Creating the first test piece and posting it online was a worthwhile exercise. I learnt a lot from making it and I got useful feedback from other people.

The advice was:

• the grey was pretty good but a little bit of brown would look more realistic
• the gaps between the setts were a little prominent
• there should be a line of setts alongside the track
• the setts between the rails should run parallel to the rails

Many thanks to David, Paul and Michael for the advice.

To work on these things I’ve created a second test piece:

• I’ve run the setts between the rails parallel to the track, and this looks much better
• To reduce the prominence of the gaps between the setts I pressed the tool into the DAS clay more gently. I pressed too hard on the left hand side again, but the right hand side is an improvement.
• I washed the clay with a mixture of black and brown paint. When this was dry I dry brushed with grey. This has added more brown to the setts. Additionally, the brown/black mix is less conspicuous than the black wash I used previously and it has reduced the prominence of the gaps between the setts.

The test piece isn’t that neat but it is a good step forward and I’m feeling more confident about starting on the layout now.