tarmac. 

The drainage canal or rhyne, so typical of the Somerset Levels and other flat areas, runs alongside the railway before turning away to the south. The water effect was achieved using a 4 inch wide strip of Perspex, which was painted a mixture of dirty grey, black and green on the underside and set into the scenery. This type of Perspex comes with a protective film of clear plastic, which should not be removed at this stage. 

It was important to get the relative heights of the water surface and the railway correct, as the track was not particularly elevated above the rhyne. The banks of the rhyne were built up using ‘sculpted’ polystyrene foam ceiling tiles covered in the usual newspaper, woodwork glue and Polyfilla combination. 

Road surfaces were made up out of card cut to the size of the roadway and laid in position. The level of the card surfaces had to be carefully matched to the rail height at both level crossings. It is important that the road surface is just below the level of the top of the rails, to enable track cleaning to take place without scratching or marking the road surface. Although I have tried the ‘talc on wet grey paint’ method on Engine Wood, the road surfaces on Bleakhouse Road are just painted with enamels and suitably weathered afterwards. 

The cobbled areas at the back of the station and in the Peat Works were done using Wills moulded plastic cobbles set into Polyfilla. Irregular shapes were cut out of individual Wills sheets and joined together to produce a continuous cobbled surface before being glued onto the baseboards. Where separate cobbled sheets do not exactly match, the gap has been filled with Polyfilla, smoothed down and individual cobbles scribed on. Weed growth between the cobbles completes the picture. 

Since the photographs were taken, a backscene has now been added. This was hand painted in water colours directly onto thick white card, which in turn is mounted onto 2mm MDF fixed to the baseboards. The center section of the backscene is removable for transport and also helps to disguise the baseboard joint, as it straddles both boards. The backscene depicts a view of the Polden Hills, looking north from the Levels near High Ham.