Here is the inital trackplan laid out on "Blue Foam"
This is Phil and Ashley doing the first cut of the plywood.
Here is the finished module, less the foam top.
Here is the trackplan on the foam which has been cut and fitted to the plywood sub-frame
Phil then sets to work doing the wiring... I'm too busy making brews and photographing the hard work :)
The track is now laid and the basic scenery colour "Vogel" has been applied.
The trackwork was then finished (adding the last 10cm or so of ME code 55 at the ends onto wood bases cut into the foam). This provided a Free-moN compliant interface, although based on feedback from Europeans we decided to bring the track right to the edge of the board. See a blog post about discussions on the standards we almost used :)
We (well Phil) then finished off wiring the frogs (so we can switch the frog polarity) and the last track feeders. We will probably add point motors later...
Ok at this stage we had a decision to make, doing the ballasting. I've ballasted plenty of track in my time, so wanted to try something different. About 2 years ago I bought some Simply Glues "Simply Road Base" in grey and clay. I used them on some T-TRAK modules and was very happy with the product. As Nowa Nowa featured a limestone like fine ballast I thought I would try using the Simply Glues product. It was a bit tedious to apply, but far less messy than normal ballasting ans almost as quick. I was very happy with the results, in particular the texture for N scale, but I wasn't completely happy with the colour...
I also ran out of product, and still had a large area to do where the goods shed goes.
To start modifying the colour I airbrush Tamiya Dark Sand in between the tracks (see the picture above) and on the ballasted sides of the tracks, this helped a lot and gave the impression of the rust and train dirt being darker near the rails.
The construction of the goods and gangers shed will be covered in a blog post.
At this stage I was happy I was getting good textures and tones, if not the exact colour I wanted....
