MARK HOLLAND shows us how to add a bit of Christmas fun to your layout.
With Christmas almost upon us, I thought it might be nice to add a bit of seasonal interest to our shop layout. Many of you may have experienced the local Rotary Club fundraising around Christmas with the help of Santa Claus (on his musical float) and I thought this would be simple to represent on our layout.
With the use of a trailer and Santa and his reindeer the job starts.
Unfortunately all four reindeer were just a little bit too long to fit into the trailer, so two had to be left behind.
After that, a small hole was drilled into the bottom of the Herpa trailer. This is easy to do as the whole trailer is plastic.
A small section of 'snow' was needed in the bottom of the trailer, which was donated by our Christmas window display! You can of course use anything you like from cotton wool to artificial snow for this.
To add a bit of the party atmosphere to the trailer, I hid a Train Tech Smart Light under the sleigh. Once it was fitted the cables for the Smart Light were fed through the hole and out the bottom of the trailer.
One of my clever colleagues (not me! -Ed) made up some appropriate edging for the trailer. This was cut out ready for gluing on.
Careful use of some superglue and some gentle folding puts the edging in place.
Edging all in place and the Smart Light powered up, an Oxford Diecast Land Rover makes the perfect vehicle to pull the float.
This was a fun and quick little project to do. If you can, I suggest adding some Christmas spirit to your layout, even if its just in a small way like this!
Merry Christmas to you all and don’t eat too many mince pies!