When I did our weekly shopping I found this nice Santa.
Light works on batteries and has a switch to put the light on and out.
Santa was easy to remove. In this way a had a nice led light for the inside of my warehouse. I have to find a way to construct my building in a way I can put the light on when required.
I started with the inside of the warehouse. I have finished one pile of wooden whiskey boxes and have to build more. There will also some barrels along one of the walls
The first edition of the warehouse of Roope & Voss is demolished.
I have decided to make Northall part of Greater London. In one of the books of Ruth Rendell inspector Wexford is ‘recovering’ in Kenbourne Vale, Postal district W15. Northall will be Postal district W16.
After this a wanted to give the premises of Roope & Voss a more London look.
I found a nice description of a famous warehouse in Wapping High Street. I used this description to create a guide for the design of th
In the archives of the Northall Gazette I found a nice description of the cottage and the warehouse behind it.
And some pictures of this part of the layout.
View from the dockside.
Birdseye view Farnshawe Ltd.
This picture is made before I did some more work on the roads. I also decided to create a ‘NO ENTRY’ sign for the alley. The background is also still the try-out.
I had to find out first some more information about how to place this traffic sign.
With the h
In one of the replies on my entry Street Scene Design was written: “Also bear in mind that in the 'fifties' these areas would still have 'flagstone' paving rather than the later concrete types - and they would be rutted & disrupted by vehicles. Road surfaces would often be of cobblestone or granite setts.”
For the road surfaces I already choose for granite setts. For the pavement I didn’t make an decision. So after the reply I liked to see if I could create a flagstone paving with granit
I had to find a solution for my the lighting and background of my APA-box diorama. Due my multiple chemical sensitivity I’m not able to do any soldering. So I have to search for other possibilities. I find this one of the most difficult jobs for my diorama’s.
I use a led strips from IKEA with the following description: light temperature 2700 K / 30 lumen. This is enough for a APA-box. I have used them also for Nice Street (Urban Scene).
This time the led strip is adjusted at the front of th
Do you also have a lot of modelling pictures on your computer?
What do you do with them?
If they only are an back up then you can maybe use them. Mostly I buy a calendar for my office at work. This time I wanted to make the calendar a little bit more personal.
Before I used the APA-box I built Bridge Street. Bridge Street doesn’t exist anymore as a layout. The only remembering are the pictures I made to follow the progress and to publish them on the RMweb for feedback. So I decided to u
For the building of Fanshawe Ltd I needed a rain pipe to hid the join in the alley.
I already made a rain pipe using a 1,2 mm rod from Evergreen for a house on Nice Street. A texture is glued around this.
For the warehouse I wanted to use a square Victorian rain pipe.
I wanted to create it myself using a self-made texture. My journey on the internet began.
I learned a lot of new English words connected to rain drainage. Finally I found a picture by CG textures that was usable.
I decided to finish the cottage in the front of the diorama first.
Added the street name sign on the building and a drain pipe.
For the roof I had a look at several slate and red clay tile options. In the front of the diorama I try to use whenever possible light colours. The grey slate tiles I found didn’t look right to me so I choose the red clay tiles from Wordsworth Models (free download).
I also first searched for some background information and read it.
I wanted to give the roof a
Before I can finish the building of Fanshawe Ltd. I must decide what wall based street furniture I want to use.
I spend a lot of time behind my PC searching for street names for Northall Dock.
For Greater London there are several options. See the picture below.
On Flickr there is a London Street Name Pool with a lot of pictures. I could skip all those modern type street name signs.
I also tried to find names that refer to the scene of Northall Dock.
For Northall Dock I will
I’m fond of ghost signs. The an add just some more character to a building or a scene.
For Nice Street I made my first self-made ghost sign. I wanted to try that again on one of the buildings on Northall Dock.
During my research for the warehouses of Northall Dock I came along this one:
This sign I want to made on the premises of Farnshawe Ltd.
First I made the sign in Word and cut out the individual letters.
Then I used the cut out letter to create the letter for the
For the members of the RMweb John Thaw fan club.
I have followed the TV series of inspector Morse and became a fan of John Thaw.
For my diorama’s I searched for names so I started to read some of the Inspector Morse detectives by Colin Dexter.
I discovered that the personality of inspector Morse was more complicated in the books than represented in the series. I also discovered a nice link between inspector Morse and our interest in railways and railway history. You can read my discovery i
When planning Northall Dock I had the idea to build some stables along the now finished road. But when building a muck up I saw that the building did not hide the side of the main road as I wished. Then Scalescenes came with the canal cottage and I made the front and to put it along the road.
The question:
How to create the right derelict urban appearance for the cottage?
So I left the front unfinished. When I have such a problem I mostly do the following with success.
The Process
To add some details to Northall Dock I did some research. As a guide I used the Hounslow - Street Scene Design Guide from October 2012. Although not the area I’m building it gives a good overview of how you can design streets and what kind of elements are used.
From this guide I selected the following vertical street elements:
Advertising signs and A-boards
Bespoke Furniture
Bins
Bollards
Boundary Railings
Bus Shelters
Street lighting
Covers and gratings
Sur
I started with the road along the warehouses. Progress is going slowly. After every step I had to wait for 24 for hours before I could do the next step:
1. glued track on the baseboard
2. spray painted the track with a primer
3. painted the track with Humbrol acrylic rust paint
4. painted the track with Tamiya gun metal
road modeling progress
Then I looked how I could to make the card road. I noticed that it take more time than I thought. Progress will go slowly:
- Fitting
For the roads along the dock basin I use a granite road texture I found some time ago here http://www.btcomm.com/trains/resource/brick_n_stone/hocking_valley_pavers_med.jpgI had to resize it a little bit using the sett texture from Scalescenes as a reference.
I had to build the road op with two layers of 2 mm card to get it even with the dock edge.
On the picture you can see the starting point of the road.
road modeling in progress
With the embossing pen I scratched in every st
For the building of my diorama’s I do a lot of research on internet. For railway modellers there is a lot of information available.
My main interest in railway modelling is freight traffic and the social history of the period that I’m building, the late 1950’s. To give a right impression the use of daily live pictures is most important. Luckily I have found a lot of beautiful websites with a lot of pictures.
But what about social media you could ask now. The most frequently social medium
Still too hot for me and my card modelling.
So you have to wait for some modelling progress.
Basic materials for my card models
For the making of my diorama’s I use textures that I print out.
I know there is a lot of discussion about what kind of printer you should use.
I use a HP Photosmart Office printer. For printing I use the following:
- Mostly light crème drawing paper for walls
- Water color paper for roofs, rough walls
- A good quality printing paper for metal
- The
Back from my holidays. I walked a lot in the fields and woods in the early morning and late evening ( before sunset). Made some useful grey sky pictures. Because of the sunny weather I did a lot of reading ( inspector Wexford), searching on Internet and following the blogs and forums on the RMweb.
Last week it was to hot for modeling in Holland for me.
So here is the entry of my result of my internet research on roads.
For my Nice Street diorama I didn’t much research for the road surfa
I have built the Dock Basin.
I wanted to opt for try-out no.4 acrylic paste, paint & varnish and a wooden pillar. But unfortunately my acrylic past wasn't doing the job properly. So I made a small change here. Instead of acrylic paste I used Gesso. Gesso is a base that is used to prepare the painting surface for acrylic paintings etc.
The edge is made of separate build card edgings stones. On internet I found a stone merchant who had edge quay stones for sale. He also mentioned the size of
Planning an urban diorama
When I decided to build diorama’s I tried to find as much information as possible.
With this information I made my one reference card. My reference card (without the pictures) contains the following elements:
Think of the acronym PICS:
• Plausible scenes
• Independent / isolated vignette(s)
• Contours in the scenery
• Staging
Planning ahead
To avoid frustration on your project, plan ahead. Look if you can create your scene with available scenery produc
After I tried out several water texture possibilities I was looking for the quay wall texture I want to use.
I had bought the dock edge pdf’ s from Scalescenes in the past. This has two options a concrete one and a stone one. I found the concrete one to modern for my diorama.
CGtextures.com has a lot of nice textures. They have also some useful dock textures in their collection. I tried several but tried out the concrete one: ConcreteBare0280 (Texture: #35243)
I decided to try out the stone w
Thinking..
After I put the poem to the entry last I week I started to think about the ….. (dots)
So here is the answer in a nutshell. The inspiration came when I traveled by train with my wife over the new line through the Flevopolder to Groningen.
Holliday …
As a boy in the late 1950’s I got on vacation with my parents to a place in the north of the Netherlands in the province of Groningen. After going from Utrecht to Groningen with the electric express train
The poem is my free interpretation from the first part of the poem “down in the deep water”. The original poem is to be found here: http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/down-in-the-deep-water/
This is the first time I made several try outs before I start modelling a part of my diorama. On my first water surface I just used black paint and several layers of varnish. For Northall Dock I wanted to see if other ways would give a better result. So for the dock water I tried o
From main scene to diorama design.
“Just build what you can see”
After the design of the main scene and his most important details it was time to plan the whole diorama. I made the other buildings from scrap card. This gave me the opportunity to see of the basic plan was alright.
The other buildings
I planned two other warehouses and a stable. After my first trial I discovered some problems with the balance of the warehouses and the height of the stable. To solve this problem
Design
As you could see on the drawing I designed three warehouses.
The story
The warehouse of Roope & Voss Ltd will be the main scene. The story behind the Roope & Voss Ltd – Wine and spirit merchants can be read in the article of the Northall Gazette.
The Warehouse - from the Dutch architect Peter Potter (1854 -1918)
The building is just quick build to see of:
· the scene is convincing
· the building has the right appearance
· the colours are right
Detail
