PaternosterRow

Just a couple of update pictures. A slighty alternative view of the Fowler showing a stronger sunlight streaming effect and one of the front of the North Screen taken from the overbridge.

Hi Dave, Thanks for your glowing comment. Yes it’s hard going trying to get the conditions just right but worth it in the end. I had no idea about your work until I clicked on your profile - those shots of your station at night are absolutely brilliant. Regards, Mike

The picture of the real thing (Mike Morrant Collection - Fowler 2P) that started the journey on this layout. I've managed, after many hours messing about with a spotlight and my Panasonic Lumix, to capture the streaming sunlight effect I wanted. Just wish I could photoshop some steam into the shot - I'll just have to put up with cigarette smoke for now! A couple of sepia images of a Duchess in LMS war time black. I really like this loco - the streamline shape must have made for an impressive sight in the 30's when first introduced. It's a great pity that WWII got in the way of further development of these type of trains. The speed war between the LMS and LNER really produced some wonderful designs.

Brilliant little tale and great use of the Airfix soldiers. That brought back memories when me and my two best friends played war games using Airfix 1/76th kits in our early teens (gosh - what a long time ago that was now). We each had a very eclectic collection of figures and tanks and it seemed not to matter if we had US Paratroopers fighting alongside German units etc. However, to distinguish each other’s armies we’d have our own paint scheme and my friend, Roy, painted his stuff up in white and black to represent snow troops. Simply because his favorite was the German Mountain Troop pack. So Thank you for that pleasant trip down memory lane, Mikkel.

Beautifully done and very useful account about the techniques used. Absolutely love that last photo.

Hi Locksley, just having a browse this morning and happened on this fantastic project. That Sentinel is just amazing and the workshop is just brilliant - you just wish you could walk in those doors and explore it! That night shot photo of the workshop is a real piece of art - good photography of railway layouts is of great interest to me. Lots of inspiration here and I look forward to seeing more. Mike

Cheers for the advice, Barry. Know exactly what you mean. I’ve got a later early BR version that looks much better and that’ll appear in later pics once the layout is finished. In the meantime, I’ve merely used a black piece of card behind the Margate version for taking pics - this helps hide the hideous gap between rear bogie and the incorrect footplate profile. It just shows how far the manufacturers have come over the last few decades. I doubt we’d put up with now what was available then - even Hornby’s Railroad Range is superior to the early stuff. Many thanks again. Mike.

Gosh, Alex, that’s a real compliment. Thank you and it provides plenty of encouragement for me. Making these roofs, and I’ve done a few now, has been a long learning process. I guess, because I made this, then I’m aware of the wobbly bits so having others appreciate the work is very gratifying. I understand that bits of wire and cornflake box card is not everyone’s idea of proper modeling, but it is surprising what you can achieve using humble materials. Necessity is the mother of all invention, so they say, but if I had the cash I’d certainly would use brass and have things laser printed etc. Many thanks again, Mike.

Just a few pics showing how the wire roof was constructed for anyone interested. These roof structure may look very complicated but they are relatively easy to make once you break it all down into its respective components etc. As a builder, I've a bit of understanding of how they are constructed in real life - this knowledge has helped enormously. The bundles of wire are seperated into seperate strands. These are then G clamped to either end of a furniture clamp - the clamp is turned in reverse to stretch the wire straight and introduce a little tension. I've already ruined one furniture clamp (on previous schemes) as they are obviously not designed to work in reverse. It took about 230 x 3ft lengths of wire to make this structure and a lot was used up by the circular Truss design. I studied a lot of pictures of the prototype and carefully drew out the Truss design onto a piece of plaster board. This holds the wire firmly in place during soldering. For such a large 3ft by 3ft structure I needed 78 of these. Soldering them all up in the same jig ensures repitition. The circles were easy to make by using a broom handle. This was for the smaller outer circles - the big central one was made by using an old postal tube in a similar fashion. The six beams were the next job. They required two sides a piece - this differs from the prototype in as much as the bottom plate is a single 2 inch thick piece of flat steel. I had to double up because they would been far too wobbly to work with and they needed to be as ridgid as possible. The next job was to tie the structure together. An exact plan of the roof was drawn out onto a piece of flat ply and the beams placed precisely into the positions determined by the walls. The Trusses were soldered together - note how they line up with the beam positions. The trusses were then soldered to the beams. I used a Dremel to cut the top of the beams and slid the trusses down into place. Once everything was throughly washed down it was onto the cardboard ridge and valley sections. Note how the metal bars used to join the trusses have been covered over with card spacers. These were cut to the same pattern and they nicely hide the join. Once I was happy, the whole thing was sprayed Matt Black from rattle cans. Unfortunately, no matter how accurate you try to be you will always get deviation from perfect true so there has been a lot of McGuyvering since - cutting out a wire here and cutting or adding cardboard there etc. The test photographs have helped me identify areas where things look a little lumpy etc - still a bit of fiddling to go yet.

Thanks for the glowing praise, Pete. However, if you were employed as a 4mm scale consultant engineer then you’d condemn the structure immediately. There’s loads of wonky bits and if you were able to put your eye along the beams you’d see just how out of true parts of the roof is. I’m also not totally happy with the screen, it’s all down to rushing a bit and the choice of materials out of economy. Believe me, if I had the cash I’d have the roof parts etched separately before assembly and the screen laser cut or printed. That was if I could use CAD or the like! Thanks again for the comment. Mike.

Thanks, Mikkel. Well she holds the purse strings so all consultation starts with her first! Joking aside, I actually respect her view on most things as she’s not given to false flattery and also has quite a fair and balanced opinion of things in general. Whilst initially taking umbrage, as always, I did actually see her point after pondering for a while. She’s actually the better photographer in reality and I always encourage her take charge of the camera on holiday. With my layouts, however, that’s a different matter and so she’s only allowed to critique!

Brilliant and unique. Those lithographs are a fantastic source. You can tell from them that Broad Gauge really was broad! There aren’t many modelers that have tried to tackle this period of railway history simply because, I suppose, that absolutely everything has to be made from scratch. This nicely mirrors the difficulty those first railways pioneers, like Brunel, had in as much as that they also had to invent from scratch for the new technology. Standing at that station in 1842, a passenger must have felt like how it is for us getting on Concorde etc. (not that I ever had the privilege of flying on that beautiful piece of engineering, but you know what I mean). It’s such an important period of railwayana that I wonder why Hornby and the like have never produced much of it except a rather crude version of the ‘Rocket’ etc. A great blog for anyone interested in railway history.

Wow, Pete. This is coming along nicely. I’ve always admired your attention to precision and I can see why 0 gauge appeals to you now - the level of detail is outstanding and made maximum by your weathering and building techniques. The subtle weathering on the buildings is superbly done. Those long shots are a joy. Using a mirror is a great trick and I see how you have made sure that it butts up precisely, ensuring that everything is absolutely straight so that the illusion is convincing. Mind you, I wouldn’t expect anything else from the master of straight lines and angles. Brilliant piece of work.

Beautiful modelling.

The latest pics of progress. The roof is complete and a backscene of joined, white mounting card has been erected. Just a small section of some platform buildings and a LCut footbridge to install. I also need to get a printout of the real citadel building seen to the rear of the station - this will be pasted to card and placed in the correct position on the backscene. The above looks a bit like a painting in a way. There is no photoshop trickery here - the photo has been merely cropped. Taken by a Fuji Bridge, F11, 1 sec exposure, ISO 100 with a slight adjustment on the white balance to prevent washout. I've used my homemade lighting rig cobbled together from an old overhead projector. A mirror has been placed at the end of the roof section to make the station look much larger. Just under the screen - again, a cropped Fuji shot. Note the reflection of the inside of the end screen in the distance. This picture was actually taken at night using a spotlight and a diffuser box powered by a LED 100 watt equivalent bulb (see pics below). I got the spot from a man who used to be a projectionist many years ago. The spot is as old as the hills but works brilliantly and it only cost me around £10. I was trying to emulate streaming sunlight, but, as my wife pointed out, it just looks like someone shining a torch through the roof. Some more thinking required. Another night shot - this time with my Panasonic Lumix shoot and go camera. I used the 'Starry Night' long-exposure setting - placing my hand over the lens after about 4 seconds to prevent white out (the camera only goes down to 15 seconds exposure on this setting). The cheap spot with my own version of a beam splitter taped to the front. The LED diffuser box. It is just a simple cardboard box with tracing paper front taped over an ordinary bulb holder.

Thank you for the kind comment Ben. Large Victorian Stations are often referred to as Cathedrals of Steam, but I think Carlisle takes top billing here. Those screens and the much larger roof must have been an impressive sight when first erected in 1880. It’s a shame they were lost. Thanks again, Mike.

Thanks very much, Andy. I’ll keep posting on progress etc. It’s been a bit of a slog this one!

Cheers, Mikkel. The haze is simple cigarette smoke - not exactly PC these days but very effective. These are high F stop, long exposure shots so you don’t get to see blue swirls just a sort of haze. Love the shot of Gollum by the way!

I've been experimenting with my home made lighting rig (see my Folgate Street Blog) I made from an old over head projector to see how the lighting effects being planned might work out. I've sprayed on a bit more black to enhance the filthy state of the screen. Painting and cleaning the Screens wasn't too regular in the 20th C and they appeared much filthier prior to 1936 when it was last cleaned and painted. I'm clearly going to have to think something up if I want to create a more mottled, sun beam type effect when the model is completed. I'm thinking of using a layer of white paper over the top with various pinholes and openings here and there. This will all have to wait for now whilst I finish the layout.

Hi Alex, hope you and the family are all well and good. Thanks for the comment - very flattering given your skills at this wonderful hobby. Don’t be over fooled by it all - photos always make the work look better! Overall, I’m pretty pleased with results so far and I’m pushing on for the finish. This layout has felt like a bit of a marathon so far. Cheers again, Mike

Gosh, cheers, Mikkel. That’s valued praise from a genuine master of the hobby and it’s come at the right time too as I was started to flag a bit. Unfortunately, being limited by the materials I use out of economy I see all the niggles and mistakes. The screen for example, is made of card and it doesn’t take well to readjustment. You can see that things don’t quite line up and the angular nicks along the top of the windows are not all uniform as on the prototype. The same goes for the roof structure and if you were to put your eye along the trusses you would see the wobbly bits and how out of tue it is in places. The layout was inspired by a single picture of a Fowler 2P taken in 1948 (Mike Morrant Collection) that I saw a couple of years ago. Carlisle, at that time, was in a right state of decay and the screens at both ends (and roof) were filthy from years of neglect. The shot is just so atmospheric that I couldn’t resist having a go at modelling it. As you know from previous stuff, I love all that internal atmosphere from these Cathedrals of Steam. I have all sorts of plans for dramatic lighting effects when the layout is complete - here’s hoping some of them work! I’m not sure about gaslight though! The Screens must have been magnificent when built in 1880 and they were all out of wood supported by a light metal span from behind. This, in turn was connected to the roof structure - a real work of art that was sadly lost in 1957 because of years of neglect. They were some builders those Victorians and the neo Gothic design would have even undoubtedly been inspired by Pugin - it was all about art and function for them. What a sad loss. Cheers, again and I’ll keep plugging away at it now I know I’m on the right track (no pun intended).

Cheers, Dave. Yep and I found it on a dump site so it was free! It took 200 x 3ft lengths that had to be pulled straight in a vice first. About a third of it was waste etc. Those circular braces took up an awful lot and it was a tedious job overall to complete.

The latest project. I've been off and on with this layout over the last couple of years. So I decided to buckle down and get on with it. The roof is still under construction and I'm very much at the McGuyvering stage. There's always a lot of niggles to sort. This is a quarter of a station scheme with a mirror at the rear to double the length. The whole layout is a mere 6.5 foot long. This is an original Hornby Margate version of a Duchess which has been fettled with. The track is all Code 75 and the baseboard was made from an internal door picked up from my DIY store. Using a door is quick and almost as cheap as making up one yourself. It's also very straight and square as you can imagine and therefore helps when you make roof structures out of wire. Although the station is not an exact copy of the North End of the station I have tried to remain faithful to the roof profile. This has been made with 1mm dia wire that has been soldered together in various jigs.

Brilliant and I’m going to really enjoy the development of Kyle 7mm (love that title - it’s the sort of minimal moniker that suits your architectural approach). As I commented before, this is an interesting idea to enable comparison between the 7mm and 2FS versions - a serious study into a hobby that is generally written off by those not involved as a big kids pastime. If they only knew what work went into our creations - the planning, the frustration, the joy and the craftsmanship employed. For me, and I’m sure that some will think I’m being a bit too over the top and fanciful, it’s an art form. Especially given the quality and finesse of Kyle 2FS (not to mention a whole host of other layouts that appear on RMweb). Can’t wait to see the Lima 33 and MKI coach conversions as I’ve often thought of buying some from EBay as a cheap intro to 7mm. Great to see you posting again and I love that picture of the real location, Mike.

Brilliantly entertaining and useful information all at the same time. The colour of that dung is so realistic that it instantly brings the smell to mind (now that’s proper modeling for you). Happy Christmas.