Page 2 The Harbour

The second board will contain the Harbour including the the Town, Station and goods area (a lot to fit in a small space) so it needs careful planning, so here is the first sketch of the provisional layout.

I have not attempted a harbour before so it was important to get this right first. The boat is an Artitec HO scale trawler which will be the biggest vessel in the harbour so this was used to get an idea of the depth and dimensions needed.

The first stage was to seal all the joints to make it watertight ( a small lip needs to be added along the front) and then rough coating of paint so that no bare wood is showing and artificial water and colouring can be added later.

The next step was to build the harbour wall from Slaters dressed stone, this was given an initial coat of english grey and the textured with a second light brushing of darker grey. After that stanchions and a top edging strip were added to the wall

Because the narrow gauge boards sit directly above my main layout I have to build each one as a separate module and make sure that it is all wired and working correctly before it is put in place.

This is because once fitted access to the underneath is very limited, so here it is in place with the trackwork plus points complete and wired up.

The next step then was to add some water staining to the base of the harbour walls by dry brushing in some green and brown paints prior to adding the water resin.

Building Up The Backscene

Filling up the Dock

Using AK products I first filled the Dock area with Resin Water and once it had dried the boat was positioned and bearing in mind I have to reach over it to access the layout it was placed at one end and then a cardboard former was used to build up the water ripples around the outline so that it would not be fixed in place but would move if knocked.

The water effects took some time building up. Firstly water gel was used to build up the waveforms which dries transparent. The waves were then overpainted with water foam mix which had whites and grey paint mixed into it to give it colouring and finally the resin water had the grey-white mix dabbed on with a coarse sponge to show turbulence in the water, ( It’s quite a rough day in my dock today)

And, finally some Modelu Fishermen were placed on the scene although there is still work to do the boat needs finishing off (easy to do now that I can just lift it out) and there are some more fencing and bollards to fit

A Colourful Town

The next job to do was to start work on the Town, I wanted it to feature the painted cottages that are often seen in local seaside town so a row of these was made and painted using suitable pastel colours.

I also found some typical seaside boarding houses on-line at a bargain price so I bought the last three, they are of course identical so the next job will be to work on them to give them individual identities.

Finally the Water Tower was finished and placed, this type was designed especially for the Double Fairlie so that both boilers could be filled without moving the Loco.

This left space for a small building at the end so I used a Quarrymans cottage as the Station Masters House

From where he could keep an eye on the comings and goings at the station

I usually buy 3d printed figures for my layout nowadays as I can paint them to suit their use but the recent release of holiday makers by Bachmann was perfect for my needs so here they are heading for the beach.