Another quick sketch

Ok, this really is just a very rough sketch I did on a piece of scrap paper, but based on the thoughts in my last post I think the idea portrayed here will work much better and be a lot easier to implement.

The building, which will sit fairly square to the back of the layout, will be modelled in "3/4 relief" (the ridge of the roof will be a couple of inches forward of the backscene with large trees disguising the actual join between building and backscene). The chimney will conveniently hide the backscene corner as a curved backscene wouldn't really work here.

The rear siding will run in front of the building, parallel to the running line, with a low, grassy bank and fence in between with the exit to the left hidden by a thicket of trees and bushes bwteen the siding and running line.

This will allow for a number of possible scenarios - the building itself doesn't have to give away the specific nature of the industry involved so various scenarios (and types of goods stock) could be envisaged. The rear siding could be treated either as a single siding to serve this one building, with just the occasional van being shunted in and out, or as connecting to a more extensive system of sidings and facilities beyond the modelled area, allowing for longer trains to run in and out. I like this flexibility as it allows scope for variation in rolling stock and operations.

Painting brickwork

A useful tip just picked up while reading Chris Nevard's website is to use ordinary DIY emulsion paint (B&Q 'pebble' is the colour Chris used on the crossing keepers cottage on Catcott Burtle), thinned down with water and a little washing up liquid, as a wash over the top of enamel-painted brickwork (and then gently wiped off the brick surfaces) to recreate the pointing. When I painted my goods yard office I used thinned down enamel paint over the brick colour and then wiped off with a thinners soaked rag, which caused a real headache in that it was very difficult to remove from the brick surfaces before it dried and without leaving small fibres from the rag stuck to the paintwork, leading to what I feel is a less than completely satisfactory appearance close-up - and it took a heck of a long time for such a small building! The obvious advantage of emulsion is of course that it can be removed relatively easily with water even when touch-dry (or completely dry if given a real good scrub!). Something to remember on the next building I do.

Another ideal use for emulsion is colouring exposed ground surfaces such as bare earth, around sidings, platform and road surfaces etc.

Llanfyllin Signal Box in 3mm

I just came across these pictures on the 3mm Society's website showing a model of Llanfyllin signal box by Peter Gentle:





Wonderful! I may include a model of this same box on my layout, although it's a platform-'mounted' signal box so I'll have to see whether this works or not with the space I have available.

Goods yard office

Finally got round to putting the finishing touches to the goods yard office which I must have started about 6 months ago... suffice it say that I haven't by any means been working on it for all that time! It's been a case of little and not-very-often I'm afraid!

Well, here are some photos, so you can judge for yourself whether it was worth the wait!











The window frames are made with Evergreen styrene strip with clear plastic sheet for the glazing. The rows of tiles are made from strips of paper with the individual tiles cut into their lower edge, then stuck down with the bottom row first, and each successive row overlapping the previous. (I printed the outlines for the tiling strips on the computer.) The ridge leading was formed from a strip of paper folded over a piece of styrene strip. The leading around the chimney stack is also paper cut and folded to shape then glued into place. The chimney and guttering are Wills, and the downpipes (which I'm especially proud of!) are scratch-built from plasticard.

I'm pretty happy with the end results, although being the perfectionsist that I am, I know there's still room for improvement, in particular the paint finish on the brickwork and the overall crispness of the detail. In hindsight I also wish I'd taken the time to add some interior detailing, even if only for my personal satisfaction (although if I was really bothered I suppose I could try to manouevre a few pieces of furniture through the door!!)

I might still add a few more external details - perhaps a lamp over the door, a sign/noticeboard on the wall. Maybe a little moss on the roof or around a leaky section of guttering etc. But basically, that's it, ready for installation on the layout.

Weighbridge Office - Part 2

Here's a few images showing progress on the weighbridge office...




You can see the way the building is constructed, as I described in the earlier post, using two layers of 40 thou plasticard covered with embossed brick sheet.

The floorboards were scribed into the floor. The lintels are paper, drawn on the computer and cut out using a sharp knife - the best option I could come up with in the end! The whole building will eventually sit down into a cut-out in the groundwork of the layout, hence the height of the floor compared to the base of the walls.

Painting has been a very slow process and isn't finished yet. Initially I gave the entire building an undercoat of dirty grey inside and out - the colour you can see on the inside of the building in these photos. Next I painted the external walls a brick colour (a pinky, orangey, browny colour to be precise!!).

Then I followed Martyn Welch's instructions in 'The Art of Weathering', painting a mortar colour (very pale mix of Humbrol white and stone) all over the brickwork (one wall at a time), waiting until touch dry, then gently wiping the paint off the surface of the bricks using a cloth moistened with thinners. In the end I had to repeat this process several times, and I struggled to find a suitable 'cloth' that would get into all the crevices adequately without either leaving too much or too little 'mortar', and without leaving fibres in the paint. In the end, with varying degrees of success, I used a combination of small pieces of disposable computer screen cleaning cloths (the sort you can buy from office suppliers) ,and my fingers! I think probably fingers are the better option, as the screen cleaning cloths tend to soak up too much thinners then dry out very quickly, can't really be cleaned, and quickly deteriorate.

Following on from this I gently dry-brushed the walls with a subtle mixture of Humbrol orange, brick red and flesh colours to bring out the colour of the bricks. This also has the added benefit of toning down the mortar courses which by this stage were rather too prominent from a distance.

I still need to pick out some of the bricks in various lighter and darker colours, and add some general weathering before the painting is complete, and that's before I add the windows, door and roof! A modeller's work is never done!

So far I'm reasonably happy with how things are progressing, although being a perfectionsist I do beat myself up about the quality of my models. But this is the first plastic structure model I've tackled so I can't expect miracles!

Weighbridge office

The station building plans are coming on slowly, but I've decided that it would be slightly silly to attempt the largest and most complex building first. So I decided to start with something much smaller and more straightforward - the weighbridge office.

I've only found one photo of the weighbridge office at Llanfyllin and that's in a general view of the station and goods yard taken from (roughly) the goods yard entrance. From this angle you can only see the end profile of the building, so my model is definitely not an exact replica. Instead I've used my rough guesstimate of the overall proprotions and basic style from this photo, then built up the rest of the picture using photos of other similar structures.

I drew the plans using Adobe Illustrator, and you can take a look at them (somewhat reduced in scale) here:

The basic bodyshell was marked out on 40 thou Slater's plasticard (I was going to use 30 thou which is a lot easier to cut, but decided the 1mm thickness of 40 thou would make measuring and ligning everything up much easier, which I'm glad I did). I also marked out a second piece for each wall, 1mm narrower at each side and 1.5mm lower along the top, to add extra strength and to allow the four walls to lock together squarely. As well as the walls I makrked out a floor piece (again double thickness) and the chimney. I lightly score the outlines using a sharp knife with the aid of a small steel rule and engineer's square, afterwards rubbing some pencil over the score-marks with my fingers so they show up more easily.

With everything measured up and marked out I then set to work cutting each piece out. This is done with several light strokes of the knife along the steel rule edge (first locating the tip of the blade into the existing marks to ensure an accurate alignment. After several runs of the knife you can gently snap the pasticard, then clean up the edges with the knife.

The next stage is to cement the double-thickness walls and floor together using Slaters Mek-Pak. It pays to line each pair up first and check the measurements and make any necessary adjustments with a file or knife. Most of my pieces were a good fit fortunately.

Mek-Pak dries (or more accurately, evaporates) VERY quickly so I find I have to work very quickly with a loaded brush to ensure one entire surface is flooded before bringing the two pices together. A quick adjustment of the alignment is usually necessary, then the two pices can be pressed together firmly, and a little Mek-Pak touched to each of the joins, allowing it to run into the seams.

These then need to be left to dry for several hours, ideally under some heavy books to make sure there's no warping.

My next task was to cut out the embossed brick overlay for each wall. I've used Slater's '00' red Flemish Bond (this is the bond used on all the Llanfyllin buildings). The same method is used for marking out and cutting the brick sheet.

In order for the bricks to line up seamlessly at the corners I find it best to allow the brick layer to overhang the edges of the walls by about 1mm, then to file a 45 degree mitre along the edge so that when the two walls are joined together, the bricks meet at the corners. This takes some patience to get right. If you cut or file off too much you get a gap - so its always worth erring on the side of generosity and then gradually filing away until you get the right amount. Its best to actually do the filing once you've cemented the brick sheet to the wall, as you can then check the fit as you're going along rather than doing it all in once go and just hoping for the best!

Finally, for now at least, I joined all the walls and the floor together. The chimney is attached to the back wall and was constructed in one piece with it.

More to come soon.

Lalnfyllin station building

Well, I've well and truly fallen under the spell of Llanfyllin, after seeing the photos in the Great Western railway Journal this month.

I've now decided to start work on the station building. This is something that I can work on even before I start on the track etc. although actual construction is some way off yet. I am currently working on producing a 'near-to-scale' drawing in Adobe Illustrator - I say 'near-to-scale' rather than 'scale' because I'm working purely on estimates from the photos. I'm also switching the two ends over so that the two-story station-master's house is at the left-hand end, since my station will be the other way round (don't ask me why - I suppose I could just as easily switch it over to be the other way round...)

Anyway, the idea is to produce a 'scale' drawing that I can use as a template for the actual construction (I started doing it with pencil and paper but soon realised that doing it on the computer made far more sense.)

Signal box - part 2

Work is progressing well - if fairly slowly - with the signal box. I have now added the outer 'shell' to 3 sides. The way I've done this is to use moulded brick styrene sheet for the lower half and 20 thou styrene sheet scribed to represent the planking of the upper section.

The tricky bit is making sure the two layers fit exactly, around the edges and door and window apertures. There's not really been a 'method' to this - just a lot of careful measuring, making things slightly larger than required and then filing painstakingly once the two layers are glued together so that everything is flush and no joins are visible. Slow but satisfying work!

Signal box

I've started construction of an S&D signal box - based reasonably closely on the prototype example at Wellow on the S&D Bath-Bournemouth main line. The signal box still survives in private ownership.

Here's a photo of the box in 1966 and here's a photo of the box taken in the last few years.

I bought the Ratio GWR signal box kit a few months ago, but since then decided I needed something 'more S&D' to help visually set the location. It's also a chance to experiment with scratch-building in styrene sheet (otherwise known as 'plasticard'). I'm using 30thou sheet in this case.

I started by drawing each side of the box to scale (the actual measurements were estimated from the photographs) on graph paper, then transferred the outlines to the sheet using a craft knife, metal rule and engineers sqaure to keep the angles true.

Once each side was cut out, I filed the joining edges to a 45 degree angle, allowing each side to be joined seamlessly. I'll do some filling and filing if necessary later.

The floor is double-thickness, with the floorboards scribed using a Tamiya plastic-scriber (it was mentioned in a recent edition of Model Railway Journal and it really is very useful). The floor is also supported underneath round the edges with styrene strip.

The exterior (bricks and wood planking) will have to be glued onto the shell later - I haven't really got as far as thinking about that yet. If I'd planned things more carefully from the start mayble I would have scribed them directly onto the shell itself. Too late for that now though!