Morning all,

 

After an intense 3 months of work, including readjustment to WFH I was happy to have pre booked a week off after Easter to have a break and of course, profit from some modelling given current restrictions. 
 

Following the last post with the apron, the next job before tackling the dries was to undertake the ballasting. This was using some black ash ballast from Green Scene following the tests I did and posted last year. No point to dwell too much on the ballasting as this was done using the tried and tested dry lay, mist coat and then pva/wul/water mix. One board seemed to adhere better though and even after a coat of a well known hair spray manufacturer, giving it much needed volume and bounce  I resorted to a second spray of said solution. This seems to have fixed it with just the usual patches needing some touching in.

 

The chairs have been painted rust colour and the whole thing now needs toning down using some weathering powders. I also added some patches of static grass just to give the feel of it becoming unloved as this is set circa 1983 just before it closed...small hints of weeds will be added to the apron and the gap between the concrete and rails in due course.

 

Right, that’s the ballast bit....now the clay bit...namely the dries. As mentioned before I had produced some drawings based upon the originals from an Architect friend I studied with and these formed my quick n dirty foam mock ups. Whilst I usually prefer to work in card, I knew I was going to build the dries in plastic as I needed a mixture of random stone (the base) concrete (the floor and projecting platforms) brick (for the columns) and block (for the later infills) Primarily as I didn’t fancy applying DAS and hand scribing and ending up with a mixture of materials. All of the sheets were purchased from South Eastern Finecast at an exhibition but also topped up by mail order direct during lockdown. 
 

I started by building a foam board carcass of about 300mm long which was then expanded  bit by bit. The brick columns were cut paying attention to photographs and counting courses and received a few strokes with a file on the edges to get mitred corners making sure the courses lined through...that’s the Architect in me coming through 

 

 

Random stone was applied using double sided tape and I built a brick pier followed by a block work infill before commencing the next brick pier again. This continued until I had the complete length (1100mm approx.) and I set about making the timber wall plates and rafters. Here is where things took a detour  I started the first bay building the rafters bearing on the wall plate with the idea I would attach the fascia board. The fascia board was pre prepared using some excellent gutter brackets found online by googling. Giles kindly ran me off some and dispatched in time for this week. These were glued into place and the fascia board offered up and glued in place as per attached pic.

 

 

Feeling pretty pleased with myself, whilst I transported the layout back to the spare room, I bumped into a shelf and the dries building fell flat on its face...breaking off all the gutter brackets - the room was filled with much fruity language  Relax, walk away, think it through and ponder overnight.

 

The next day the first task was to make a foam board support jig to prevent this happening again...It then occurred to me that I was approaching this all wrong as I was having trouble keeping the alignment of the fascia as well as having to cut/trim each individual rafter  Ok, time for rethink...and some cheating 

 

 

At the level of viewing the underside of the rafters will be barely visible from the front, so why build this as a traditional roof? What was needed was a box type structure with a soffit board to allow me to get the alignment as well as attach the gutter brackets separately to the front. This was made in sections, welded together with MekPak and attached to the structure. This would allow the fascia board to be attached as well as the profiled roof sheets. Win. 

 

 

So to end the week, I attached the fascia boards (having first predrilled and glued the gutter brackets) filled some joins with model filler and then the whole assembly was taken to the garage for a spray with grey primer...to see what needs more work! I have sprayed a test piece of roof but am not so sure about the profile yet so will get some more options before attaching. I now need to add the gutters, downpipes and further detail such as metal guard rails etc. 

 

 

 

 

The unit was placed on the layout and some test running followed to check clearances. One of the projecting platforms needed a tickle with a file as the handrails on the 08 caught on it but this is an easy fix. First runs were shocking despite cleaning the track prior to remove the pva and paint so a good coating of IPA on the rails seems to have resolved that.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Going forwards I am tempted to now start the dries buildings on the other board before I start painting and weathering this one however I will see how the mood takes me on that. I now have a methodology to build the other more complicated building and as this sits more forward and will be more visible I may look at trying to laser cut some timber rafters at the studio when life gets back to some normality.

 

Overall I am happy with what has been produced this week and turning a negative into a positive, this lockdown has allowed me to progress with the modelling which normally is undertaken for a couple of hours at the weekends.

 

As always, comments welcomed and stay safe all,

 

Pete