The Caffeinated Engine Driver

It's been two years since I last blogged about Jerusalem, and almost two years since I started looking at modelling in OO9. In all that time Jerusalem has hardly been used, and in fact for over half of that time the layout has been stored in the loft to give me more space to model other things. While I enjoyed building Jerusalem and learnt a lot I'm happy to admit that there were many things that were wrong with it. The curves were two tight for a mainline, as seen by the problems with the carriage and the tunnel, the track was badly laid which led to some derailments and the points didn't work well as I relied on the blades to switch the power. In fact the whole layout concept was a serious compromise.

If you remember back to the very beginning of Jerusalem the choice of building in N gauge was purely motivated by me wanting a continuous run layout and not having the room to build such a layout in OO gauge. In retrospect this was a mistake as I'm much happier working in 4mm to the foot scale or above than the 2mm to the foot of N gauge. So when tidying the loft last weekend I made the decision that given all the problems with Jerusalem I was never going to go back to it, and will probably never return to such a small scale either, so the layout was simply taking up valuable storage space.


So as you can see the layout has come down from the loft and anything useful has been stripped from the layout, and the board has now been dumped in the garage ready to go out with the rubbish (or to the tip if I can't be bothered breaking it down further). Some of the parts, like the trees, might be reusable in 4mm scale but I'll hold on to the rest as well as there is no resale value in a few painted animals and some dry stone walling. The loco and rolling stock though are likely to be sold to provide funds for more modelling as it seems silly having them sat collecting dust when I have no sentimental attachment to them.

I've never been lucky enough to see a badger, and if the current government has its way, the chance of me ever seeing one will be very low, so I'll have to make do with the next best thing; a badger roaming free in Jerusalem.

The badger is from the same Langley Models pack (A64) as the squirrel I added to Jerusalem back in September. In contrast to the squirrel I couldn't get away with painting the badger in a single colour although I did start with the same grey primer.

Because I'm modelling in N gauge (2mm to the foot) this badger really is tiny and I had to use the smallest paintbrush I own along with tiny amounts of paint, but I'm really happy with how it turned out. It looks much better in real life and will be a nice addition to the layout once I've figured out where I want him to sit.

I'm still to decide exactly what business S. A. Tan and Sons are in, but maybe they are running a woollen mill?


I didn't want to fill the layout with sheep, so I've used just three from the pack of eight I bought from Langley Models (model number A70). For those that are interested (and to make sure I can remember) they were painted by first spraying with Humbrol grey primer before the face and shadow detail was painted black (Tamiya flat black). The wool was then dry brushed using first white (Tamiya) and then Ivory (Model Color).

If you look closely you might also be able to spot the squirrel.

Today’s post was going to be all about sheep, but just before 1pm the post arrived with my repaired locomotive, so I can finally show you a working passenger train.

I thought I'd go for a video rather than a photo and while the train is probably moving a bit to fast and the video quality is poor you should still get the general idea.

British Railways are sorry to announce that the introduction of a passenger service through Jerusalem, as well as all goods services, will be delayed for an unknown period due to a failed locomotive.

As some of you will know I've recently had a birthday, and many of the presents were train related and will probably turn up on this blog at some point. One of those presents was a Mk 1 57ft suburban brake (Graham Farish model 374-312A) which, for the first time, would have brought a passenger service to Jerusalem. Unfortunately the failure of my only locomotive has brought a halt to "playing trains" for a while -- modelling will continue though.


The locomotive failed almost five months to the day after I bought it and so fortunately it is still under warranty. It has run perfectly, in both directions, since it arrived, at least until Friday last week. The first sign that there was anything wrong was when I tried running it in reverse; it had a pronounced wobble and was making a weird clicking noise. Strangely it ran forward without any issues what so ever. From a quick examination, it appeared that as the wheels rotated the rod connected the middle wheel and valve gear wasn't moving properly as the vertical piece it is connected to wasn't moving at all (it should swing left and right). I was going to see if running it forward for a few minutes would help it settle, but it hadn't moved more than about six inches when the connecting rod popped off (as you can see in the photo). Given that I have no idea what the underlying problem was or how to repair the obvious problem properly it has now been boxed up and sent off for repair under warranty. Hopefully it will return soon.

The coach is, however, excellent and I really am looking forward to being able to run it properly; I've been slightly lucky in that I didn't have anything anywhere near as long as the coach to check clearances when building the landscape and it only just clears the tunnel mouth... but just is enough. I will, however, definitely be more careful with clearances on future layouts, although if I can avoid such tight 1st radius curves in future then the problem will (at least partially) disappear.

As you can see, other than some weathering, the articulated flatbed truck I started to build from a Langley Models kit a few posts ago is now complete. The final step was to glaze the windows.

Given the small size of the windows, and the relative thickness of the castings, it was obvious that sticking some clear plastic inside the cab wouldn't work at all. One alternative would have been to try and cut some plastic to fit flush inside the frames but that also didn't seem like a sensible route. Fortunately there is a much easier alternative; Micro Kristal Klear.

Microscale Industries' Micro Kristal Klear (I bought mine from Eileen's Emporium) is a PVA like glue that is designed to both dry clear and to not discolour clear plastic. This makes it perfect for gluing windows in place, but it can also be used to make the windows. You simply use a cocktail stick to smear a small amount around the edge of the window frame, and then draw the glue across the opening to make a thin film. You can see this in action above, after I'd just done the first window. Once dry the glue is clear and the window is glazed.

Having built a loading dock alongside the factory siding I need something to load. Fortunately I'd already sourced something appropriate on my trip to Edinburgh.

When I arrived in Edinburgh I had the afternoon to kill, so rather than heading straight to my hotel I took a slight detour to visit Harburn Hobbies. My reason for visiting the shop was to see their Harburn Hamlet range of N gauge accessories, and after careful consideration I came away with a stack of wooden crates (item number HN 606).

While the stack looks quite good placed on the loading dock, it is also perfectly sized to fit within the open goods wagons meaning I can move it around the layout if I want to. Now of course I need to populate the layout with workers to make the scene more realistic.

I've now added some scenery to all of Jerusalem (I haven't necessarily finished doing this but it now looks a lot more natural) and while I'll probably go into the details in later posts I thought I'd show you roughly what I see when I sit back and enjoy the view from my study chair.


This isn't a perfect copy of my view due to the lens on the camera curving the image somewhat (also it is slightly overexposed so the grass is darker), but it should give you a fairly good idea of what I'm currently looking at.

Now I know that when it comes to seeing shapes in clouds (which is apparently called Nephelococcygia) not everyone always sees the same thing. So does anyone else see Max von Sydow's excellent portrayal of Ming the Merciless from the 1980 film version of Flash Gordon (the one with the excellent Queen soundtrack) in this bit of sky from the temporary clouds on Jerusalem?


Personally I can see the eyebrows, moustache, beard and the cowl around the back of his head. Can anyone else see this or am I just going insane?

Not a train, or railway, in sight in today's post. What you are looking at is the road leading away from the factory which bends to the right over the railway and out of Jerusalem. As you can see I've done some more scenic work, specifically hiding the end of the drystone wall and grassing the slope to the left of the road. The main new item is the speed limit sign. Unlike the "Beware of the Trains" sign, I bought this one which is from a set of pre-1960's road signs made by Ancorton Models.

The previous post was meant to be more than just a single photo, there was meant to be some textual content as well; specifically details on how I made the "Beware Of The Trains" sign. Unfortunately I managed to press Publish instead of Preview! So here are the details behind the making of the sign.

While I'm sure I could have bought a Beware of the Trains sign I decided that it was simple enough for me to have a go at making my own; after all it's only two colours, how hard can it be. The major problem is the size of the sign. The sign is approximately 3.5mm wide by 2.5mm tall. This means that the large letters are written in a 2.4pt font! Given that 10pt font is considered small you should be able to get a good idea just how small the letters are. If not then these photos should help.


The first photo really gives a good sense of the scale of the sign, it also shows that laser printed ink actually rubs off quite quickly! To stop this happening I painted on a thin layer of Humbrol enamel satin varnish before I tried handling the printed area. The printed and varnished paper was then stuck to some thin black cardboard (it's probably around 200gsm) and then carefully cut out using a sharp knife.

I made the post from some 0.6mm wire (the same stuff I used on the trees). I cut a piece about 1.4cm long to give me a 5 foot post (at 2mm to the foot that is 1cm) plus 4mm to go into the layout surface. I held the wire in a pin vice while I painted it with Tamiya flat black. Once the paint was dry, I used a cocktail stick to put a tiny drop of superglue on the back of the sign and then glued it to the post. Once the glue had set I gave the whole thing another thin coat of satin varnish. The final step was to drill a small hole (0.65mm drill bit) into the layout and slide the post in.

If you fancy making your own sign then feel free to re-use the SVG file I created (I've included both a white on black and a black on white sign). I did try converting the SVG to a more common format (like a PNG or a PDF) but in everycase the converted file lost too much detail making the small letters unreadable. I'd suggest opening the file with Inkscape and printing at the highest quality setting your printer can manage.

Given that I'm not modelling a windswept Hebridean island (although there is at least one person who does) Jerusalem is going to need some trees. Now I've never been a fan of ready to plant trees. They are either conifers modelled as perfect cones or deciduous trees that look more like a green ball on a stick. Even the kits for building trees don't really inspire me; the trunk looks very plasticy and the resulting tree is still very regular looking. What I wanted was some straggly looking trees that were all different but similar.

I've recently been reading through John de Frayssinet's excellent Sceneic Modelling book in which he suggests using sagebrush to create very natural looking trees. Now firstly I don't have any sagebrush plants and secondly John models in 4mm to the foot, and so his trees would be a little big for Jerusalem. It did, however, get me thinking that maybe there was something in the garden that would work.

As this year we have had a reasonable summer we have done quite a bit of work in the garden. This has included removing a number of shrubs that had gone berserk at the back of the garden. I'm not entirely sure what the shrub is but it spreads by putting out underground runners and these runners, cut into bits, looked fairly tree like to my eyes. As the roots went into the recycling bin I cut off the bits that looked promising and left them to dry out. Once dry they were microwaved for about 30 seconds to make sure they (and anything on them) were very dead.

So, yesterday, armed with some dead roots, I set about making some trees. This is essentially a simple four step process, which you can probably figure out from these handy step by step illustrations.


Firstly you need to find the appropriate bits of root. Each root then has a pin inserted into its base to allow it to be easily added to the layout; I used some 0.6mm wire that I had laying around and drilled a 0.65mm hole in each root. The wire was fixed with a small dab of superglue and left to dry. Once the roots were ready I added them to a temporary base (just a push fit into a hole, no glue). The tops of the trees were then sprayed with a matt varnish (specifically Winsor & Newton Artists' Matt Varnish). This makes them very sticky at which point I rolled the tree in Woodland Scenics Medium Green Course Turf. I then allowed the varnish to dry before repeating the process at least once to add more body to the foliage. When I was happy with the tree I then sprayed it with varnish again and sprinkled over some Woodland Scenics Green Blend Blended Turf to add a little colour variation. If you ignore drying time each tree probably took less than five minutes to make.

Once the trees are fully dry I then touch up any areas of the trunk where the bark has rubbed off with small dabs of RailMatch acrylic Sleeper Grime which seems to match the trunk colour quite well. A small hole (0.65mm again) is then drilled in the layout and the tree carefully positioned. I'll probably glue the trees in eventually but for now they are just a push fit so that I can remove them to work on the grass underneath and around them. So here is another shot of the front right corner of the layout with the trees in place.

If you remember the back story for Jerusalem started with the following mumbo jumbo

It's 1955 and little Johnny has borrowed his Dad's camera for a day of trainspotting. He isn't expecting to see much as the sleepy branch-line near where he lives isn't exactly a hive of activity. Having settled himself on a sunny bank it isn't long before the distinctive sound of a hard working steam engine echos down the valley and within a few minutes the train emerges from under the nearby road bridge and into view. A quick press of the shutter and Johnny captures for posterity the first visit of the newly built 82026 to his sleepy corner of England.

At the time I didn't even have a track plan and certainly not a working layout and so I illustrated the post with a black and white photo of the locomotive and bridge just sat on my desk. Well here is the current state of play which I think is a much better match to the description.


The photo is straight from the camera without any digital messing about, which shows how even with the slightly large clouds everything comes together quite nicely. As you can see so far I've only worked on the area to the right of the road, and even then it is only turf and so looks more like a nicely mown lawn than naturally occurring grass. It will look more natural when I bring out the electrified tea strainer!

In case you are interested all the materials, but one, used to create the grass came from the Woodland Scenics landscape learning kit, but so that I don't forget exactly what was used the full list is:

• Green Blend Blended Turf
• Medium Green Coarse Turf
• Medium Green Clump-Foliage
• Yellow Flowering Foliage (this wasn't in the kit)

I've finally got fed up of looking at the brown backscene and so have temporarily brought in some clouds.

A few months ago I test printed a couple of options for the backscene as photobox were offering exceptionally cheap poster printing. I printed two options on the same poster, the photo in use here is actually from a panorama I took on Skye a few years ago. The second sky I experimented with was courtesy of Adrian. Unfortunately neither of us were happy with how either sky turned out; the clouds on this one are a bit big, but the colouring is slightly better than on Adrian's (not Adrian's fault but due to the low resolution file I printed as we had problems transferring a better copy).

So while these clouds are only temporary I think you'll agree that they brighten the layout considerably, and show that when we do manage to figure out a better photo then the approach of printing as a matt photo poster will give me a good backscene that will complement the rest of the scenery quite well.

You can also see in this photo that I've finished the factory yard, at the third attempt, with the surface being created and painted in the same way as the access road.

Just a quick post today to show a couple of features I've recently completed.

Firstly I've re-done the road surface. If you remember from the previous post I painted the road grey and then washed it with thinned down black paint. This kind of worked but left the road quite black, almost looking as if it had just been rained on. Having repainted it a couple of times I still wasn't happy and so I had a look for a different solution. In the end I've gone with another Woodland Scenics product; Asphalt Top Coat. As the name suggests this is specifically designed as the top surface of a road. It is quite a thick paint that produces a fairly smooth level surface as it dries, so while I'm really happy with the colour and texture I might need to introduce a pot hole or two for realism.

As you can see I've now also painted and fitted the dry stone wall, and I hope you will agree that it looks a lot better than in it's unpainted form. In case I need to paint any more matching stone work in the future (or you wish to replicate the colouring) I first painted the entire wall with Tamiya Flat Black and then dry brushed on Woodland Scenics Stone Gray followed by Model Color Flat Earth, and finally Model Color Ivory. To take the shine off I then used a little Humbrol Smoke weathering powder. Having glued the wall in place I think it does a pretty good job of hiding the join between the land and the back scene (although I won't know for certain until I get the sky sorted). In fact I've decided to add a wall on the other side of the bridge for the same reason, although that wall will in turn be hidden by some shrubs, but that is a job for another day.

The problem with Blake's poem is that, other than the line "In England's Green and Pleasant Land", there is no clue as to the location of Jerusalem. Fortunately everyone knows that Yorkshire is God's own county, even Wikipedia gets it right (and no I didn't just edit the page), which allows us to narrow down our search slightly. Unfortunately, Yorkshire is still an awfully big place; if it was a country it would have been higher in the medals table at last years Olympics than Australia! Fortunately this recently taken photo helps us place it more accurately.

Given that we have two wagons, one from Sheffield and one from Pensitone, I think Jerusalem must be somewhere in my local area!

As you may remember from the track plan for Jerusalem, there is a single point on the scenic section which leads into the factory siding. I'd also decided that the point was going to be modelled as being manually operated and had even bought and painted a cosmetic point lever. Well I've now glued the point lever in place, although I still need to add some ground cover around it to make it look more natural.

Now the point lever is in place you can see how the manual operation of the point looks in this video. Personally I think the connecting rod sliding under the base of the point lever is a nice touch.

As you can see I've now expanded the road to form the factory yard which has allowed me to ballast the factory siding as well. Unfortunately I'm going to have to re-do part of the yard surface...... again.

To make sure the factory doesn't appear to float in mid air, I needed to embed it into the yard surface. On the first attempt I ended up placing the factory too far from the siding, leaving a rather huge gap from the loading bays to the wagons. By the time I realised this though the clay had dried solid and so I couldn't easily rectify the problem. To move the factory I had to cut out the rectangle of clay around it and start over.

Cutting out the first attempt, re-positioning the factory, and laying the new surface was easy, and everything looked great. Unfortunately I didn't do a very good job of smoothing out the new surface and levelling it with the first attempt. The result; a bumpy surface around the factory and an obvious straight line join between the two attempts. Of course I made sure you can't see these problems in the photo!

So I'm going to rub down the surface, and add a little more clay to smooth things out and to touch up a few places where the surface meets the factory wall then I'll repaint (hopefully with a slightly better colouring). Hopefully at that point I won't be embarrassed to show a photo that includes more of the yard surface.

So I've bitten the bullet and built the access road. There were two reasons I wasn't particularly looking forward to this bit. Firstly I wasn't sure what I was going to use as the road surface, but more importantly fitting the road would mean permanently incorporating the road bridge into the layout. In other words, if I messed up I'd have to build the bridge all over again, and as I've mentioned before it isn't the easiest of things to construct.

After my success with building the loading dok top, I decided to make the road surface out of the same air drying clay (it's a commonly available modelling clay called DAS but I can't seem to find a manufacturers website). As you can see it is now in place and painted. I tried to keep the colour from becoming too uniform by again painting with the slate gray pigment and then washing on black. As the surface is smoother though, it seems that the black wash has given a more even colouring, although it still has some variation.

The next job is to to extend the surface around the factory building to form the yard area. Once that is done I should then be able to finish ballasting the siding and fix the point lever in place. After that I think I can make a start on the more natural parts of the landscaping; grass, trees, etc.