Liverpool Lime Street (2mm Finescale)

[Fen End Pit]

I thought of this plan as I passed today on a day trip to Liverpool from Ely (Cambs).

 

Mind you, your model won't feature the £128 round trip fare, having to spend 30p to use the loo as Lime Street or the delay of an hour when everything around Nottingham ground to a halt!

 

Good luck with it!

 

David

[Weekday Cross]

Wow! I recently bought a return trip from Alfreton to Liverpool for £25, booking in advance. Lets hope your journey was worthwhile!

 

Meanwhile, on with the project...............

 

Following exposure of the project on RMWeb, I now have a wealth of information to work from - far more than I could reasonably have envisaged at the start - though it all seemed so simple back then

 

For the record, I have lettered the map and provided explanations for some features, as follows:

 

A - This was a mess hut.

 

B - This was an ash bin with a low brick wall and wooden-shuttered entrances.

 

C - The highly elaborate gatehouse was part of the tobacco factory - I have a poorish image of the road side now to work from.

 

D - I have a moderately good idea of what the lift looked like now

 

E - Apparently recesses were cut into the rock face to make the shed roads longer

 

F - There were short run off rails around the edge of the turntable, but no buffer stops or similar. The whole area around the turntable and water columns seems to have been cobbled. The turntable was originally 42 ft in diameter, but replaced by a 50ft one in 1892. It was converted to electric power in about 1920.

 

My LNWR water columns arrived from Gem yesterday. They look pretty well spot-on compared with the photos.

 

My next task will be to work out how much depth I need under the baseboard for the turntable and (hopefully) a working lift. I will also order some bits from the 2mm Scale Association shop for the trackwork in the next few days. I am planning to use Easitrak plastic track bases for the plain track and copper-clad sleepers for the hidden track. I am not sure yet what to do for the track where there are inspection pits - I may experiment with cutting the chairs off the Easitrac track bases, but am not really sure yet.

[Weekday Cross]

I made a start on the baseboard this evening

 

I found some old scraps of timber in the garage and cobbled together a rectangle, 19.5in by 10.5in - this allows space for some 6mm ply around the outside to make it all look neat and tidy.

 

The vertical pieces are just loose at the moment - these will support the plywood sheeting at the sides and the back off the diorama. I just put them there to give an impression of what things will be like after the next step.

[Weekday Cross]

Progress on the model is now well and truly under way, as I have made a start on the loco shed. This wasn't where I planned to start. The really critical thing is the turntable, but I can't make much progress on this until track supplies arrive.

 

The real loco shed was made of stone. The nearest I could find was Wills OO scale Dressed Stonework. A few of the courses are a bit large for 2mm scale, but on the whole it is near enough perfect for the job.

 

So far, I have built the front wall, the side wall and the base of the tower. I found one or two differences between the photos and the drawing in Jack Nelson's book (LNWR Portrayed) - mainly that the large window on the frontage is set in a recessed panel. Much was cut out with a piercing saw. I drilled the holes for the circular ventilators on the tower with twist drills, gradually using larger size drills until I had pretty well worked my way through my complete collection. Fortunately, the resulting holes are pretty well circular and still in the right place!

 

This structure is my first experience of DL-Limonene, a polystyrene solvent. It dries more slowly than Mekpak and other similar solvents. It has a very interesting smell too. I have been told that it is distilled from fruit. The smell is certainly very fruit-like. I even got a mild taste of something like oranges in my mouth.

 

I will also use the Wills stone for the walling around the top of the cutting and for the base of St Vincent Street bridge. Some of this stonework looks quite rounded in photos - fairly typical of sandstone walling in general. To get a more 3-dimensional look to the Wills walling, I plan to experiment with a few ideas. One possibility is to use some old matt emulsion paint and carefully add blobs to each stone - but there are other ideas too, if that one doesn't work very well.

 

Otherwise, I have marked out some shapes for the turntable on some double-sided PCB. I will use the PCB for the turntable deck, the perimeter of the turntable well and the plinth on which the turntable rail is attached. When the smell of the solvent gets too much, can do some work cutting the PCB instead. I have also completed gluing the components of the basic baseboard together, as mentioned yesterday.

[Weekday Cross]

There has been little more progress on the loco shed. I don't know why, but I was just itching to get something done on the turntable instead! I have bought some darning needles for the shed though. These will be used as the pillars along the entrance to the loco shed.

 

I have also cut a piece of pine shelving for the top surface of the board - for no other reason than that it was available! It will certainly make the baseboard solid when I stick everything together - not just yet though, as I still need to make cut-outs for the turntable and one or two other things. My original idea was to use foam sheeting for the top, but I decided that with the turntable mechanism and the sector plate for the fiddle yard to support, I really needed something pretty solid.

 

The first photo shows the plan of the diorama put onto the baseboard. The loco shed walls have been put in place to give an idea of what things will look like. So far, none of the wall sections have been stuck together, so they may look a little wonky on the photo!

 

I have also cut out and partly-assembled the turntable well. This is made of various oddments. The base is a thick piece of MDF. Above this is a ring of 6mm plywood. The plinth for the circular rail is made of double-sided PCB. The whole lot was glued with epoxy adhesive and weighted down on a flat surface with loads of books whilst it set. I have put 2 long 4mm frame bearings into the MDF, one from the top and one from the bottom, to act as bearings for the turntable pivot. A washer was put around the upper bearing to represent the central pivot support of the turntable.The gap under the PCB has been filled in with wood filler to form a smooth surface.

 

The second photo shows the partially-assembled turntable well on the right and the separate turntable plinth on the left. This will go just under the track sleepers. The spokes in the middle hold the central pivot locating hole in position until the plinth has been glued to the turntable well. Once the glue is set, the spokes and pivot locating hole will be cut off and disposed of.

 

I have also begun cutting out the sides for the turntable itself. These are being made of brass sheet. I have no drawing of a LNWR turntable, so I am using the Cowans Sheldon drawing in MRJ No 25. I will change the details slightly to suit the turntable at Lime Street better. The top will be made of double-sided PCB. More on this another time.

[Weekday Cross]

The turntable deck is now well under way, as you can see from the photos below.

 

Photo 1 shows the underside of the deck. The deck itself was made from thin double-sided PCB. I cut the planking on the top using a piercing saw (only visible in the last 2 photos). I then soldered some U section brass along the edges. Holes have been drilled for the handrail supports.

 

A second piece of PCB was then cut and soldered to the underside of the deck. This is the bit with the large holes in it in the first image. The purpose of this was to provide a positive location for the side girders.

The left and right hand sides of the turntable are electrically isolated, to make wiring easier later on.

 

The girders themselves are fabricated from brass sheet. I soldered some L shaped brass along the lower edge. 2 vertical pieces were soldered to the sides. These were made from OO rail with the head filed off. to make it a T section. I have not made the underside too detailed, as it will be difficult to see when everything is finished.

 

In the second and third photos, the turntable is just balanced above the well. I have not made a proper pivot yet. The ends have yet to be trimmed properly.

 

That is as far as I have got, so far. The rest will have to wait until some 2mm scale bullhead rail from the Association shop.

 

It will probably look nothing like an LNWR turntable to the experts, but I have very little information to go on. In all the photos I have looked at, everything under the top of the turntable is very dark - far too dark to pick out any detail.

[Weekday Cross]

There has not been much to report on progress over the last week or so as I really needed some track supplies before I could progress much further. Fortunately, I now have some, so progress can recommence.

 

The critical area is the turntable and getting the angles of the track leading off it right.

 

Just as a taster, here is an extract from one of the photos kindly sent to me by Dave Pennington, showing some of the detail I will have to incorporate.The information Dave has sent me answers a lot of questions about the appearance of the site and buildings.

[Weekday Cross]

In contrast to the last post, here are some view of the current scene. The scene from up above was taken from the nearby hotel car park. The houses are situated behind where the tobacco factory used to be, so would not be visible in my model, but illustrate the style used in several streets in the vicinity.

 

The colours in the rock walls were amazing to see when the sun came out - almost surreal. I bet they looked very different in the days of steam!

[Weekday Cross]

I have been comparing the various plans and maps I now have in my possession. The more I have looked into the detail of the site, the more I realise that my original plan, based on that in Jack Nelson's book "LNWR Portrayed" is slightly inaccurate. This is not a criticism of his work - he was working on information much later than when the turntable was removed. He probably had less access to photographs and plans than we have today. Pretty well all he had to work on was what was there when he did his research - I assume in the 1960s or early 1970s.

 

Anyway, here are the 3 plans I find most useful...

 

The first is a 1890 plan. This must show the 42ft turntable.

 

 

Next is a plan from 1911. It probably shows the 50ft turntable.

 

 

Finally, a plan from late LMS days (?), by which time the turntable had been removed.

 

I have rescaled them in Photoshop and overlaid them on my computer, to see the differences. Apart from the change in track layout once the turntable had been removed, the plans are much the same. The main changes were to peripheral buildings - several of which appeared in the final plan, though the mess room appears to have shrunk significantly from earlier plans. Comparing the earlier 2 plans, it seems likely that the pivot of the 50ft turntable was slightly different to that of the 42ft turntable, presumably to maintain adequate clearance with the mess room - otherwise men pushing the locos around would have very restricted space.

 

Over the next day or so I hope to draw the plan out on the baseboard. The main source will be the 1911 plan which best represents the state of the site I wish to model. Then, I can cut out a hole for the turntable well in the baseboard top. I will only start laying the track once the turntable is complete, to ensure everything lines up OK.

[Weekday Cross]

Last night I was messing around with the photo from Jack Nelson's book. I scanned it and printed it out approximately to scale to see what the retaining wall and the tobacco factory would look like. Here is the result!

 

 

The perspective at the extreme left and right of the photo give a completely false impression, but the retaining wall and factory are just about spot on. I left a bit of the foreground on the photo - in reality, the whole backdrop should be a bit lower. That means I can probably just squeeze in the top of the steeples on the tobacco factory office building on the right.

 

Looking closely at the photo, there are a few intriguing details to investigate further. I suspect, for example, that the accumulator tower next to the loco shed has some windows on the ground floor. Also there looks like a circular ventilator on the side wall of the loco shed/water tank.

 

The tobacco factory is also more interesting than I had originally thought. The main factory building is very plain until you get to the bit at the right-hand end. Although the photograph is very poor, it suggests some quite elaborate features - maybe it was the original office building? There looks to be a large water tank on the roof too. According to OS maps, the tobacco factory was a telephone factory by the 1960s.

 

I cannot model the factory for the diorama - I only really have room for a flat backdrop with the buildings painted on. That is unfortunate, as they would make a very interesting project in their own right. I guess a lot of research would be required to find more information though - and I don't have the time if I am to finish the diorama for the RmWeb deadline.

[Weekday Cross]

We are on a roll at the moment, finding new information even when we didn't expect it!

 

A trawl through Google found this wonderful link to the Yo! Liverpool Forum, where someone has posted some very interesting images of the tobacco works.

 

 

Some photos of the workers are here: http://www.yoliverpool.com/forum/showthread.php?51234-Cope-s-Tobacco-Works-Lord-Nelson-Street&highlight=st+simons

 

The overall view of the factory - actually Cope's Tobacco Works - is very useful to me, even though it shows the wrong side of the factory. The roofline of the factory shows a lot of detail, right along to the gatehouse on St Vincent Street. Also, my first glimse of what St Simons church looked like. This was demolished after bombing in WW2. I have seen no images of it before. The road on the left is Lord Nelson Street - the buildings on the left hand side of the road still exist. The station roof and St Vincent St bridge are clearly visible too.

[Weekday Cross]

On with the story of Cope's Tobacco Works! This is the only other known photo - (unless someone can come up with more, of course!) It must have been taken just before demolition. It suggests that the drawing shown in my last post was very accurate in its portrayal of the details. This gives me more confidence that the whole drawing is fairly accurate - though it deliberately misses off any details in the right foreground that would obstruct the view of the works. Many thanks to Dave Pennington for the photo.

 

Here is a history, copied from several sources on the Internet....

 

George Cope (1825-1888) and his brother Thomas (1826-1884) began manufacturing cigars in Liverpool in 1848. By 1876 Cope's Tobacco Factory in Lord Nelson Street employed some 2,000 workers including 1,500 women. The Co-operative News for 26 August 1876 reported with some admiration that the women workers at Cope's were responsible for making thirty-six million cigars a year. Cope's were proud of the factory and the working conditions including a series of free evening classes where women workers could learn to cook 'simple dishes, cheap, nutritious and palatable'. In the first class in September 1875 the instructor Mrs Thwaites cooked 'sea pie, Australian (i.e. tinned) meat pie, and treacle pudding'. A month later additional classes were conducted in St George's Hall for 'women in a better position than wives of the artisan class' who could pay a fee. Buried Anfield Cemetery Liverpool. Liverpool Mercury reported that George Cope had a short illness and that the recent weather has accelerated his Death. On his death he left £274,000 which by todays money would be worth about £16,409,860.00

 

At the end of the nineteenth century Cope’s was ‘one of the sights of Liverpool’. A visiting reporter from the Birmingham Daily Gazette wrote with some admiration of the processes involved in preparing tobacco, making cigars and cigarettes, and of the Sample Room that contained ‘specimens of the tobacco plant from every part of the globe’. He also noted that Cope’s had ‘workshops where they…execute their own engineer, smith, plumbing, joiner, and carpentering work. Here they make their own machinery, which is used in the different tobacco processes. They have steam saw mills, where they cut up logs of cedar, from which they make their own cigar boxes…and the paper boxes which are used for cigarettes are also made upon the premises’. A visitor from The Glasgow News in July 1880 gave the following account of the exterior: ‘Viewed from Lime Street one gets sight of a solid substantial building, three storeys high, whose front presents an architectural harmony of plinths, corbels, architraves, mouldings, wooden doors, and large lofty windows…The end next to Lime Street is ornamented with a handsome tower, rising up to a considerable height above the parapet of the main building and covered by a high-pitched slated roof, on which there is placed a spirelet, surmounted by a large weather vane. The entrance doorway is on the Lord Nelson Street side of the tower, the space over the entrance is divided into three panels, and is filled in with sgraffito work , which Messrs. Trollope & Sons, of London, are making so popular in architecture throughout the country.’

 

I reckon that will have to be it as far as research goes. The possible sources of new material are drying up rapidly. I guess it is time to get back to modelling. Any gaps will have to be left to my imagination

[Weekday Cross]

The names of some streets in the area intrigued me - especially after Ian Fisher sent me a PM with some information. Here is our collected wisdom on the subject...

 

Copperas Hill is named after copper sulphate works that existed on the road until the works were forced to move (1756) due to the foul smell, the name however remained. Copperas is the old name for Copper Sulphate

 

LIME KILNS which gave Lime Street its name were on the site of the present station. Fumes from the kilns were said to affect patients in the nearby infirmary, and in l804, the works were rebuilt, on Lime Kiln Lane.

 

Various other streets in the area are named after admirals, like Lord Nelson Street.

 

By inference, St Vincent Street, must be named after the battle of Cape St Vincent, I guess.

 

Thanks again to the Internet for providing the information!

[Weekday Cross]

I was working this evening (real work, not model railways) I had some spare time whilst this work was uploaded, so did another trawl of the internet. It is amazing what is still out there to be found!

 

What about this one, for example, dating from 1959......

© Copyright Ben Brooksbank and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence

 

It clearly shows the mess building just below the station roof on the right of the image. This confirms the building had a flat roof and shows a window that was not obvious before. Also, up above is part of the tobacco factory that is not shown in Jack Nelson's photo. This shows how the view from the Lime Street end integrates with the rather plain frontage overlooking the station throat very clearly. Cool!

[scanman]

Totally off-topic but.....

 

Various other streets in the area are named after admirals, like Lord Nelson Street.

 

By inference, St Vincent Street, must be named after the battle of Cape St Vincent, I guess.

 

St Vincent Street is more likely named after Admiral Lord Jervis - he was made Earl St Vincent after winning the said battle. he went on to become First Sea Lord and (in naval history circles) is famous for a comment made to a parliamentary committee.....

 

When questioned by the committee about the French ability to launch an invasion (a profound fear at the time) he pithily quoted 'I do not say the French will not invade. I merely state they will not come by sea'.....

 

Whilst Nelson rightly took the glory for Trafalgar, it was actually 'Old Jervie' who laid the foundation - Nelson and many of his 'Band of Brothers' (Collingwood, Hardy etc) - served under him. Nelson himself considered Jervis the greatest admiral of his age.

 

Right, back to railway modelling!

 

Regs

 

Ian

[scanman]

Great background stuff on the architecture! So often we tend to look at non-railway architecture as 'part of the backscene' - forgetting that quite often these buildings were a primary reason for the railways existence. Raw materials arrived by rail, finished goods left by rail and rail provided transport for the workers....

 

Good stuff!

 

Regs

 

Ian

[Weekday Cross]

Scanman, many thanks for your insight into British naval history - as you say, naming the street after the man rather than the battle sounds most plausible! I had heard of him, but not with a title.

 

As for the background research, I am finding this very addictive - quite bizarre really, as it looked a clear, cut and dried project when I began it It is only when you start looking at things in detail that you realise how much you are missing I guess most people would just fudge the gaps, but trying to find out what things were really like has been very interesting, not just finding out about Lime Street, but about Liverpool in general.

 

It would be nice to get a much clearer view of the eastern end of the main factory building. Otherwise, I think I am just about there, I think now. it is unlikely that i will unearth any more detail of St Simon's church, but I reckon I can do a model of the post-war building that took its place. The church would in any case be difficult because it soars far too high for the 11 inch maximum height allowed for the 2011 Challenge.

 

In the meantime, I hope to find the time to restart work on the turntable today

[Weekday Cross]

On with the turntable, though it is slow work, unfortunately!

 

The circular rail around the turntable pit has now been soldered into position. The rail itself is code 40 bullhead rail from the 2mm Scale Association. I rolled it around a small tin to give it approximately the correct curve. Then, I soldered it to the copper-clad PCB used for the plinth around the well. I made a spacer out of a spare piece of PCB, with the copper removed at the end next to the rail so it didn't get soldered to anything. I rotated this gradually around the axis of the turntable, so I could solder the rail in exactly the right position. I used generous amounts of Carr's Green Label flux, so the solder flowed nicely. This worked very well and took little time to do!

 

I am now in the process of laying the running rails on the turntable deck. This, in contrast, is quite time-consuming! On the prototype of the turntable I am modelling, the rails are held in place by conventional chairs attached to the wooden deck of the turntable. I decided this had to be represented. I cut out some tiny rectangles of brass to represent the base of the chairs - 40 in all . I have now soldered half of these in place on one side of the deck. Next, I will add the rest, before soldering on the rails :blink:.

 

Let's hope the finished product is worth all the effort and patience! . I will add a photo when both rails are in place and the solder has been tidied up

[Weekday Cross]

Just a quick record of my minimal progress today!

 

Attached is an image of the turntable deck, now that the running rails have been added. These are 2mm Scale Association code 40 bullhead, mounted on small brass rectangles. When everything is soldered together, it does look a bit like chaired track, even though it is far from perfect. Getting the solder blobs the same size proved impossible - especially when you consider I had to put solder on the inside as well as the outside of the rails to represent the chairs. I used a 12W iron with a pointed tip for this job.

 

Overall, I am glad I did things this way, rather than be lazy and just solder the rails straight to the deck.

 

Next I need to cut a couple of insulating gaps along the planking in-between the rails and fill in the gap to hide it. That will make the 2 sides of the turntable electrically isolated again.

 

I also have to work out how best to do the handrails, which could be a fiddly job! I will try a few experiments on this later this evening.

[bcnPete]

That looks great - I have been following this project in the shadows and it is coming together very nicely...

[Weekday Cross]

That looks great - I have been following this project in the shadows and it is coming together very nicely...

 

Thanks for the compliment !

 

I was aware that quite a few people were looking in, as I now have around 2,500 hits. This project is a lot more involved than most in the Challenge, but I think it is worth it! I am enjoying just about every minute, so far - research as well as modelling.

 

I should have another update tonight, as I have now sussed out how best to do the turntable handrail supports.

[Weekday Cross]

In general a good day, though I deserve the title of "Idiot Of The Day" for one intelligence lapse!

 

I cut 2 slots as described yesterday to isolate the 2 sides of the turntable deck. I then tested it with a multimeter to make sure everything was OK - it was still indicating a short! After 10 minutes or so of gentle filing, testing, looking at the insulation gaps with a magnifier, testing again, swearing etc etc... I finally remembered that the turntable was mounted in a metal vice As soon as I removed it from the vice, the mysterious short disappeared - surprise, surprise!!

 

I then cut the stanchions for the handrails. I made these out of code 40 bullhead rail - it is surprisingly versatile stuff! The diagram below shows how I cut the pieces, mainly with a file. Dimensions are in millimetres. It was nothing like as difficult as I had imagined it would be. Then, I soldered them in place on the turntable deck in the pre-drilled holes. I used a square piece of metal to make sure each one was straight - though once soldered, they are so firmly-fixed it is easy to make minor adjustments with a pair of pliers.

 

Finally, I soldered some handrails on using some fairly stiff nickel silver wire, taking care that everything was level.

I still need to do a bit of cleaning up of the solder - but I am very, very pleased with how well it all went (apart from the multimeter episode, anyway ) The stanchions and handrails are a bit over-scale, but very firm and rigid, which is the main priority.

 

The second photo shows the almost finished turntable deck, complete with offending vice!

 

There are still a few more details to add before I clean everything up, including the wheels under the deck, but these are all cosmetic, so I don't think they will take very long.

[Weekday Cross]

One thing I forgot to do in the last entry was add a photo of the real thing! This was taken in the little corner of Liverpool Lime Street I am modelling.

 

I think this is a "John Hick" class - Webb compound no 1559, "William Siemens". These were 3-cylinder compound locomotives, with the front driving axle driven by the large inside low-pressure cylinder and the rear driving axle by the 2 outside high pressure cylinders. There were no coupling rods, so each driving axle could rotate independently. If only I had the time and the skill to make a 2mm scale model. I could then more or less reproduce this scene in miniature! That really would be the icing on the cake for my diorama, I think!

 

The date must be about 1900, so the turntable is definitely the one I am supposed to be modelling, installed in the early 1890s - before the loco was built (1898). The photo is courtesy of Dave Pennington.

[scanman]

This turntable is an EXCELLENT piece of modelling - once painted it's going to look superb! I also liked the little tip about using a strip of PCB as a radiusing tool. Very neat - and understated genius!

 

Regs

Ian

[beast66606]

That looks great - I have been following this project in the shadows and it is coming together very nicely...

 

Me too - and agreed it's a very nice project, of course I'm a bit bias as the location is only a few miles from me, as the crow flies, straight over the Mersey rather than under it as trains/traffic travels - and my good mate Mike T is assisting where he can.