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1865 Great Eastern station - laser cut station building

Fen End Pit

Entry posted by Fen End Pit

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Over the last few weeks I've been drawing up a laser cutting drawing for a Great Eastern Railway '1865' style building. These were built on several lines including the Stour valley line, conveniently these came in three sizes, small, medium and large. The Great Eastern Railway society publish some plans of the small version Takeley and an ancient April 1986 copy of Practical Model Railways has drawings of the Medium taken from Lavenham.

 

I've decided to try this as an experiment on cutting using Acrylic rather than MDF. I had some white 3mm Acrylic and I obtain some .7mm Acrylic/ABS mix from HPC laser.

 

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Just the base here cut from 3mm Acrylic. It worked ok and the joints seem very strong with Plastic Weld. I've tried using a mitre joint on the small shed end of the building using the sanding disk in Makespace. I had to use a little model filler on the corners but I think the corners might look better than the 'interlocking' method but we'll see once it is painted.

 

blogentry-7212-0-27654400-1400105329_thumb.jpg

 

The building has brick adornments on the corners and around the windows and here I've tried using the .7mm material from HPC laser. This isn't listed on their website but you can ask for it if you ring them. The material cuts a lot better than pure ABS and I can see that it has potential.

 

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Once I stuck the quoins onto the base it does begin to look like an 1865 station building.

 

I think I need to practice a bit with some of the strengths/speeds of the laser to get the brick engraving and cutting better but as an experiment in what the materials can do I'm happy so far.

 

David

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steve22

Thanks for this, David, some nice skills there.  It's good to be able to see new modelling techniques coming to the fore.  And presumably at reducing costs and becoming available to anyone, DIY.  Do I read that right?

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  • RMweb Gold
Fen End Pit
  • RMweb Gold

Thanks for this, David, some nice skills there.  It's good to be able to see new modelling techniques coming to the fore.  And presumably at reducing costs and becoming available to anyone, DIY.  Do I read that right?

Yes, I'm doing the cutting myself rather than using a bureau service. The sort of cutter that will do this is slowly reducing in price, the cheapest you'd want is around

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jburgt

@David,

 

Nice project. I work on a similar project in 4mm scale. Is your solution also suitable for the fine brickwork?

And, also important, is your material easy (and safe) to glue?

 

Grzz,

 

Hans

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  • RMweb Gold
Fen End Pit
  • RMweb Gold

@David,

 

Nice project. I work on a similar project in 4mm scale. Is your solution also suitable for the fine brickwork?

And, also important, is your material easy (and safe) to glue?

 

Grzz,

 

Hans

Hi Hans

I found that the perspex cut very cleanly, but with a slight tendency to curl where I had lots of bricks cut on one side. Also I wasn't particularly happy with the .7mm Acrylic/perspex mix as it didn't really cut as cleanly as I'd like. I've reverted to using MDF and ply since, see later postings.

 

David

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