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While the station was drying, I rolled and glued a card tube around a roll of duct tape, afterwards adding some ply hoops inside to maintain the shape.
Another card tube was made around a postal tube, but it had a few uneven areas, so this was then wrapped in some 1/64th plywood to give a nice surface to finish.
The three main buildings on the Ponyville side of the layout, the Rarity's Boutique, Princess Twilight's Oak Tree Library and the Station. The patch of ground in the loop of the path will have another house, as yet undecided. Some more research ( episode watching ) is needed!
The sloping roof panels have been added now, along with the windows. Some 3/8 inch MDF forms the platform structure.
In case the loco pulls the coaches up to the station, I decided a method of stopping the train was needed in case my daughter turned the controller the wrong way. About three inches from the end of the track, one rail was cut, and a diode soldered across the joint. It will be burried under ballast. The loco now stops upon entering this section, but the diode still allows it to back out of the track.
That was the end of yesterday's work.
This morning, I made and fitted the station door. The basic station structure was clad in 1/32 inch ply with the proper sized window openings cut in. This left a recess on the inside where the thicker hardboard structure was, and allowed a nice fillet of glue behind the glazing.
Two white LED's were soldered up to their resistors and then glued into the station roof.
The station roof structure is finished, and with the lights glued in, it was glued onto the rest of the building. The walls of the station have also been painted, as have the masking tape window frames.
Hopping back to the Boutique, a piece of window plastic was taped over the card postal tube. It was then softened with a heat gun until it conformed to the curve of the tube.
In the second floor, the window opening was cut, and the edges cleaned with a mini sanding drum.
Back to the station again. The overhanging roof has turned wooden pillars to support it. The only easy way to do this was to get on my lathe and turn some pillars!
The door of the station had a small pan head screw added as a door handle and the windows had their outer frames made and glued on. The pillars were stained, the platform glued to the building base and the pillars glued in. The last job will be to make the thatched roof.
The first job this morning was thatching. The thatched roof on the station was reated with a coating of Milliput epoxy putty. While it was still soft, I dragged four tined fork across the surface, followed by a scalpel blade to create the straw texture. This was left in the sun a few hours to harden.
Once cured, I mixed up some cream/straw coloured paint and gave it a couple of coats. In the bright daylight, it looks fairly white.
The boutique has a fairly tall tower, the top of which will have to be removeable. This is the start of that upper removeable section.
Later, once the first parts had dried, I began planking the roof shape to create the cone. These will be dry overnight allowing the rest of the planking to be added.
The lower part of the boutique had the card painted in dilute PVA to harden it up. Window plastic was elastic banded around it, then heated to form the curved glazing. With that done, the window openings were cut.
The first storey was glued to the ground floor, and then planking added to create the cone shaped roof between the two levels. These are drying overnight, and the gaps will be filled tomorrow. That part of the roof can then be sanded. The start of the doorway can also be seen.
The earlier top section of roof can be seen placed in position here. There is another open structure tower goes on top of this, followed by a small spire!
The last shot of the day shows all three buildings in their approximate positions. They aren't this close in the TV show of course, but quite a few compromises are necessary in this micro layout, which is after all, a little less than 3 x 2 feet in size.
This afternoon was all about wiring. Twenty, red, green, blue, yellow, and white flickering LED's were wired up to resistors and fly leads, and then grouped in clusters of three and four. They were then glued into the holes on the layout.
The inside of the holes were then filled with a little fine sand, and glued with dilute PVA.
While they were drying, I started on the camp fire. I'd previously soldered a 3mm red and yellow flickering LED together, and these were glued into a hole at the campfire location.
Some strips of wood, stained a few weeks ago, were then slowly glued into a pile around the LED's. This was done with the LED's illuminated so I could pile them up, leaving appropriate gaps to allow the LED's to show through.
Later in the afternoon, the fly-leads from the gem LED's were soldered into two clusters of three holes, so that either of the set of three could be illuminated on their own, or all six sets together. The colours show well to the naked eye, but their brightness flooded the camera sensor, making it hard for it to pick up the individual LED's in each hole.
I also added some more planking to the cone on the top of the boutique tower, and filled the gaps in the planking on the lower part of the building.
