Atlantic's works: Portable layout update

[Mercator II]

'That'll do'

Coming along nicely

[Atlantic 3279]

Indeed. Not too bad for a rough job...

[drmditch]

Wooden sections for chimney structures?
Card overlays.
My supply of rocket sticks (from New Year in Vienna a few years ago) is lasting well.
I cut the roofs round them.

[Atlantic 3279]

I might even have a rocket stick or two saved in the "might come in handy" box in the shed. More certainly, I do have a selection of pieces of balsa...

[Atlantic 3279]

Now more bracing than Skegness...

Why is that the un-braced walls of plastic or card structures always try to bow to a concave profile after assembly and/or lamination using glue, irrespective of whether the glue is on the outside, inside or both sides of the thickest layer of material?!

A bit more fancy brickwork around the bay window too, thanks to orange and brown coloured pencils.

[Atlantic 3279]

Main (upper) chimney stacks now a much neater and more stable fit after re-making in solid form, and piercing the roofs - or a roof and a ceiling in one case. Three layers of balsa for the central stack, one layer of balsa, some coffee stirrers and a single thickness of card to achieve the required dimensions for the far chimney stack. The stack on the single storey portion is still hollow and simply standing on some reduced-tack double-side tape, as it will have to be a removable feature. I may ultimately fix some fine pins to its base so that it plugs in to discreet holes in the slope of the non-viewing side of the roof. The front of the building now has glazing too. Individually made window frames with full relief would of course have been nice, if made sufficiently neatly and accurately, but I wasn't prepared to spend the necessary additional time trying and possibly failing to produce acceptable results. I have therefore simply used a bow pen to rule the outer frames (brown) and the sashes (deep cream) onto clear material, then stuck this in place behind the fenestrations.

[Atlantic 3279]

[Woodcock29]

Looks terrific Graeme. Excuse my ignorance - where is the prototype? To save me scrolling through my books.

Andrew

[Atlantic 3279]

http://www.disused-stations.org.uk/d/donington_on_bain/

But I'll probably be using a different name. Both Wragby, and South Willingham station buildings were almost the same, but close study shows that the architect or the builders worked a large number of detail differences into the same basic plan. Why they did that, and why such ornate designs were employed for a railway that was ever struggling to find money (both for initial construction and for eventual provision of its services) is a little puzzling. Too much Victorian confidence and enthusiasm, to the detriment of the poor ordinary shareholders, and not enough sound financial analysis and caution perhaps? The fact that none of the established regional companies such as the GNR or the MS&LR would have anything to to with building the line might have given the private local promoters good reasons to wonder why...

Anyway, there are some horribly ornate ridge tiles in the period photographs of the building, and I have so far no idea of how (or whether) to attempt to model those. To scale, I suspect they'd be hopelessly fragile. I don't do CAD, not the proper sort that produces files of the type that suit etchers, laser cutters or Silhouette machines, and I'm not inclined to pay for such luxurious techno-production anyway. Any bright ideas anybody, please?

[Atlantic 3279]

I found these, but not quite right.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/202997699585 ... SwRu5exnwA

I suspect Donington's may well have been fleurs-de-lys, or possibly trefoils, but they were alternate large and small examples, the large ones pitched at estimated 9" (3mm) centre-to-centre. I did consider making something with a simple 3mm saw-tooth edge and a load of say 0.8mm holes drilled in a line below the teeth, two per tooth, just to get the right general look in a stand-off view. Tedious to make though...

[Danby Wiske]

Might it be worth contacting the ebay seller? Adapting an existing CAD project might be easier (i.e. cheaper) than commissioning one from scratch...

Rest of the building looks brilliant - I'm looking forward to seeing pics of it in situ!

[drmditch]

Stout paper folded and laminated over a jig, then cut with sharp scalpel?

I wrote a paragraph about the benefits of my current low-tech approach to modeling, and then this high-tech 'phone lost it - twice!

[Atlantic 3279]

Earlier today, shortly before the postman arrived, an acquaintance kindly sent me this link:

https://www.scalelinkfretcetera.co.uk/product/slf035/

My impression, looking at the maximally enlarged image of some of the middle rows on that sheet is that there's certainly a representation of alternating large and small projections from the ridge, and the larger ones appear to be acceptable trefoils or fleurs-de-lys. I wonder if the smaller ones may have originally been drawn in the same way but have etched down to mere stumps? The spacing of the large projections appears to me to be 4mm. Had the large projections had more substance, and the smaller ones been equally believable trefoils or fleurs-de-lys, it would have been almost ideal for my preferences.

Anyway, the postman turned out to be delivering my pack of 3D printed "Smart Models" ridge tiles. They came well protected by foam and a box. My first inspection of the unpainted items suggested very good definition of detail, smoothness of flat surfaces, freedom from "flash" or trenches, with good regularity of edges.

There are a lot of supports to detach, which I clipped away with great care to avoid damage to the required part of the print. The projecting crests seemed remarkably tolerant of handling when I was holding the strips of tiles and cleaning off the pips left by the supports, using a fine file. Degreasing, then a light blast of Halfords red aerosol primer showed up the detail nicely.

The spacing of the crests on these is about 2mm. One lower edge of each strip does taper off towards the end, but I can hide that at the back of the roof in most cases.

Given that I'd ideally like 3mm spacing of the main crests, neither the Scalelink etch nor these Smart Models prints are precisely right. If the Scalelink etch featured more remaining metal and less open space, I think I might be tempted to use it, but at present the case for using the Smart Models prints that I already have seems equally good.

[Atlantic 3279]

A little more progress today on the never-ending job of building my station house:

Some small plastic shallow square channel cut to lengths and stop-ends inserted ready to serve as rainwater gutters. Very short pieces formed to shape and joined with liquid poly to suit the bay. Thin card cut into to suitable strips, scribed, bent sharply to inverted V-section, and plastic rod superglued to to the apex in order to portray some plain ridge tiles. Items seen here after application of red primer.

I also cut and joined the strips of fancy ridge tiles to suit the roofs. Neither the cutting nor the joining of the 3D printed material was easy. A craft knife or side cutters proved to be no use at all, causing the prints to fracture along unpredictable lines. The gentlest back-strokes of the finest razor saw that I posses were sometimes not delicate enough to produce a controlled cutting effect. Use of a fine file did succeed in squaring-off the ends of the cut pieces, but even with the ends neat and square there is precious little material in contact when two pieces are brought together. Tiny amounts of runny super-glue did produce a joint of sorts, at least making it possible to handle the joined strips delicately - and making it easier to avoid getting the bits mixed up! I've checked that all of the ridge tile strips will fit, using the extra (plain) ones on some of the ridges as photographs suggested to me that some replacement of the original ornate tiles had occurred, possibly before WW2, if indeed all roof ridges originally had the fancy tiles. Use of the plain tiles avoid the need to buy, clean up, paint and struggle to cut/join more of the fancy ones anyway. I've temporarily stuck a couple of the most easily damaged or lost pieces of gutter in place too, and test fitted a piece of Superquick grey roof slate paper to test the appearance. When I get all this lot permanently fitted I still have to attend to all of the flashing, and downpipes, and no doubt a load of other details I haven't yet considered...

[Atlantic 3279]

At last a representation of roofing slates, permanently stuck in place, including the the multi-angled roof over the bay. The ridge tiles are now stuck down too, so for the first time it is possible to handle the model without having bits falling off. I'm much relieved to have reached this stage, as I was dreading the possibility that I'd be unable to trim the printed slates in such a way as to make the courses appear straight top and bottom. I certainly did not want to have to add them one row at a time in order to "lose" any errors in shapes of the basic roof shells. Save for in the roof "valleys", I have so far added no representation of any flashing. It will be another fiddley job, and I'm not totally sure how some of it ought to be arranged. I hope that any experienced "flashers" out there will (only) make helpful and well-timed comment upon my efforts...

The problem of the late discovery of the existence of a third chimney that only fits if the model is "out on show" rather than shoe-horned into place in my loft, has been dealt with by making a small, permanent "freelance" chimney that provides a firm mounting point for a more-probably-correct "over chimney" model.

The chimney pots are home-cast in resin as copies of a couple that I made up (by reference to photographs) from plastic tube, square section plastic, and strips of paper.