Northern Town has changed significantly since the last visit with the camera. The track plan has stayed (almost) the same but the trackbed is now raised up from the baseboard surface. The lining paper became the template for cutting the raised surface from sheets of mdf. The template being easily drawn by using this adapted wagon and a pen.
The mdf surface was blocked up on sections of two by one easy on the straight sections but many short sections made up the corners. Additional section were run across the wider sections of trackbed. All was screwed and glued together, there are a couple of boxes of screws in the formation so far.
While the boards were bare I took the opportunity of applying the sky to the walls. Like most things I took a couple of goes to get it right. The final treatment was a roughly graduated coat of Wilko sky blue starting full strength at the top and let down lots with water at the bottom, this was applied by brush. Before it had the chance to thoroughly dry I rollered over it with a full strength mix of the sky blue and white starting at the bottom and working upwards so the top section was done with little on the roller.
This morning I had the camera out so I plonked a few buildings down just to get a feel for the colour balance. I'm pretty happy with the result, it's significantly shifted the appearance from the white walls of the earlier images.
I've also been trying out a few buildings for the street at the end of the goods yard.