Over the last week I've been doing some work drawing up the cattle dock and the goods shed. The good shed was sparked off by wanting a project for the Scalefour societies 'Socially-distanced Challenge' and by the fact it was the next building I needed to work on.
The process of studying photographs, counting bricks, comparing with drawings from the GERS has been a fascinating one. The goods shed particularly is interesting because it was substantially rebuilt during its lifetime. No
There has been a bit of progress on my model of Clare in Suffolk over the last few weeks. The goods yard area around the cattle dock is coming on and I've planted the shunting signal which protects the exit from the yard (just in front on the J15)
Looking the other way and the castle mount is coming on with the start of some walls on in. These have been molded in sculptamold and I've had a go at painting lots of 'dots' to represent the stonework which seems to be lots of
I've managed to get the platform for platform 2 made and cut in the position of the platform building and platform walls. The building now has a roof, with slates cut from sticky labels and ridge tiles and guttering 3D printed on the Anycubic Photon. This shot along the platform gives a pretty nice view to compare against prototype photographs. The main station building is still the '1865 small' based on Takeley (but with the colours reversed) which I built a few years back, the platform cutout
I managed to make some more progress on the signals for Clare and now have the down home and up advanced starter in position, if not properly bedded in. Both have 3d printed tapered 'timber' posts and lamps with the rest of the details, arms, ladders etc being from Model Signal Engineering. The taller home signal was printed on the Anycubic photon but I reverted to my new Ender 5 to print the shorted starter. Both have a length of brass rod running up the inside for strength.
The adv
Over the last week I been able to build up the road surface around the level crossing and but in the Sculptamold between the road and river. I also 3D printed some picket fencing and the wicket gates for the crossing and fastened these in place. The overall effect doesn't look too bad.
But then I looked back the the river and saw that what had initially looked like a perfect pour of Woodland scenics 'deep water' now looked horrible! I think the issue was that I poured on
So I managed to put the chimneys onto the station building and don't they make a difference! I had made myself more work by cutting the holes in the roof based on the plans I had of Lavenham station from Jas Millham. It turns out that Lavenham had considerably more ornate brick work than Clare and the bases of the chimneys were quite a bit large. I don't know if this was the local builder interpreting the plans he was given differently (trying save money on his contract?) or if they might have b
Over the weekend I managed to get some filler wiped into the mortar courses and a couple of coats of Vallejo grey wash wiped in and wiped off. I was trying to achieve the look of worn old work-a-day goods shed and not the sand-blasted cleanliness of the preserved building in the country park. I still need to weather the roof, obviously make the windows and fasten on the stone capping stones.
The office isn't actually stuck on at the moment, hence the slight difference in
The failure of my old soldering iron means a brief hiatus on the B1 until I get a replacement. As a result I headed back to do some more work on the goods shed which I've been doing the artwork for and laser cutting. Having sorted out the issues I was having with consistent cutting on the side walls I had got to the point of having a set of parts I was happy to assemble. The assembly went fairly well and I was pleased with way the buttresses on the corners ended up. Having a test run prior to th
I decided to give the 3D printer a little job and modeled up some right angle magnetic clamps. These have 4 strong magnets mounted into them and while obviously of no use for anything 'hot' for holding two pieces at right angles while they glue they could come in handy. I'll put the .STL files on the thingiverse if anyone is interested, I made too different sizes, one 50mm and the other 30mm.
They proved to be very useful when assembling walls of my station building toil
Following on from my 3D printed brakes for sprung coach bogies I slightly modified the model to fit on a Bill Bedford sprung W-iron etch. This was for a 14mm diameter wheel. I printed them in batches of 5 so I can break one per wagon!
They fit quite nicely over the W-Iron.
I've been thinking that the Scalefour society might try the tag line 'Taking nice OO gauge models and cutting large holes in them'. At least that is the case with this Hornby e
In case my 16mm musings made folks fear I'd been loosing interest in the P4 I wanted to show you that I used the last few days to make some more uncouplers for Alex Jackson couplings. I thought I'd put some pictures on here to show what I'd been up to.
The uncoupling magnets are made from two 3D printed parts with a plastruct tube insert, that gives a freer sliding movement that just making the 3D printed 'plunger' fit directly in the hole. The printer is not particularly well tuned
I did a bit of 3d modelling in CAD this weekend and produced some rainwater goods. This included some of the castings that hold the pipes onto the walls, some spouts for the bottom of downpipes and some hoppers for where one pipe goes into another. I also drew up some chimney pots and some suitcases, just for the laughs.
They came out pretty well on the Anycubic photon.
The holes in the drain components were drawn at 1.3mm and drilled out easily to fit some plastruc
Thanks to some encouragement from one of my friends this week I got around to trying to layer some additional grass textures on the cutting sides. I used Peco Scene Layering Spray which worked pretty well, it doesn't seem to colour the existing grass but holds the next layer of static grass securely. Getting different lengths and colours of grass fibres makes quite a difference to the overall look.
The pickup goods approaches the overbridge on its way from Clare to Caven
Back in 2011 I played about with my Scalefour Society lever frame to use servos to lock the levers.
2011 blog entry
At the time I implemented the locking by connecting a PC and running JMRI, this used the 'logix' operation to monitor the state of each lever and then lock/unlock other levers appropriately. This worked OK but obviously required a PC to be connected to the layout. The locking was also based on my previous layout design rather than my current Stour Valley pro
I finished off my P4 conversion of the Hornby horsebox. It is a lovely model and I am very pleased with how it looks. The original W-irons were filed down to wafer thin and then I stuck a set of Bill Bedford sprung W-irons behind them.
I purchased some of the new Lanarkshire models Jackson coupling droppers and fitted these. I've always hated trying to make droppers for Jackson's as I never seemed to be able to either bend iron wire to the right shape or solder iron wir
It never ceases to amaze me that my lasercutter can both crunch through 6mm ply for baseboard construction and do super detail work in 1mm MDF. I'd been asked to help with a 4mm narrow gauge Irish project the station building had rather impressive arches over the windows. This needed not just very fine cutting for the mortar lines but also some engraving to shape the bricks around the arch. These little beasts are 18mm across and cut in 1.5mm ply.
I also made up the chim
So, this one is a bit detailed and has a few ramblings.... Sorry
Some modellers are very clever, they come out with perfectly formed designs, work tirelessly to bring them to fruition and produce superb pieces of work first time. Some practice 'slow modelling', being superbly organized, only getting out the tools and materials needed to for the job in hand and breathing deeply while wielding their scalpels. Much respect it due to these folks, if you feel you fit into these categories
The road side of the station building at Clare has a glass awning over the entrance door. Looking at the pictures this had a timber frame under the glass and a thin leaded layer on 3 sides of each pane only on the top. The main glazing bars were cut in 1mm MDF and drawn at 1mm wide but probably cut down to about .8mm. The top layer was in thin card and was extremely fragile when it came off the laser cutter.
In this picture I have just positioned the awning, the brackets, which were
I've been working on the second of the two river bridges on my model of Clare. For most of the building I've been using the laser cutter to make the brick work but the centre pier of the bridge has two different shapes at the ends. The upstream end is rounded and the downstream end is shaped to a point. The curve is impossible to cut flat and then bend and the multiple corners on the pointed end would have a some nasty joints to hide. I thought I'd give it a go on the 3D printer.
The S&T team were out again today, taking advantage of the reduced Sunday service to install a ground disk at the exit of the down goods lay-by. This signal was built from some etches which I believe were produced by D&S in the last century. It is f**tingly small!, the disk being about 5mm in diameter and the total height only being about 11mm.
Normal/Danger:-
and when cleared
The wire linkage through the baseboard also drives the ba
As I hinted in one of my previous blog postings I wasn't entirely happy with the windows in the station building. Some were ok (usually the ones I'd shot in photographs) but others were a bit iffy. I'd been slowly developing the process and the cut files for the laser cutter. This picture shows versions 1, 2 and 3 from left to right.
Version 1 was a single 1mm cut with the detail engraved on the top. The single thickness made for a lack of relief that I didn't think gave
I've been musing over the cattle pens for a few weeks now. The pen was at the end of the loading dock and, by the late 1950's was out of use and blocked by the construction of a grain loading facility.
The posts of the pen appeared to be disused rail so I opted the 3D print the posts. This was a lot easier than the prospect of breaking multiple drill bits trying to drill eight holes in 20 posts. Each of the posts is 19mm tall.
Cutting, bending and threading th
Taking onboard the comments on the mound I added the best part of another couple of inches to the top. I also altered the shape to I hope better match the rather pointed shape of the original. I've added an initial layer of static grass and made a couple of trial little bits of wall from Sculptamold (I just wanted to see if I could make a wall with it, I need to get the shapes better)
I've got the goods shed bedded in a bit better (obviously still needs windows, capping stones etc. e
Clare station was built in the bailey of Clare Castle (you could do that kind of thing in 1865!) and the castle motte is still present behind the goods shed. I don't have the space to model the whole mound but need to try to make something that gives the right feeling. There needs to be a bit of forced perspective going on too which complicates things. This section of the aerial photograph gives some idea of the scale of the real thing. To those who have visited over the last few years it will b
