Paint special!
Part 1: Stuff I use. Paint. Let’s start with the basics: paint. I mostly use humbrol and revell enamels, because that’s the stuff I’ve used for years (and we have a ton of the stuff at work.) Humbrol paint used to be really good as evidenced by some 40 year old cans my dad used…
New fleet additions
After finishing blast furnace 5 it was time for something a bit different. As I already have more engines than I can use on the layout, well, why not make 3 more? So, here we go. Fauvet Girel Espérance-Longdoz had 4 locomotives made by the french company Fauvet-Girel, 72 ton diesel electric engines that look…
Blast furnace 5 part 2
So, here we are two and a half months later, with blast furnace 5 more or less finished, for now at least. Time to show the second half of the build and think about what project to attack next, go right ahead with blast furnace 7 or first some trains, or a smaller building? Maybe…
Blast furnace 5 part 1
Well, it’s been a while, as usual. With Ougree mostly finished, time to turn my attention back to Cockerill. A part of the layout I had been working on when the project was started but was then put on hold to finish Ougree, so I could have a sort of finished working layout for shows.…
weekend update 8: no pigeons were harmed…
Well, it’s been a while, but now we got rid of the old fridge, time for another odds and ends-post! In the meantime there have been many hours of just being around the layout, not doing all that much but nonetheless continuously adding detail bits, tufts of grass and as of this weekend, pigeons! So,…
poking gravel
Well, it’s been a while, but here I am again! Custom plague-mask and all! Lately work on the layout itself pretty much came to a halt as I was mostly busy working on the most important part of any steelworks layout fleet: the ballast tamper. Indeed, priorities-wise I have not learned a single thing after…
weekend update 7
Well, the last couple of weeks has mostly been about making little detail bits, adding them to the layout, designing and making more detail bits, waiting for resin castings or etched parts for those detail bits and generally not feeling like there is heaps of progress, for lack of big projects. So, this time just…
steelworks layout problems
When modelling steel industry you need quite some background knowledge of many things, like for example price tags of consumer electronics in belgium in 1988. Well, as I had no idea about that, I first made a pile of washing machines, tv sets (with led inside of course) etc… Then flooded several people with questions……
weekend update 6
Well, it’s not a weekend, but here’s an update anyway, and since I once called them weekend updates, why not stick to the tradition. Also, I get to drink a bit while writing this, so yeah. Some heavy belgian craft beers this time. not complaining. So, on to the more interesting stuff: progress on the…
it’s all painted!
This time, a little milestone! But first things first: wrapping up work on the rolling stock workshop for now. Things were mostly there already, so sticking random decals on things, then add dirt of various kinds. After adding a light to the hydraulic press I decided the whole thing was officially good enough for now…
Weekend update 4
Well, two more weeks of being locked up in here, bad news to everyone except modellers. Ok, mostly artitec projects, but also some belgian things in between! First quite some very necessary but not necessarily fun work, like attaching lights to the ceiling of the workshop protruding in the direction of the viewer, to eliminate…
Weekend update 3
Yes, there has been more than 1 weekend since the last update. Well, one weekend renders more interesting results than the other, so in this case I decided that it would be better to wait a bit and show some more afterwards. Sooo… well, as is to be expected, work on the rolling stock workshop…
weekend update 2
This weekend the rolling stock workshop was on the workbench again. (well, it had been all the time, I just built the ladle cars on the bits of workbench left over.) I was already slowly preparing the workshop for some paint for a while, this has to happen some time halfway the build as a…
Junkerath ladle cars
As this week progress on the layout is pretty much non-existent but I had a bit of time to finally finish the ladle cars, time for a little special on those things. These cars were built in the 1950’s by Junkerath for Cockerill-Ougree as part of a big modernisation going on in that era. At…
weekend update 1
Apart from longer posts concentrating on a single subject, I’ll also try to do frequent bits and pieces about recent progress on the layout, usually after a weekend successfully avoiding life so the weekend could be entirely squandered on modelling. This time, more work on the overhead cranes in the rolling stock workshop. They’re now…
Back to the present: the Ougrée rolling stock workshop.
After yesterday’s trip down memory lane it’s now time to write a bit about the project I’m currently working on: the Ougrée rolling stock workshop. It would have been nice to flex some knowledge here, like build dates etc, but sadly all I know is that it is already on a 1950 aerial view of…
let’s start with a blast from the past
a little diorama for Artitec At the start of this project we decided to build many of the houses based on a limited number of standardised resin facades with standardised etched brass windows. This would of course greatly reduce the amount of work required and individual tweaks to each house would make sure the appropriate…
About me
As you have to do for introductions like this, I selected some pictures suggesting an exciting lifestyle doing questionable things around old industrial buildings. Of course most of the time this is greatly inaccurate as I am a modeller before everything else, so usually you’ll find me in front of a desk covered in dust,…
About Le Bassin
Le Bassin is a 1:87 scale model railroad, loosely based on the steel industry around the town of Seraing near Liège, Belgium. It will be a somewhat different steel industry layout, not focused on running realistic steelworks traffic in a complete but slightly schematic steelworks, but rather a diorama breathing the atmosphere of Seraing and…
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Le Bassin 