MORE ORBOST!!!

Gday All!!

WOW!! Paul has been living and breathing Orbost these past days. The following photo is proof of this. Just look at the amount of preparation work involved!! Paul traveled to Orbost with a GPS and the Google Maps printout to mark elevations and land detail on the print for as much accuracy as possible.
This hill will continue onto the third module. The railway will continue at the base of the hill for a short while before slowly climbing towards as it approaches the end of the module. These pictures will be posted in the next update.

The first module gets its MDF edging. I just love the land formation from all the angles taken so far. The edges have now been painted matt black and will have a black curtain to the floor drawing attention to the layout. A brown-grey was painted as a base before the sifted dirt and green ground foams are applied.
Note the elevation change in the MDF towards the bottom left of the photo. This displays where the highway passes and forms the edge of the layout. This was done to capture the feel of viewing the railway as if driving along the road encouraging viewers to look across the layout.

This photo shows the view along the long bridge and onto the station from what will be the peak of Grandview Rd. There is now a picnic area at this location so everyone can enjoy this view..... sadly minus rail and trains.

This bridge will look amazing when the trestles are installed. The trestles will vary from 9mm to 5mm high. Lucky Paul has great eyesight!!

That is the end of this update. Im sure it will only be a couple of days till im updating the blog again!!!

Take care and happy modelling.

Orbost progressing VERY fast!!

Greetings All!!

Its been a while since my last update. Unfortunantly ive been having issues with my intenet at home. In the mean time Paul has been putting a LOT of time into Orbost. This involving two trips to the actual location which is around a SIX hour round trip!!! The reason for these trips as you will see in the following pictures.
This first photo shows the progress made in the station area. The white styrene shows the road formation. During the trips many notes were made and photos taken detailing the geography of the land including water courses and distances.


In this photo Paul is demonstrating the length of the second, larger bridge. This photo also demonstrrated the use of the Google Maps overlay to ensure accurate scaling.

This photo Paul is demonstrating the length of the first smaller bridge just heading out of the station. I tried to capture the amount of work Paul has put into land formation. A lot of work has been put into this area of the layout.

This is the start of the larger bridge where landfill meets trestle. During floods the water rushes under this bridge and erodes the land underneath.

Finally here is Paul proudly showing off the progress of this extremely impressive layout, even at such an early stage. This photo does only show one and a half modules with another one and a half modules to complete to go!!

Now the internet is back ill attempt to update more often.

Take care and happy modelling.

Adrian

ORBOST!

Intruducing Orbost. This multi-module exhibiton layout is a scale representation of the yard and impressive trestle bridge that used to exist many years ago. Although the bridge still remains, the station and yard area are almost unrecognisable.
Located in on the Snowy river flooldplain in east Gippsland, Victoria, this was the terminus station that serviced a large area. There were plans for the railway to proceed further east and possibly into New South Wales however sadly this did not occur and like many other stations of its kind, slowly deteroirated and closed down. The railway currently stops at Bairnsdale however the formation to Orbost is preserved in the form of a RailTrail (http://www.railtrails.org.au/).
That is why this layout is so exciting. Lots of research has been undertaken to ensure the layout captures the feel and detail of the area. One of the resources used is Weston Langford's website (http://www.westonlangford.com/).

The site that has been most useful in the project so far would be Google Maps. Screen shot were taken and scaled to resemble 1:500. These shots were then pieced together using signwriting software, printed to scale onto signwriting vinyl and attached to foam. This was used as a base for scaling and sizing of the modules. I will post a photo of this at a later date.

This photo shows the amount of customisation required in the point work to get the track closer to each other like the prototype. The track was also masked up and sprayed to resemble rusty track.

This photo attempts to show the size of the station module. There is a smaller trestle immediately out of the station. There are two more modules, one for the long trestle bridge and the other for the long climb out of the floodplain.

This photo shows the DERM about to drive onto the trestle bridge, cough* without trestles.

This photo shows the terminus looking towards the station area.

This photo shows the size of the yard compared to my hand.

Take care and Happy modelling!!

Adrian