A snapshot in time. A glimpse of the Plettenberger Kleinbahn in 1/22.5 scale.

[finescalerr]

Yep. -- Russ

[marc_reusser]

Super.

[Malachi Constant]

Starting to feel a bit guilty about lurking here without comments ... keep looking at the updates, ending up speechless and saying nothing ... so:  still looking at the updates, still speechless and just saying that!    (Very inspired by your work!) -- Dallas

[Barney]

Mark - I agree with all that + such miniature precision with super detail
Barney

[Peter_T1958]

Hi Volker

Incredible attention to all those seemingly trivial objects! What has cought my special interest is the picture of the gauge bars.
What did you use to blacken those items? It has been my experience that blackening won't work on the soldering tin ...

Thanks, Peter

[Hydrostat]

Thanks for all your comments - very much appreciated!

Starting to feel a bit guilty about lurking here without comments ...

Dallas, I could write that at a lot of threads, too. You come straight to the point .

What has cought my special interest is the picture of the gauge bars. What did you use to blacken those items? It has been my experience that blackening won't work on the soldering tin ...

Peter, I use Gravoxide to burnish brass items. It produces stains on the soldered tin, which are a bit brighter than on brass. For you'll surely color it with washings later on it doesn't matter. But it's most important to remove solderuing flux stainless and to have the surface completely fat free - and it helps to roughen it before burnishing with sandpaper or a fibre glass pencil.

Cheers,
Volker

[Hydrostat]

Helmut milled the special sleepers for the bridge:



I started to play with some color and would appreciate to get feedback about your impressions for I'm not sure about the result:











Cheers,
Volker

[artizen]

They are excellent. Much better than the result I recently created for a photographic plank.

I am hoping to bury most of the sleepers under grass and ballast as a consequence. Unfortunately endless playing for the ultimate result would mean missing the press deadline for the photography. Something else to come back to later.

[Ray Dunakin]

They look great to me! I like the blobs of tar/creosote, and the various stains.

[1-32]

great sleepers -but.
the ends are too square usually the end grains attract the most wear and as a result there is more wood grain showing.i am assuming that these sleepers are secound hand and as a result there should be signs of there former lives, ie- old bolt holes and wear from fish plates.maybe i am jumping the gun but the rails and sleepers are too seperate,the rails are this lovely colour but this has not bleed onto the sleepers.
kind regards kim

[marc_reusser]

I like the general coloring. Better than I could do. I do have slight issues in two areas, the first being the much lighter shades on the lower half of some of the ties....of course this will not matter if they will be ballasted...but I don't know the condition/look for the bridge. The other item is the end grain...it seems a little too "tight"....now this of course is one of those things that in real life varies from tie to tie, and location to location...even with what wood was used, or how it was treated......it just seems to me from the extreme close-ups, that the grain coild be a bit more "open" I have in the past used a wire pencil, or wire brush in a dremel tool to get this effect. The trickeist part is getting the feel for it, so that you do not make the ends of the ties convex or concave.

Lovely work though, regardless.

[finescalerr]

Marc is probably right but the ties are terrific even as they are. -- Russ

[mad gerald]

... great work so far, Volker,

In case you need some additonal reference material (regarding the colouring) have a look at the sleepers (second hand) of the Feldbahn at TUEV Norderstedt (a circular track [sic!] with one switch and one crossing), but I'm not quite sure if it is comparable with a Kleinbahn like the Plettenberg one ... IMHO your sleepers eventually tend to be a little too "brownish", but as Marc mentioned, there's a great variety from tie to tie and from locality to locality ...









Cheers

[Hydrostat]

Thank you very much, gentlemen, for your critical reflection.

great sleepers -but.
the ends are too square usually the end grains attract the most wear and as a result there is more wood grain showing.i am assuming that these sleepers are secound hand and as a result there should be signs of there former lives, ie- old bolt holes and wear from fish plates.maybe i am jumping the gun but the rails and sleepers are too seperate,the rails are this lovely colour but this has not bleed onto the sleepers.
kind regards kim

I like the general coloring. Better than I could do. I do have slight issues in two areas, the first being the much lighter shades on the lower half of some of the ties....of course this will not matter if they will be ballasted...but I don't know the condition/look for the bridge. The other item is the end grain...it seems a little too "tight"....now this of course is one of those things that in real life varies from tie to tie, and location to location...even with what wood was used, or how it was treated......it just seems to me from the extreme close-ups, that the grain coild be a bit more "open" I have in the past used a wire pencil, or wire brush in a dremel tool to get this effect. The trickeist part is getting the feel for it, so that you do not make the ends of the ties convex or concave.

Lovely work though, regardless.

I'm completely with you, Kim and Marc. I should not have shown the pic with trackage, as this isn't final coloring of the track at all nor completely mounted. For example fish plates, rail clips, bolts and washers are missing.

I didn't take much attention to the faces' end grain because you can't see the faces. But at least the upper visible part needs more attention. Thank you very much!

... great work so far, Volker,

In case you need some additonal reference material (regarding the colouring) have a look at the sleepers (second hand) of the Feldbahn at TUEV Norderstedt (a circular track [sic!] with one switch and one crossing), but I'm not quite sure if it is comparable with a Kleinbahn like the Plettenberg one ... IMHO your sleepers eventually tend to be a little too "brownish", but as Marc mentioned, there's a great variety from tie to tie and from locality to locality ...









Cheers

I feel the last picture shows the coloring and state of the sleeper I tried to achieve. They mustn't be too grey; I only know that greyish color from not or very seldom used tracks. Here are some prototype pics of the bridge. The sleepers had some constant dampness from the brook but must have dried fast on the upside.







The next out-take (transport of the dismantled bridge) shows those very slim bridge sleepers.



But I made a mistake: Most sleepers were thicker and carved below (see the cut pieces on the left) to fit the solebars (longitudinal bridge beams  )...



... which you can see here:



Unfortunately there's always a gap between claim and reality; at least the CAD construction is completed, including the mostly incorrect sleepers. But I'm going to change that at the model.



Here's in a nutshell what I've done:

First of all carve the beechwood sleepers with a triangular scraper, treat the surface and sides with a wire pencil (I forgot about the faces ) and then water them for half an hour or so. Then start to apply thinned black gouache by Caran d'Ache, playing with intensity of thinning. For everything is wet it's easy to remove too much color. This results in a greyish surface, when dry. At some points add carefully thinned opaque white at the surface, avoiding to have it running into the carving. Then apply black semi-gloss aceton soluble color to the wet(!) surface. The color starts to crumble a bit. Wait until the wetness had changed to moisture and apply some brown pigments at the fishplate areas. Then let it dry completely. Finally use aceton to dissolve the blotches of black color, which have no adhesion to the ground up to this point. Same with the pigments, which can be washed into the wood by this method. For the tar blotches are a bit too shiny use some thinned opaque white to soften that a bit.

Cheers,
Volker

[Peter_T1958]

Hallo Volker

"Ganz grosses Theater!" Congrats! This looks unbelievable realistic, especially the blobs of tar...

great sleepers -but.
... I am assuming that these sleepers are secound hand and as a result there should be signs of there former lives, ie- old bolt holes and wear from fish plates....
kind regards kim

I do not know if these sleepers were second hand. It doesn't really matter, and in any case such signs of their former life woud add a lot of additional character.

In case you need some additonal reference material (regarding the colouring) have a look at the sleepers (second hand) of the Feldbahn at TUEV Norderstedt (a circular track [sic!] with one switch and one crossing), but I'm not quite sure if it is comparable with a Kleinbahn like the Plettenberg one ... IMHO your sleepers eventually tend to be a little too "brownish", but as Marc mentioned, there's a great variety from tie to tie and from locality to locality.

In the meantime I rushed to the nearby freight station site to take a look on the real thing. To me the colour looks spot on although most of the reference pics I have googeled  show a lot more "grayish".
Here a reference pic to show, what is to be understood by "sleeper". Even under the same conditions, colours vary a lot. Especially in my in my region (perhaps also in Volkers) with relatively a lot of humid weather, a darker appearance may be quite accurate.

I feel the last picture shows the coloring and state of the sleeper I tried to achieve. They mustn't be too grey; I only know that greyish color from not or very seldom used tracks.

But I made a mistake: Most sleepers were thicker and carved below (see the cut pieces on the left) to fit the solebars (longitudinal bridge beams   )... Cheers, Volker

Yep!

Regards, Peter