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St Ruth

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Leamington 2017


D869

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This weekend we blew the cobwebs off St Ruth after 6 months of exhibition inactivity by taking it to one of the bigger of our local shows run by Leamington & Warwick MRC.

 

We haven't been completely idle during this period (almost... but not completely). The most noticeable additions being the ability for our 'sun' to gradually set allowing us to run the layout in darknes. Apart from a black cloth to keep out stray light from overhead this has entailed a lot of work putting lights (controlled by an Arduino under each board) into buildings and generally bringing into commission all sorts of lighting bits that had been built in over the years but so far hardly used. The signals had been built with working lamps from day one but this is the first time that we've wired them up other than for occasional photo sessions. One of our more recent members, Andrew Hyatt has also spent a lot of time painstakingly researching and then creating reproductions of the 1950s era street lighting that is evident in photos of Penzance up to the 1970s.

 

The second major addition has been a shameless theft of Nigel Ashton's display board idea. We now have a board running most of the length of the scenic section containing details about various buildings and other stuff about how the layout works. For this show it was printed onto plain paper but eventually it will be done with something more resistant to sticky finger marks... because it does attract plenty of finger poking.

 

Oh, and the show was fun and the food was very good.

 

Some photos...

 

The Leamington College provided a handy balcony just so that we could take some high angle photos...

 

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My attempt at photographing 'after dark'. In practice this is tricky because I didn't want to get in the punters' way. As you can see, overhead is not the only source of stray light - particularly when you set the layout up in an atrium.

 

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The roadshow crew doing their stuff

 

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  • RMweb Premium

quality looks very good,  I intend to use ardunios to control lighting on my own home layout   can I have more details of the street / station lamps please

 

Nick

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  • RMweb Gold

Looks good Andy - glad the show went well.

 

Is the intention to always run the show in this setting or was it a trial? Just curious.

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quality looks very good,  I intend to use ardunios to control lighting on my own home layout   can I have more details of the street / station lamps please

 

Thanks Nick. I'll pass on your request to Andrew (street lamps) and John (platform lamps). Both use surface mount LEDs as the light source but they are better placed to tell you about how the lamps are put together.

 

Looks good Andy - glad the show went well.

 

Is the intention to always run the show in this setting or was it a trial? Just curious.

 

Thanks Pete. Not sure whether you mean the whole show... in which case this is their second year at the college... which brings with it the usual likes and dislikes in terms of exhibits being spread around several rooms. If you mean the night time running on St Ruth, then yes it's something that we intend to continue. I think the reaction from the audience was positive but this is the first time that we've had a serious go at it so we have plenty of rough edges to sort out.

 

Regards, Andy

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Thanks Pete. Not sure whether you mean the whole show... in which case this is their second year at the college... which brings with it the usual likes and dislikes in terms of exhibits being spread around several rooms. If you mean the night time running on St Ruth, then yes it's something that we intend to continue. I think the reaction from the audience was positive but this is the first time that we've had a serious go at it so we have plenty of rough edges to sort out.

 

Thanks Andy - sorry, my bad on the phrasing. I meant the latter, running the layout in night time mode.

 

I was thinking you might start off during daytime mode, then introduce the black sheet as the day goes on...a nod to the dark side ;)

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  • RMweb Gold

Looks very good. The nightime running should be very atmospheric. The only downside is it might make it  harder for people to see the benefits of finescale track and wheels also you excellent work.

I presume the black sheet can be left in place so you can change from light to dark and back. What about coach lighting have you got any stock prepared.

Don

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Plagiarism can always be translated as "research"! I claim no copyright on display boards - after all I came up with that after I couldn't get the departure board idea working very effectively and that was nicked from St Ruth. I'm glad I didn't have to calculate the curve on the slant that you have - a 20 degree slope on a 90 degree corner was enough for me! It does add something though, keeps folk away from the layout just enough without being a barrier and gives them extra info. On something like St Ruth with lots of prototype info to share, I'm sure you have lots of material you can play with. I look forward to seeing the finger-proofed version.

 

The night view seems very effective although I'm glad it wasn't me who had to install all those LEDs.

 

Regards Nigel

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Thanks Andy - sorry, my bad on the phrasing. I meant the latter, running the layout in night time mode.

 

I was thinking you might start off during daytime mode, then introduce the black sheet as the day goes on...a nod to the dark side ;)

 

Looks very good. The nightime running should be very atmospheric. The only downside is it might make it  harder for people to see the benefits of finescale track and wheels also you excellent work.

I presume the black sheet can be left in place so you can change from light to dark and back. What about coach lighting have you got any stock prepared.

 

The black sheet stays put all the time so the layout's own lights provide all of the illumination for the daytime scenes. We have added some wire frames over the halogen spots to keep the cloth well clear and this seems to work fine with no worrying build-up of heat.

 

Lighting in the trains is still to be done. Fortunately only a subset of the stock runs at night. Unfortunately all of those coaches belong to me.

 

 

Plagiarism can always be translated as "research"! I claim no copyright on display boards - after all I came up with that after I couldn't get the departure board idea working very effectively and that was nicked from St Ruth. I'm glad I didn't have to calculate the curve on the slant that you have - a 20 degree slope on a 90 degree corner was enough for me! It does add something though, keeps folk away from the layout just enough without being a barrier and gives them extra info. On something like St Ruth with lots of prototype info to share, I'm sure you have lots of material you can play with. I look forward to seeing the finger-proofed version.

 

The night view seems very effective although I'm glad it wasn't me who had to install all those LEDs.

 

Thanks Nigel. I think you are assuming a much more mathematical process than was actually the case - I think the job was done rather more freehand with some trial and error and then the info panels were done by tracing the curve from the ply and (I assume) scanning it in. I still think we could use some way to keep the finger (or frequently, big camera lens) pokers back a bit from the goods yard.

 

Regards, Andy

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A couple of the photos that I took at Leamington (hopefully) showing the new lighting ...

 

I took several images on a bridge camera in manual mode, adjusting the settings to try to get some that were not too under/over exposed.

 

St Ruth at Leamington (evening) 2

This image shows off well the level of lighting introduced - including lights in some of the backscene buildings that are in relief / pretty well flat.  What it doesn't show at the distance taken is the detail that has been added to the building interiors, all of the rooms lit have had to have interiors modelled, the Pirates Hotel dining room for example has several tables and chairs and diners enjoying their evening meal.
 

St Ruth at Leamington (evening) 1

Being in a well lit Atrium, this image is probably closest to how the layout looked in the flesh, I suspect that in a normal exhibition hall the evening/night-time scene would look somewhat darker.

 

Ian

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I like the lighting; subtle and convincing - unlike the magnesium flares on a plastic stick that many layouts plague themselves with.

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Thanks Ian and Andy. The LEDs are series wired with suitable resistors after some experimenting to try to achieve sensible levels of lighting. The other issue is colour - most (all?) of the tiny surface mount white LEDs only come in cool white which looks pretty nasty to my eye in a model context. We've coloured these with yellow glass paint where they are supposed to represent tungsten bulbs... but not where they represent mercury street lamps.

 

Regards, Andy

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In case you weren't aware mercury lamps used for street lighting has a green-ness to their light that became more obvious as they aged.

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I think I was aware although it's a looong time since I saw one. I'm sure that we have green paint too but I suspect the result would be too unsubtle.

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Very much enjoyed this layout at Leamington. One of the finest 2mm scale layouts that I have ever seen. The signalling is exquisite- especially the WORKING subsidiary and route indicator. The control panel diagram is quite impressive too. Very much captures the atmosphere of the place that a lot of people think that it is a model of- which of course it isn't- just inspired by.

The lighting looked good as well.

 

I would like to thank the very friendly crew who kindly let me around the back and take some photos and of their sequence details. The display featuring the details of the train at the time was also very interesting being a digital photo frame with corresponding photos.

 

Look forward to seeing this fine layout sometime soon- likely to be at Hinckley. Modelling at its finest and a logical and coherent scene presented.

 

Natalie

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