Beaggleskkelly - Baby Wipe Box Diorama

[Alexander Court]

Its safe to say I've been quiet of late, I've been lurking, occasionally posting, but yea pretty quiet. Firstly, while I have had Bufferstop pass on thanks, I want to say how grateful me and Sid are to members and their donations, Christmas was made much more bearable thanks to them. I've had very little enthusiasm once online to post my progress with things, or even post a thankyou because it means thinking about what happened. The worst part of moving on is that I can't, I'm still waiting for his ashes back, for now it still feels like he has been taken from me almost as fresh as the day it happened, and when I think about it I think about those few days, how they were spent, and the last day, his last day, and the final moments.

But move on I must, or at least try to. The best thing I found to distract me was a model railway project, but everything as packed away from just after Christmas because Amelia had her Christening in mid january and family came to stay. I looked into micro layouts and then I looked at what I had. One thing I had in abundance was baby wipe boxes from tesco. But what to build?

In memory of Beagueen I had started painting locomotives into blue with red rods. A year or so before I had received a present from a friend of a modified ex thomas railroad 0-4-0 tank engine and had made a steam railmotor out of a four wheel coach and these were painted in this blue so I decided to paint more locos like this to make a fleet of industrials owned by a colliery, either as a private or ncb-ish livery. The locos would receive names. A smokey joe was to become 'Beag' which is Irish for small and part of his name, and the ex-thomas tank became 'Weans' which is a nickname we gave to the cat. His name for the vets was 'Davros' which is what my railroad bagnell diesel will become when painted blue. The first project though I will post pictures of before I start on the images of the wipebox is converting a dcc fitted bachmann junior charlie into a more detailed looking model with some seethrough plastic, a driver and some paint.

However for now, I'd just like to show you these photos of Beagueen, may he rest in peace, my beautiful boy. (you can go through the links to find a few more)









Thank you all for your help.
And sorry boy, we did all we could.
Alex.

[Alexander Court]

Right so I guess we better start with my repainted bachmann junior diesel. Formerly Number 2 'Charlie' it is now called Doowop after our other cat. Here is how it started out:



The first thing I did was remove the body and frame and then I took the body off the frame to examine the componants. It turned out that the front cab window piece was part of the cab roof as well as just the cab window fillers. I cut away the window fillers leaving the cab front windows in place because I had no way of manufacturing a matching piece with the windows cut out and I wouldn't notice them being painted black anyways. With that done I painted the whole locomotive blue. Once dry I cut up some see through plastic acetatey stuff from the packaging of a hornby wagon and made up some windows which I then glued into the cab:


And some shots of it in its basic blue:



My black paint is quite old but I still just about managed a coat of black around the edges of the frames though the red does show through when using a flash on a camera, again not overly fusse, I left the top surface of the frames red because I damn well felt like it Then I took a hornby driver from one of those detail packs and painted him up into his overalls:



The frames appear to be used for the saddletank as well? Because there were spasher/wheel arch things inside the cab which didn't need to be there,but they did allow me to glue my driver in with a little bit of raised height to make him decently visable in the cab:




As you can see in some of the earlier shots I painted the handrails gold and repainted the funnel bit as it got some blue on it:
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And a few more shots, I hope I did a decent job of making this loco look a bit more realistic even if not 100%




Anyways, Next Time we will get onto the beginning of the wipebox diorama, bear with me....

Alex

[whynot]

Nice work - look forward to the small diorama!

[Alexander Court]

Thanks whynot!

First up is this little pic of a class 08. I've had this body for a long time, well actually it belongs to Sid, and I decided to put it on the chassis of my other 08 I never run (the brms one) underneath it (with the help of some handy white tack). She calls him Splodge after his loose resemblance to Splatter from Thomas and the Magic Railroad.


So yea I took some track that was already painted up and put it in a baby wipe box and looked at how I could arrange stuff. I took the fuel road stuff I couldn't get to work on the Siddington Lake layout and then put it in the box, It didn't look great, I added a grounded tank for the diesel fuel (later decided that made it too crowded) but decided I needed a shed. I had previously cut some hornby shed things from the layour building packs in half for a previous project. I found the cut up bits and put them together with tape...no good, it looked too crowded and made one line hard up against the edge of the box to allow clearence for the shed. I had a stroke of genius, or mild unstupidity, I undid the tape, moved the pieces across eachother and redid them so that the shed was narrower, and this is how it ended up looking:





I also test viewed my repainted stock, including a wagon and an lms brake I've repainted and hope to get NCB transfers for to make it look like something I've seen on the internet.




From above you can see roughly where things will go, I decided it would be in the corner of a colliery, just at the edge of the complex, surrounded by a hill that its cut into, so there will be a wall along the back and one end of the box and some grass above those or just behind to hide the 2d-ness and then a backscene I had spare behind.






A couple of shots of the repainted stock on the Siddington Lake layout:





And a few last shots of stuff in the wipebox:




And that's all for this post...why is it being made at almost 2.00am? Those who've had babies will know.

Alex.

[nickbrad]

A good use of boxes that would otherwise end up in the recycling bin, there's nothing to stop you expanding with further boxes. it's a natural progression on the box file layout idea.

As for the Junior Charlie, I have a couple to do myself, it's just a case of motivating myself to continue on with it.

[Alexander Court]

A good use of boxes that would otherwise end up in the recycling bin, there's nothing to stop you expanding with further boxes. it's a natural progression on the box file layout idea.

Well the lack of fishplates and the no electrics might hinder it a bit but I do plan in future to make a couple more different dioramas of different things perhaps. The space is super limiting, there's not much you can do with just the length of an R601.

As for the Junior Charlie, I have a couple to do myself, it's just a case of motivating myself to continue on with it.

I still have a bagnall to repaint blue to become Davros but I shall have to wait until we have moved house before I get that sorted.

Thanks for the input.
Alex.

[Alexander Court]

So anyways, once I had the plan roughly worked out I was time to sort out the box. I started by attaching some card from another source to the two long flaps on the top of the box to create a single lid and then drew out a new flap on the front of the box which I then cut. I used my Hornby Dublo book to help glue the flaps.




Then it was time to test fit the scenery. The shed as you can see was made better by taking the plastic end pieces that had been cut to the right shape and attaching a card template to the front of it the same shape and something similar was done to the rear but a full wall was put over the end instead.


I then tested out the backscene that I had but at this time it was not quite right as the plain blue bit came up too high and the sky was out the top of the box.


I fixed this for the time being by folding the plain blue bit up as far as I needed behind the rest of the backscene to make the clouds visable.




And here is a picture of the Bagnall 'Davros' on the diorama, waiting for its repaint.


Alex

[Alexander Court]

With the main structure of the shed complete I then decided to make it look more realistic, this was the most expensive part of the whole diorama. I went to the library and printed out some wordsworth grey bricks in black and white. These sheets would also be used to make the walls. It took one or two attempts to get right but I slowly got all the pieces cut correctly and put them in place to see what they would look like:





One thing I was dreading was the roof, but luckily my attempt at roofing for the october-december competition had given me some practice. First up I used some contact adhesive and white tack and fitted some wooden coffee stirrers as a central roof thing:




I then cut up more stirrers to make the rest of the roof framing:



I was worried about all the tiles falling through so I used a piece of paper underneath them. I did originally score lines on long strips to make it look like tiles but the card was too thin and I was left with a lot of individual tiles, and I thought "this.....could take a while"....






And here it is with the roof assembled:




It took a while to mix a decent grey paint but black was a little blue and the white was a little watery and so yea eventually I got a mix right and started painting the roof:






I used some of my leftover paint to paint the base of the baby wipe box:


The paint was almost dry when I decided to attach the wall papers:


I didn't just have outer walls covered in papers but the inner walls too:











I cut some of the edge bits of the wordsworth print outs to make the bits that go over the windows (ok not great) to make them seem less flat:



And for the end of this update here is a pic of the buffers, cut down to fit inside the shed by removing all the stuff from the back and glued to the rails which have had the fishplates removed:


Alex

[35011 GSN]

Great work you've done so far! can't wait to see more!

[Admin4]

really interesting project, i have one of the bachmann junior locos in my stash to pull apart for a project so was interesting to see what you have done with yours.

[whynot]

Coming along nicely! I like the roofing.

[Alexander Court]

really interesting project, i have one of the bachmann junior locos in my stash to pull apart for a project so was interesting to see what you have done with yours.

Mine was a little crude but it has worked out alright.

Coming along nicely! I like the roofing.

Thanks, I didn't think the roof would work out as well as it did.

Alex

[Alexander Court]

So where was I?

Ah yes, the box was painted, the track layout was rehearsed and the she was pretty much finisshed. I added in some card for the walls to see how it would look and had the sky resting in place, so it was time to assemble it all and test display some stock:







For years I've had a broken Triang Standard Track Bufferstop which couldn't be used because the base was broken and I'm sure I've used it on other layouts glued to the track but this time i glued it down much neater:



I decided that if I was to do it mildly realistically i would need a concrete base thing for my engine shed and coal stage and water tower. So I cut some card and shaded it in with some sketch pencils. I placed the building on and drew round it and the tracks too and used the two widest 0-4-0s I had to check clearences. This is how it turned out:




I then placed it on the layout space to see what it would look like:



Happy with this, I glued the sky backscene onto the walls of the box:



And thats it for now.

Alex

[Alexander Court]

With the shed base finished and the base for the coal stage and water tower being made I mocked up again with the finished brick paperd walls in place:





Time came to glue down the concrete bases I had made:




I then put glue down where I needed to and then placed the track onto it and used a mix of very fine and not fine ballast poured over the whole thing and then tipped out all the loose stuff, neatening up some areas and was left with this:





While tidying up I found a GBL magazine mallard I had been sent by a friend and decided to shove it into the shed for some photos:





And then I decided to get some shots of possibly my rarest ready to run locomotive:





And a few more shots showing some close ups and further aways:









So there we leave it for now, next up there's grasswork.

Alex

[35011 GSN]

Mallard looks quite at home there!