Castle Aching

[Caley Jim]

Castle Aching is looking so good that it is in danger of becoming a tourist 'honey trap', which is the quickest way to the ruination of any place.

But excellent news for the WNR!

 

Jim

[Caley Jim]

 Presumably there was a standard for imperial fasteners.

For Whitworth bolts, the dimensions of a nut are 1½D + 1/8" across flats or 2D across corners, where 'D' is the diameter of the bolt.

 

Jim

[Bill_J]

Spent a few hours reading through from the start, currently while watching "Full Steam Ahead" on BBC2, seeing the effect the arrival of the railways had on bringing Scotch Whisky to the rest of the world, while taking a break from the olympics - what a great way to spend a Saturday afternoon. 

 

Thanks to Edwardian for inspiring me to consider replacing several years of armchair modelling, with a return to genuine activity.

[wagonman]

The thing is, what most modellers call "rivets" on wagon ironwork (which they call "strapping") are usually nuts or sometimes bolt heads, and until BR days, were usually square. Using Archers rivets is more than you need to do.

 

Take a sheet of 10 thou plasticard sheet, and cut a narrow strip from it, approximately 10 thou wide. Chop this up into 10 thou cubes, then stick these on using a 0000 paint brush and MEK or whatever you usually use. Dip the brush into the solvent, and it will hold enough for you to pick up a cube, and then to brush the cube into place. It sounds far harder than it is, and it costs virtually nothing. I found a single-edged razor place to be the best tool for cutting. I used to take wagon bodies with me on business trips, along with some Mekpak, a brush, a straight edge and some 10 thou off cuts. The back of a notepad provided a cutting board, a small tin led everything's needed. Unfortunately, (over)reaction to events 15 years ago means that taking such things onto aircraft as hand luggage is no longer possible.

 

(I am aware that the GWR used rivets.)

 

If you want rivets, or are not too concerned over the correct square shape*, then why not simply emboss them from behind? In 4mm scale, reasonable quality paper is thick enough for the ironwork, and it can be embossed with a ball-point pen. A little slightly thinned PVA will stick it onto a thin ply body (check out aero modelling supplies, to see if you can get 1mm thick for PO wagons, 0.8mm will do for company wagons), so you can build more wagons that you will ever need for very little money.

 

* I am not a river counter, clearly. I am more concerned with their shape first...

 

 

I agree totally with Simon's method for depicting the nuts on wagon ironwork. In 7mm scale an argument can be made for using Grandt Line mouldings, but they are overkill for 4mm scale. The actual work of applying 10thou squares of styrene needs good light, good eyesight, and patience! Don't try doing more than a few dozen at first otherwise what I usually refer to as "doing a nut job" becomes all too literal.

 

BTW, though the GWR and others used rivets on their metal underframes, only the LNWR, as far as I know, used them to hold its wagon corner plates together. If you want rivets, particularly on a surface where you can't push through from the rear, then the Archer products are good. I might try to dig out some photos... but don't hold your breath.

Edited August 21, 2016 by wagonman

[Edwardian]

Nearholmer, on 20 Aug 2016 - 10:26, said:

Castle Aching is looking so good that it is in danger of becoming a tourist 'honey trap', which is the quickest way to the ruination of any place.

K

Unfortunately, the Promoters of the Line have thus far lacked the wherewithal to construct the Permanent Way. Funds need to be raised to insulate and weather-proof the railway room and baseboards constructed before track laying can commence, so CA is safe hoards of tourists for the moment. 

 

Shadow, on 20 Aug 2016 - 11:51, said:

All I did was take a photo. You've turned it into believable building in a believable town.
Really great modelling.

Dave

Yes, but you did take it, and a good one too, and I am grateful for the time and trouble you have taken to help.

 

Guy Rixon, on 20 Aug 2016 - 13:02, said:

If you have access to old MRJs, Chris Croft's series of articles lists the fastener sizes for 1923-spec wagons.

I've just looked at an RCH specification-drawing from the 1906 spec, for a 12-ton wagon. The body fastenings, holding the sheeting to the side knees and the diagonal braces, are specified as half-inch bolts. The only other fastener size I can make out (my scan of the drawing isn't perfectly clear) is some 5/8" bolts in the underframe. I would guess that a nut on a half-inch bolt might be 0.75" across the flats (having just looked at a modern, M12 nut), or possibly up to 1" if they were being generous with the metal. Presumably there was a standard for imperial fasteners.

POWsides do dry-print transfers for GE open wagons and ventilated vans in 4mm scale.

PS: the village is looking lovely and quite inspiring.

That is helpful, thank you.  I did not know about the POW Sides transfers.  For the small lettering era on GW, GE and GN, I still think I need to produce my own stuff if I can.

 

mullie, on 20 Aug 2016 - 13:32, said:

Village is looking great and desperately needs a layout to go with it.

The people of Pott Row were getting restless as their service has been really poor over the last year. A passenger must be staging a sit in on the light railway platform because she has a wait of at least 4-6 months before a suitable carriage is available. As we are coming out of wartime and rationing is still in place services are well used but stock is very run down.

If you don't give your community some trains soon their might be a protest meeting in the local pub as the line from Pott Row could easily have passed through Castle Aching and I will draw a map of the route the Pott Row sits on one day.

Yes, we are 60 odd pages in and not a rail has been laid nor a train run.  Not even a baseboard.  I am very conscious of the need to address this absurd situation sooner rather than later!!

 

 

Spent a few hours reading through from the start, currently while watching "Full Steam Ahead" on BBC2, seeing the effect the arrival of the railways had on bringing Scotch Whisky to the rest of the world, while taking a break from the olympics - what a great way to spend a Saturday afternoon. 

 

Thanks to Edwardian for inspiring me to consider replacing several years of armchair modelling, with a return to genuine activity.

 

You are most welcome.  I can remember distinctly exactly when and why my railway mania was re-kindled as an adult, which is why I know it was 17 years that passed in the Armchair before I did anything about it; I hope it was not so long in your case, but, as the Memsahib is prone to say "Just F-ing do it!"

 

Hope to see the results posted on RMWeb in due course.

 

 

The thing is, what most modellers call "rivets" on wagon ironwork (which they call "strapping") are usually nuts or sometimes bolt heads, and until BR days, were usually square. Using Archers rivets is more than you need to do.

Take a sheet of 10 thou plasticard sheet, and cut a narrow strip from it, approximately 10 thou wide. Chop this up into 10 thou cubes, then stick these on using a 0000 paint brush and MEK or whatever you usually use. Dip the brush into the solvent, and it will hold enough for you to pick up a cube, and then to brush the cube into place. It sounds far harder than it is, and it costs virtually nothing. I found a single-edged razor place to be the best tool for cutting. I used to take wagon bodies with me on business trips, along with some Mekpak, a brush, a straight edge and some 10 thou off cuts. The back of a notepad provided a cutting board, a small tin led everything's needed. Unfortunately, (over)reaction to events 15 years ago means that taking such things onto aircraft as hand luggage is no longer possible.

(I am aware that the GWR used rivets.)

If you want rivets, or are not too concerned over the correct square shape*, then why not simply emboss them from behind? In 4mm scale, reasonable quality paper is thick enough for the ironwork, and it can be embossed with a ball-point pen. A little slightly thinned PVA will stick it onto a thin ply body (check out aero modelling supplies, to see if you can get 1mm thick for PO wagons, 0.8mm will do for company wagons), so you can build more wagons that you will ever need for very little money.

* I am not a river counter, clearly. I am more concerned with their shape first...

 

Well, that's the answer.  Many thanks again, Simon.

[Donw]

For the square nuts 13thou is about 1inch in 4mm  I would expect the nuts to be thinner than wide so I reckon 5 thou  sheet might be better. Evergreen do 5 thou. Alternatively you might just cut some from paper especially if you are making card or ply bodies. Rivets can be represented by tiny blobs of PVA applied with a cocktail stick use a PVA that is not too watery. These sort of jobs can be done on a tray on your lap with the family while they are watching TV.

Great work on the village.

Don

[Guy Rixon]

BTW, though the GWR and others used rivets on their metal underframes, only the LNWR, as far as I know, used them to hold its wagon corner plates together. 

 

 

The fasteners on some GWR vans look like rivets on the outside, but I speculate that they may actually be dome-headed coach-bolts with the nuts on the inside of the body.

[Quarryscapes]

For Whitworth bolts, the dimensions of a nut are 1½D + 1/8" across flats or 2D across corners, where 'D' is the diameter of the bolt.

 

Jim

 

The latter is a very useful dimension as in CAD, polygons are usually defined as the radius of a circle touching the corners, which can take some working out if you are making an AF bolt! 

[nick_bastable]

A lot of quality work on display in this thread  excellent buildings and figure painting ever  considered joining  the dark-side of 2mm modelling    ?

 

Nick

[Edwardian]

A lot of quality work on display in this thread  excellent buildings and figure painting ever  considered joining  the dark-side of 2mm modelling    ?

 

Nick

 

Nick, thank you for that.

 

I have seen a number of wonderful layouts to 2FS; a quality and level of detail that I would scare have thought possible until recently. 

 

Then again 3mm is a fairly happy medium, I very much like the look of S, and 7mm gives an appearance of solidity and a presence that the smaller scales cannot match!  There is much to be said in favour of each.  I suppose I naturally gravitate to 4mm as it is familiar, both from childhood railways, but also childhood military modelling.

 

Never say never, though .... 

 

In other news, I hope this weekend to complete, more or less, Castle Aching's High Street, which is the one at the rear of the scene.  I want to do this because I have decided to alter the angle of the baseboard slightly and cannot determine the exact footprint of the village until I complete this range of structures.  I suppose I am, literally, working back to front.

 

I am also doing so in the figurative sense, because I am next to build a baseboard for the village and will build it to suit the eventual size and shape of the village rather than fitting the village to a pre-determined baseboard size, because nothing has been pre-planned!  The village you see is both the cardboard mock up and the finished village!

 

Once I have the village board, I can produce a board in front to carry the railway.  The eccentric way in which I have gone about this meant that I needed to get the village most of the way there before I could start on the real estate that actually carries the railway. 

 

I am looking forward to track construction, maybe sometime in September with a following wind.  Looking forward to point construction less, BUT, I notice in this month's Model Rail, Chris Nevard is tinning his PCB sleepers as well as the bottom of his rails, so I feel slightly less eccentric on that score!

 

As for stock, I cannot afford any more components at present, but might start on some trial wagon bodies to see how I get along.

[Edwardian]

A fuller update to follow, with some pictures of my version of the Ostrich.

 

In the meantime, I have laid the village out on the dining room floor to finalise the dispositions and work out the size of the village board.

 

The board will be exactly 5' long.  At the far, castle, end, it will be 3' in width.  At the nearer end, it will be 2' deep. 

 

There will be a second 5' long rear, and purely scenic, board, which is to contain fields, woods and the parish church, a large feature, though to be built smaller than 4mm scale in order to aid perspective.  The idea is that the church and mature trees at the opposite end of the layout to the castle mound will balance the background visually to an extent.  So much for theory.  This is purely mind's eye, and test and adjust modelling.  Nothing on paper, let alone models of models or mock-ups.  That is why I have to set up the village components together every so often, to see where I'm going! 

 

Honestly, I spend 17 years in an armchair reading up on how to do this properly and then the fit comes on me and off I go doing everything the wrong way.

 

In front of the village board will then be the first of two railway boards.   The idea is to fit the two together in a very simplified version of Iain Rice's jigsaw baseboard concept.

 

Anyway, the reason for covering the dining room carpet this morning was to arrange for the rear, High Street, module to be set at an angle from the backscene.  If you look at the plank in the picture below, this represents the course of the backscene and you will see how the rearmost row of buildings is now angled away from it. 

 

Looking at the village, there are really no parallel lines in its layout now, which I hope will give it a natural look.

 

The essence of an old English village is that it seems be an organic thing, to have grown and not been planned or, even, built.  Hopefully that sense will come across when CA is eventually finished.  I will certainly have built the village, but will certainly not have planned it!

[BG John]

I think the architect who designed that large modern building, and the corrupt planning officers who allowed it to be built, need to be taken to a dark alley and taught a lesson they won't forget!

[Edwardian]

I think the architect who designed that large modern building, and the corrupt planning officers who allowed it to be built, need to be taken to a dark alley and taught a lesson they won't forget!

 

Bl**dy Normans. Haven't they heard of "sympathetic development" and the need to use local materials?

 

They'd never get planning permission for it these days!

[Fenman]

... The essence of an old English village is that it seems be an organic thing, to have grown and not been planned or, even, built.  Hopefully that sense will come across when CA is eventually finished.  I will certainly have built the village, but will certainly not have planned it!

 

Although, ironically (as I'm sure you know), Castle Acre was a planned Norman village.

 

The model is looking very nice indeed.

 

Paul

[Edwardian]

Although, ironically (as I'm sure you know), Castle Acre was a planned Norman village.

 

The model is looking very nice indeed.

 

Paul

 

Thank goodness I only pinched half the name and half the buildings from there!

 

Otherwise, I'd end up with a sort of early Twelfth Century Milton Keynes (but without the roundabouts).  Speaking of Normans in Norfolk, no one has picked up on the fact that my King's Lynn is called Bishop's Lynn, the original name of King's Lynn!

[Edwardian]

Personally I just call it "Lynn", so I wouldn't really notice which adjective was applied.

 

Well, I had to do something. The name East Lynn had already been taken for a superb and inspirational S Gauge layout.

 

I would have used it, otherwise, as one of the sayings in our family, uttered upon someone's sudden departure, is "Gone, gone, and never called me 'Mother'!"

 

Funny lot.

 

Anyway, this line, I believe, is not in Mrs Henry Wood's novel East Lynne, which, I confess, I have never read, but is in a stage adaptation of this melodrama, which, I assume, my Yorkshire grand or great grandparents once saw!  I think I mentioned that my mother's antecedents were all characters in a J B Priestley play?

[Fenman]

...

Speaking of Normans in Norfolk, no one has picked up on the fact that my King's Lynn is called Bishop's Lynn, the original name of King's Lynn!

 

I'd assumed that was deliberate, in your alternative history!

 

Paul

[wagonman]

As it happens Little Walsingham was also a planned 'New Town', albeit in the 12th century, and they had already thought of laying it out on a grid pattern. Fortunately or otherwise only about a quarter of it was ever built.

[richard i]

A fuller update to follow, with some pictures of my version of the Ostrich.

 

In the meantime, I have laid the village out on the dining room floor to finalise the dispositions and work out the size of the village board.

 

The board will be exactly 5' long.  At the far, castle, end, it will be 3' in width.  At the nearer end, it will be 2' deep. 

 

There will be a second 5' long rear, and purely scenic, board, which is to contain fields, woods and the parish church, a large feature, though to be built smaller than 4mm scale in order to aid perspective.  The idea is that the church and mature trees at the opposite end of the layout to the castle mound will balance the background visually to an extent.  So much for theory.  This is purely mind's eye, and test and adjust modelling.  Nothing on paper, let alone models of models or mock-ups.  That is why I have to set up the village components together every so often, to see where I'm going! 

 

Honestly, I spend 17 years in an armchair reading up on how to do this properly and then the fit comes on me and off I go doing everything the wrong way.

 

In front of the village board will then be the first of two railway boards.   The idea is to fit the two together in a very simplified version of Iain Rice's jigsaw baseboard concept.

 

Anyway, the reason for covering the dining room carpet this morning was to arrange for the rear, High Street, module to be set at an angle from the backscene.  If you look at the plank in the picture below, this represents the course of the backscene and you will see how the rearmost row of buildings is now angled away from it. 

 

Looking at the village, there are really no parallel lines in its layout now, which I hope will give it a natural look.

 

The essence of an old English village is that it seems be an organic thing, to have grown and not been planned or, even, built.  Hopefully that sense will come across when CA is eventually finished.  I will certainly have built the village, but will certainly not have planned it!

Loving the organic feel this has. I have hoped to copy some of the elements like the angles and step in the road to go round a building for Dettingen's town board which is yet to be built.

Richard

[runs as required]

As it happens Little Walsingham was also a planned 'New Town', albeit in the 12th century, and they had already thought of laying it out on a grid pattern. Fortunately or otherwise only about a quarter of it was ever built.

One of my favourites of these Medieval planned settlements is Warkworth, Northumberland with its clever Kipper bone plan neatly fitting the river Coquet's meander.

It utilises the deep, minimum street frontage Burgage plot system to maximum advantage between castle and church/bridge.

dh

In the 20th century Nikolaus Pevsner said of the imposing castle that the military engineer happened also to be a great architect. He went on: "Warkworth must be approached from the north. With its bridge, its bridge-tower, then Bridge Street at an angle, joining the main street up a hill to the towering, sharply cut block of the keep, it is one of the most exciting sequences of views one can have in England."

[Donw]

I would criticise yourself too much. It seems quite sensible to build the village first, after all real vilages were built piecemeal over years before some idiot tried to work out where to place the railway. I very much like the look of the village.

Don

[Edwardian]

Well, bar a few extra details, the rear module is largely complete.  I added a wedge-shaped fillet to the rear, so the module can now sit snug against the back-scene. 

 

I decided that my Ladies' and Gentlemen's outfitters should have a name.  In retrospect, Grace Brothers might have been appropriate, but in the end I plumped for W. Awdry & Son.

 

Now The Ostrich, Castle Acre, was not a building that I originally envisaged including.  However, the row of three flint cottages did not look right next to the Georgian Lodge, so I shunted the cottages to the left and created a gap.  Shadow Dave saw the potential.  The gap I initially created was not that large, so Dave conceived of a Baby Ostrich and cunningly faked up an image to show how it would sit.

 

That was persuasive.  The Ostrich has a prominent deep roof with dormers.  This made it ideal for the chosen location, because the roof is really all that will be seen from most viewing angles. 

 

The photographs below that show just the roof visible capture what is likely to be the usual, restricted, view of the building.  Many of the shots are taken with the buildings in front removed.  In some of the shots you will see grass areas in the centre of High Street,  I am pretty sure that that these will be invisible on the finished layout, and they exist mainly to provide somewhere to plant a couple of trees in due course (further obscuring the Inn, of course!).

 

Subsequent to Dave's post, I decided to move the cottages even further to the left and the resultant gap meant that, if I knocked the cottage off its end, I could accommodate the Full Ostrich.

 

I used two of Dave's broadside views, stitched them together in Word (I know, Photoshop would be better) and, voila, I had Castle Aching's premier hostelry, The Dodo.

 

There is very little relief to this model, partly because the façade will only be glimpsed from time to time, but mainly because it sits to the rear.  I had to paint over some of the modern  accretions, matching acrylics to the printed brick work.  This proved effective enough for me to decide to paint the brick-work on the gable ends, rather than use printed texture.

 

The legend on the wall reads:

 

The Dodo

Aching Ales

Fine Wines

Good Stabling

& Loose Boxes

 

The sign I had huge fun with, finding a painting of a Dodo, pasting it into a Word document, reducing and flipping to get a mirror image so that I could have the bird facing the street on both sides of the sign.  The original had all manner of other birds surrounding the Dodo.  I merely painted these out to leave the solitary, splendid, eponymous bird.

 

The Dodo brings to an end, for the time being, work on smaller-scale buildings.  There is more detailing to do, but I am content to leave that for a while; I have the shape of my first board now, so can contemplate some railway building. The rest of the village, like the Station, is to be full size and at the front of the layout.  I need to up my game to make the front of house structures convincing. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[nick_bastable]

be careful the town planners will be after you  

 

excellent work

 

NIck

[NeilHB]

James, 

 

Stunning work as always! The Dodo fits right in on the street in Castle Aching, and the whole vista reminds me very much of many happy days as a child on holiday wandering round Burnham Market, Wells and other delightful Norfolk towns and villages. 

 

I look forward to further developments in the property market in Castle Aching...

[Old-sparky]

Jolly good stuff, and a good five minutes out from the heat, the dust, and those damned eternal flies of a family holiday.

 

Winchelsea was pretty much the medieval Milton Keynes, although, fortunately, the latter is less prone to attack by French pirates. BTW, there is a plaque under a tree in Winchelsea, commemorating the most recent event of any note, which was when John Wesley preached there. Absolutely nothing has happened since.

 

Kevin