Copenhagen Fields & TFW’s workshop

[Tim Watson]

Had a first go at the roof this evening.  I have fitted two chimney stacks where I think they might go and fitted a black strip to the top of the parapet copings.  This prevents the white styrene showing through if a building is going to get handled a bit.

The stacks were made from solid Evergreen strip, clad in our brick styrene as shown: this building technique does not require great accuracy in measuring.

The excess vertical strips were cut off with a scalpel, followed by dressing the corners with a file. 

The bottom of the stack was given a 1mm thick styrene layer to represent the flashing and the top decorative courses also built out with layers. The edges of the brickwork were notched with the scalpel blade to soften them. Plastikard buildings often look too ‘sharp’ and ‘edgy’. For a more poorly maintained building a slotting file will give a more pronounced mortar course.  The chimney castings complete with flaunchings will be epoxied on at a later stage. 

The roof was initially given a light grey wash applied in a random direction, then a darker grey with the brush in one direction only, followed by the light colour again at 90 degrees, building up texture and depth of colour along the way. Finally, a wash of a brown-grey was run along the gutters, corners and crevices.  When the paint has hardened overnight, I will paint in some dried up puddles and other features and add some further weathering using powders, especially around the vent. 

The building is looking very solid sitting on the layout - I believe a worthwhile improvement on the original concept (I’ll take some comparison photos soon). 

Tim

[Tim Watson]

As promised, some comparisons between the semi-skimmed and full fat versions of the tube station.


This is the operator’s view. 


And this is a view the public will get. 

The dried up algae containing puddles have been added to the roof. A bit of green always makes a model come to life. 

The pavement area will probably be made from 0.6mm steel plate and be attached to the building: this will protect the fine details such as the lamps (yet to be fitted) and allow the paving to be held down with buried magnets for the removable building. 

Tim

[john coffin]

Now I see it in context, Tim, it enhances my admiration for your modelling skills.

I'd like to be able to excel in one part of the hobby, you seem to do so in so many areas.

paul

[Tim Watson]

We have been doing quite a lot of planning and plotting for the York Road tube station site and its alignment over the last week, having tried the board and station out at Keen House with the southern end of Belle Isle in place. Not a huge amount to show for these efforts but at least the steel baseplate is now the correct shape. 

The paper plan can be seen under the steel, showing the lift shafts and cars (only the left hand, southern, one was ever used) and the stairs down to the basement. To the left of the steel plate the layout will be expanded slightly to square off the York Road and we will merge Bingley and Randells Road at the front on the right. There is room to accommodate this in the storage box.  

The magnets for holding the steel down are ordinary ferrous type at present but these will be replaced with modern materials with a stronger flux very shortly. The station building and platforms are a bit further out than originally intended, but this allows us to make the lift shaft operational.  The shafts will be made from 51mm brass tube. I now have drawings for parts of the lift mechanism.  

We’re away in the van thus weekend so I expect I’ll make a start on some of the rear interior detail, such as the staff room and basement stairs. 

Tim

[Tim Watson]

I finally reached quite a momentous stage in the construction of the tube station today when it was finally assembled on the steel plate.  The rare earth magnets to hold the plate are simply placed in holes in the plywood sun-base and locked in with super glue. 

The strong flux from these little magnets really holds down the steel plate extremely well. This was chemically blackened so that it won’t show any shiny edges. The weird tongue-like shape at the southern end of the building is the roof of the basement passageway that meets up with the spiral escape stair shaft. 

As mentioned previously, the roads adjoining the building plot will be extended to put it into better context. 

As I have also alluded, more and more information has appeared as this project has progressed. I now have drawings of the lifts and so the image below was taken from them, scaled to size and used to improve the accuracy of the visible lift lobby. 

These were painted and fitted over the weekend.  It will be good to now be able to get on with some proper modelling rather than civil engineering. 

Tim

[Tim Watson]

The ground floor and basement of York Road tube is going to be a it like a dolls house at the back, visible to the public from the layout front. The ladies toilets will be on the left (brown and red tiles) and the gents in the bit that sticks out.  There will be Perspex walls along the front face.  We should be getting a delivery of porcelain fittings fairly soon. 

We can now have a peak into the staff mess room.

The armchair has definitely seen better days.
Richard W has now made the definitive visible track plan. The sector plate arrangement at the south end would not be used when YR is attached to CF as there would not be room; up trains will reverse direction at YR and the baseboard will stop at the platform end. The crossing will be modelled exactly to scale, with the cut away tunnel bores correctly portrayed (we have copies of  the original drawings). Only the front line will be visible. The curvaceous purple line is the CF baseboard edge. 


Tim

[Tim Watson]

I have started to make good progress on the basement and stairs to the spiral escape stairs on YR. the only part that is really visible is a store room, but it will get interesting in the vicinity of my left hand where there is a further sub basement, top of the spiral stairs and a ventilation plant room.  This will be modelled and visible as a cutaway. The ducting is in place, but not visible in this view, being tucked under the corner of the main building.

The escape passage can be seen when the components are separated, following the outline of the lift shaft at one point. I will probably use magnets to locate these components, at least during the early stages of construction. 

it doesn’t look like a great deal of work, but it takes quite a while to work out how everything fits together.  Seeing inside the workings of  a tube station is not an everyday occurrence for me...

Tim

[Tim Watson]

The plant room and stair shaft were made yesterday. All I need to do now is find a good M & E engineer (Richard W?) to make the machinery and ducting...

When separated from the main building it does bear a resemblance to one of those diagrams of a Pharoah’s secret tomb system. 


Tim

[Tim Watson]

The scenic end of the YR tube station is now sketched in. In fact, when the original tube station was built a number of terraced houses were demolished, which accounts for its strange plan form. 

The northern wall of the remaining houses was rendered and the fireplace openings maintained, an effect also mimicked on the south end of the station; the GNP&BR always kept its options opened for further development on its railway sites. I thought that it might be feasible to represent the rendered house on the very end of the plot. 


Whilst it was obviously feasible to make the house, it ended up looking like a Norman castle keep. I have therefore shortened it, but showing a couple of fireplaces. 


Part of the reason for keeping the wall slightly higher is that there will be an advertising hoarding on the road side pavement and so the wall will offer some protection.  There is an ideal glory hole here for old bedsteads and other junk, chucked over the boundary onto the waste ground (nowadays it would be supermarket trolleys). 
The use of separate sections held together with strong magnets has been an absolute boon for easing construction. I suspect that I will use dabs of glue to hold these sections in place when construction is complete, but the glue will be easily accessed for dismantling, should the need arise. 

I should be getting some 35mm diameter copper tube soon for the stair shaft, then some heavier gauge brass tube for the lift shafts. 
Richard W has made the final draft of the visible track plan - the originals are superimposed on the Templot plan.

One could say it’s a “two sidings, two buffers stops and long grass layout”, but there aren’t any buffer stops...

Tim

[Tim Watson]

That clever Mr Wilson has been playing with some 3D modelling of YR station in relation to the main layout.



The three red tubes are not Mid-West grain silos, but the station lift and stair shafts. The Up platform can be seen as well as the crossover tunnels.  These tunnels are correctly modelled and the tracks and bore linings will be visible using cutaways.


Bit different to our original cardboard CF model from 1983! I think it will be quite popular, especially with cut away shafts and station building. 

Tim

[Tim Watson]

There is nothing like a bit of colour from some period posters (thanks to Kirtley Models) to bring a scene to life. The ‘dead’ ground at the south end of YR had a tall fence and advertisements. 

These will only be visible to the south end operator when on exhibition, but there could be some good camera views in this area, when the piazza is paved and populated (not sure Belle Isle would have had a piazza).  Before anyone criticises the wonky frame to the posters: that is copying the original. Any ideas why the boxes were dumped there?

Will lay some grass soon, but it won’t be wide rolling hills. 

Tim

[john coffin]

Almost certainly the boxes are rubbish probably from the newsagent,/sweet shop, or maybe even a local greengrocer.
Not easy to read the boxes to get more details, but I would guess that at the time of the photographs, the local
council would have cleaned up the streets and the shop waste on a daily basis, and this may have been the
safest place for the dust carts to collect any local rubbish. This kind of collection went on until the late 60's,
but got lost somewhere along the way into the 21st century.

looking even better, your skill amazes me, now you know why I am taking my time Tim,
Paul

[Tim Watson]

The troglodyte parts of YR have made some progress with the store room and plant room.  The model and sectional elevation are together for comparison.

Being such a tidy person, I find it hard to make an untidy scene - believe that & you’ll believe anything... 

It’s quite fun looking into these dolls house-like areas, but of course they don’t photograph realistically.

Tim

[Tim Watson]

After a major international collaborative project between Brisbane, Croydon and St Albans, the YR urinals have now been installed.

They really are rather small, but exquisitely modelled and 3D printed.

The originals still exist, apparently.

WCs for the gents and ladies to follow.

Tim

[Tim Watson]

The details on the YR ground floor roof have been added over the last few days. I tend to understate down pipes, using pre-coloured florists wire and painting in the pipe supports. It is so easy to end up over-scale with 2mm details. Having said that, I am very pleased with the toothed brick courses on the corner of the building. 

The ground floor flat roof had a couple of lantern roofs. These were made by scoring clear plastic with the back of a #15 scalpel blade with the dimensions dictated by the plan underneath. 

The lower halves were assembled, keeping the protective film in place to avoid glue marks (frankly, you have to be incredibly parsimonious with the Evostick contact adhesive anyway).  The clean notch-shaped grooves made by the scalpel can be seen - they could be filled with paint, but I suspect these might have been a galvanised metal construction, so the natural colour is satisfactory.

The vertical parts of the lantern had flashing strips of black styrene added; black so as not to show up white through the glazing.  These were then glued into place and the top roof also glued into place. The final act was to flood the base area with thick matt varnish to seal the flashing to the roof and avoid unsightly gaps. The roof was painted with dried puddles and a significant amount of green weathering. 

One thing that was evident and increasingly annoying was a dodgy brick joint in the first floor rear wall. Initially, the down pipe was placed prototypically, but then expedience took over and it was shifted to cover the joint.


The rear view is now nearly complete.  There should be a safety handrail at the right hand end, but that can wait until the building is being handled rather less, as it would be quite vulnerable. The protective clear polycarbonate sheet for the sectioned rooms will soon be made and fixed, probably with blackened 12BA countersunk screws. 

Tim