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More laser-cutting, this time it's BIG!


Fen End Pit

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I'd been looking for a suitable industrial building to form a back-drop to my rebuilt scalefour empire and also provide a source of rail traffic. Those with very long memories may remember my attempt to model Mistley maltings (or at least part of it) more years ago than I care to think. I didn't want anything quite that big this time so spent a good few hours on Google searching for 'East Anglia Mill' and similar terms. I end up finding Ebridge Mill near North Walsham. There is an excellent web site at http://www.norfolkmills.co.uk/Watermills/ebridge.html which has some good pictures from the '30s and '40s. The mill buildings had also been visited by several groups of 'Urban Explorers' over the years who had taken many pictures of the mill and some of the derelict details http://www.28dayslater.co.uk/forums/industrial-sites/79782-ebridge-mill-north-walsham-norfolk-feb-2012-a.html. Finally the mill is still standing and had been past by the Google Earth Snoop-mobile. (Search Google maps for 'Ebridge North Walsham').

 

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The mill consists of 3 major buildings, a low section of original watermill built in Flemish bond brick with pantiles, a later built taller mill building in English bond and slates and finally a 1950's extension of silos clad asbestos. In the early 50's the tile roof on the earliest section was replaced with more corrugated asbestos. I've decided to model the building in this condition as I thought for my period (1950-60's) the only way the building might still have been rail served was if it was used as a transhipment point for grain from road to rail. I am imagining that local farms would deliver their grain in small lorries and then some of this grain would be loaded into rail wagons for shipment.

 

Constructions follows the same processes as my previous water tank only this time the 1.5mm MDF I used to engrave the brick on is strengthened by using 3mm MDF to make the structure of the building. I was slightly caught out by just how much engraving there was on the building as I set the laser cutter going during one of my lunchtime visits to Makespace http://makespace.org Unfortunately I then had to mail work to explain I was going to be back 'a few minutes late' as the cutting of the sides took almost exactly an hour!

 

The roof and end are clad in Wills corrugated iron which was a much better approximation to the size of the corrugations on the prototype than their corrugated asbestos. Taking the time to file the bottom edge of the sheet is worth while if tedious. This still needs to be painted on these photographs and I'm trying to work out the best method. It seems to me that the valleys need to be quite a bit darker than the ridges and also full of moss on at least one side!

 

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Windows were cut in 1.5mm MDF but I have been able to thin this down to almost 3/4mm by gently rubbing on some fine sandpaper. At the moment the windows look rather 'white' and need toning down about. Bricks have again been painted using Halford's Red Oxide car primer, followed by ModelMates brick joint filler and finally various washes of water colour paint.

 

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By the time period I'm modelling the original lucam had been cut back and trying to get the various angles correct when cutting the Wills sheet caused several hours of amusement.

 

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I've took the opportunity of a couple of hours in Cambridge yesterday to cut the carcass for the second mill building. Put together the two begin to make quite an impressive, but thankfully not over-powering sight. The window reveals in the carcass are obviously way over-sized as they are designed to fit a rectangular piece of clear sheet.

 

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One thing that is becoming really clear to me is that it is so much easier to make a realistic model if you actually start with a prototype rather than 'making something up'.

 

The road side view compares quite well with Google Earth.

 

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So, next up I've got to work out how to fit the corrugated clear plastic 'sky-lights', paint the roof and then fit and make all the rain water goods.

 

David

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Excellent modeling,

 

The 4 mm approach works excellent when you have the space, but you have to make adaptions when you have less space without loosing the character of the building.

For plausible reasons I have to work with the second approach.

 

Looking forward to see your progress.

 

Regards,

Job 

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  • RMweb Gold

That's a very interesting project. I like the idea of using Google Earth/Streetview for searching suitable prototype buildings, I hadn't thought about that.

 

The building looks really good. I sympathize with your work with the Wills sheets. Knowing how difficult they are to work with it must have been very laborious - but the end result was clearly worth it .

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  • RMweb Gold

Beautiful modelling David. Really captures the building nicely.

 

I bet Wills sheets and amusement were't the words going through your head at the time? ;)

 

Cheers,

 

Mark

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This looks very good. I second mikkels thoughts on street view. I'm definitely going to have a look into that. I cant wait to see this all weathered up. 

 

By the way how is the direction of empire basin going?

 

Owen

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