Garden Railway Forum

When I asked at the big posh stationary shop in the township if they have foamboard they said they didn't and they didn't have clue where to get it from. 'Oh you'll have to go to the city for that,' was what they said.
Soooooo today I was at the local emporium/general store in town buying corrugated cardboard from their arts and crafts section and surprise surprise they had it, lots of it and it was cheap too.

Which means now I can finally get on with some buildings

I needed a tramway station for Kotanga township. Just a small one where folk can buy tickets and wait for the passenger train. Anything built to the old public works designs like that disappeared from the North Island ages ago, but after a search I found one sited in Otago in the South Island, nice and small with a postage stamp of a platform. The original is quite iconic these days so there are a lot of very clear photos from all angles which will help a lot with building a model.


I've done a little mucking about with the photo by the way. The station building may get a small awning yet; - unlike Otago it rains a lot in the Hauraki District!


Something tells me I'm going to know a lot about cutting out weatherboards from card by the time this town gets built.

Pukerangi?


Edit: Sorry - that came out ridiculously small.
Try this

Now that is a thought Phil. Pukerangi has a very nice station building too. I'd still want to keep the peaked roofed part of the building at Sutton though because I do like it and then I could add on perhaps three quarters of Pukerangi.

Basically like this.......

You could make a very quick start with Burinjuck :-)



David

Ha ha I like that David Could be good for a flag stop further down the line though.

I built this side tip wagon some time ago when I was flirting with the idea of working in 1/12th scale. I used an old photo I found on-line as a guide when I was building it so I don't have a drawing to share with you. Because of its size it spends all its time as a display piece and that's ok, but now what I need to do is make a few more to 5/8th scale or what ever it is I'm working in at the moment. These days I size my models according to the people who will be inhabiting my layout which makes sense in a way when you think about it.

NEWS FLASH: I've found my copy of, 'The Era of the Bush Tram in New Zealand' by Paul Mahoney. I thought it had gone missing when I moved house almost ten years ago now. It's so good to have it back in my hands again as it's pretty much the definitive book on NZ bush tramways.

My bedroom is in an absolute state at the moment because I'm moving everything around to set the layout boards in place; - or at least two of them for a start which is enough to make a beginning on the town, the station and the wharf.  I decided to move the orientation of the layout around so the boards with the mine and sawmill will have more room.

This plan is to no particular scale, but is mostly in proportion.  I'll sort out some proper measurements and tidy the plan up later as everything in my room is in a mess and I'm having a lot of problems with pain today.  As a guide to sizes the town board and the station board are both re-purposed panel doors with the town board being the more narrow of the two.


Yesterday I shifted a possibly illegal quantity of Lego and found somewhere else for it to live, then with my daughter's help shifted furniture and moved a chest of drawers she didn't want from her room to mine.  Those drawers are going to be very useful for me to store all my model making stuff in  :D

I tried out  the three Sylvanian Families houses/cottages I've got on the town board and not surprisingly discovered that they took up a lot of room.  I have one more house in transit so that's pretty much going to be the town.


The tramway track is going to be moved over to give a little more room for the actual street and the track that the 'Greendale Garratt' is sitting on at the moment won't be there.  The houses are going to be given wriggly tin roofs and painted & etc to look a little more like small town New Zealand houses.  They'll get fences and necessarily small front yards too.
At the far end of town there's going to be storage sheds and the engineering works in low relief to generally help to hide the wall behind them.


The small house on the end is going to be converted into a shop.  I purchased this very cheap from a toybox clearance and it had bits missing which makes it absolutely perfect for this purpose.  It will be getting a wriggly tin awning out front over the footpath as well as generally dressed up according to various old photos I've got.



The square of grassy looking stuff is sold for just $2.00 at our local general store and emporium down in the township.  I think it's something flower arranging folk use, but I think it looks like a shaggy Spring growth of 16mm scale grass.  I have three pieces at the moment, but will possibly get more once I've had an experiment with it.



These are cheap fake Christmas trees which are also sold by our local emporium.  I think I have around 10 in various sizes and I'm going to  use them as the basis for trees on the layout.  If they're left in the state which they are packed they look like..... well trees.  But what I mean is that I think they could be made to look very convincing with a little work.

When I was a teenager I used to have have my train board cantilevered over my little bed, where I made a nest with the neighbours' tabby cat.

David 1/2d

Well done Annie, a great start to your ambitious plans!
If I had been shifting heavy furniture around I would have pain the next day too.

Thanks Peter I should have mentioned that the layout will be occupying half my bedroom, - and yes my bedroom is very large which is one of the reasons why I purchased this house as I knew any bedroom of mine was going to end up with a layout in it sooner or later.
The road/rail bridge will hinge up to allow access from the non-layout half of my bedroom and the other bridge on the opposite side will hinge up so the door to the outside courtyard can be accessed.
In an ideal world I would be building the Kotanga Tramway out in the courtyard, but with this illness I have an indoor layout is the best choice for me.