Cut-outs, corbels and Scaleforum
It's been a while since the last update, but progress has continued nonetheless - even if not much of it has been by me (work just continues to get in the way). And John seems to have lost his ability to post to the blog directly (Andy is looking into it).
After finishing off some of the outer piers (where the plinths don't come into play) John moved onto, or rather returned to, the inner ones. This is where the tapered piers are inset slightly on the rectilinear plinths, and we now seem to have arrived at a workable system of ensuring that the 'inset' is even all round. There are a couple of points that have caused a bit of a problem - irritation with one and Doh! with the other. The irritation comes from the Slaters brick card where the straightness of the brick courses can no longer be guaranteed and so squareness and matching of blocks of brick is a bit of a lottery - we can only assume the tool at Slaters is old and worn, in any event there is a market opportunity out there for an accurate replacment. The Doh! is because I forgot about the inset when arranging for the semi-circular etches, and the apertures are slightly narrower in the plinths - so we really should have had two sizes made. Never mind, there's always a workaround, especially when we can direct future photographers to ones we know are better than others! Yes we could have had more etches done or had all the brickwork laser etched to start with, but there are budgetary limits!
Meanwhile, up in Kent, Mark has been busying himself with resin casting and 3D printing, the technology for which goes straight over the heads of John and myself. We just marvel at the results, and Mark deserves huge thanks for all his efforts here - largely spontaneously too.
Firstly, we now have the resin cast roofs for the pavilions:
And not one, but two options for the corbels, one in resin and the other 3D printed by Shapeways. Both are very good, but the crispness and Mark's sanity probably mean that we will go for a production run of the Shapeways version.
This is the resin version:
And this the 3D printed one:
Finally, it has now reached the public domain via Scalefour News that the viaduct will form part of a themed demonstration on modelling BR (Southern) at Scaleforum at Leatherhead in September (24th and 25th). It won't be completely finished of course, but the objective is to have the whole basic structure up, with some run-ins at each end, and one end at least sceniced and detailed as far as we can. And some form of train movement will be available, even if one of the temporary tracks might be (sshhh) 00 for the occasion.
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