Stoke Courtenay

[checkrail]

Yay!  This time it's let me attach three, bringing this sequence of the branch goods leaving for Earlsbridge to a close.  

 

John C.

[BenL]

Hi John,

 

I've been following your layout topic in awe for a while now - thanks for the latest shots, fantastic as ever.

 

Can I ask the origin of the rather nice platelayers' hut, the one next to the LMS open in the penultimate shot above?

 

Cheers,

 

Ben

[Anglian]

John,

 

Thank you, fabulous images, as we've come to look forward to. May I ask a couple of questions: one of the things that really impresses me that I recall seeing in images of the Norris layout is the wide open spaces of 'nothingness' – the flat ground around the goods yard for example, might you explain your method to achieving this? I'd imagine flat areas of grey/brown could rather kill a scene but the opposite is true here, they really pull the view together. When I look at your layout I don't get that jumpy feeling that you often get, the visual harmony between all the elements is perfect.

Secondly may I ask about your planning – how much did you pre-plan before you began to build, did you know the lie of the land relative to the track layout before you began. As I've mentioned before the whole looks beautifully considered – surely not a happy accident?

Edited February 25, 2019 by Anglian

[checkrail]

13 hours ago, BenL said:

13 hours ago, BenL said:

Can I ask the origin of the rather nice platelayers' hut, the one next to the LMS open in the penultimate shot above?

 

Thanks Ben for kind comments.  The GWR platelayers' hut is from an old Cooper Craft plastic kit.  It comes with a plastic base, which I didn't use, and also the nice little grinding wheel and the pick & shovel, which I did.  Similar lineside huts are shown in the various 1930s GW photo albums; it was from one of those that I got the idea of having an old sleeper propped up against it.

 

John C.

[Limpley Stoker]

A shovel and a pick and a walking stick , I ho, I ho.....

[checkrail]

And here's another 'no trains' pic, showing the aforementioned platelayers' hut from a different angle.  You can just see the top of its brick chimney.

 

 

Looks like the weight of the grindstone is proving too much for its little wooden legs (or maybe I just can't glue things on straight).

 

John C.

[BenL]

21 minutes ago, checkrail said:

Thanks Ben for kind comments.  The GWR platelayers' hut is from an old Cooper Craft plastic kit.  It comes with a plastic base, which I didn't use, and also the nice little grinding wheel and the pick & shovel, which I did.  Similar lineside huts are shown in the various 1930s GW photo albums; it was from one of those that I got the idea of having an old sleeper propped up against it.

 

John C.

Thanks John, and a lovely little scene that is too!

[checkrail]

A couple of hours or so later 4574 and Toad return from Earlsbridge with the outgoing goods heading for Hackney Yard.

 

 

John C.

 

[checkrail]

And here's the next pic.  Knowing the square root of **** all about photography I have no idea why some photos come out at around 1.5 mb while others are 8 mb or more, though the views look similar to me.  Anyway, I can only fit this one in this post.  Gonna start compressing them again I think.

 

 

 

John C.

[checkrail]

… and the next!

 

 

John C.

[Brinkly]

Throughly inspiring John. Brilliant! 

 

Best wishes,

 

Nick.

[checkrail]

On ‎25‎/‎02‎/‎2019 at 21:02, Anglian said:

May I ask a couple of questions: one of the things that really impresses me that I recall seeing in images of the Norris layout is the wide open spaces of 'nothingness' – the flat ground around the goods yard for example, might you explain your method to achieving this? I'd imagine flat areas of grey/brown could rather kill a scene but the opposite is true here, they really pull the view together. When I look at your layout I don't get that jumpy feeling that you often get, the visual harmony between all the elements is perfect.

Secondly may I ask about your planning – how much did you pre-plan before you began to build, did you know the lie of the land relative to the track layout before you began. As I've mentioned before the whole looks beautifully considered – surely not a happy accident?

 

Thanks Anglian.  It's nice when people recognise the effect you've been after.  So many of the layouts I've admired over the years, starting with 'A Magnificent System' by Miler & Philo in the Feb 1959 RM (discussed on this thread a few pages back), have had this 'open' look, which I was determined to replicate.  I think the answer is restraint.  Less is more.  Resist the temptation to fill every blank space (difficult with the wealth of lovely accessories on offer!). Keep colours muted.  Don't have too many people or road vehicles.  Avoid too many cameo scenes. Quiet harmony rather than noisy, buzzy - 'jumpy', as you say.   It's bit like feng shui I guess!   (I've written a bit on this in my article for next month's BRM, if it's survived the editing process!)

 

And yes, it was planned to look like this.  From the outset I had a picture in my mind's eye of how I wanted it to look.  The dropped baseboard area was part of this planning.  I originally had thoughts of a nice 3-arch viaduct and river, but very soon came to the conclusion that it would all look a bit too crammed, so went for a rail-over-road bridge instead.  I'd already compromised a bit on cutting and embankment angles, but hope that the foreshortening effect hides this to some extent. But station, viaduct, tunnel would have been a compression too far I think!  Now if only I'd 30 feet instead of 13 ……. 

 

Nice too to be reminded of the legendary W S Norris layout.  Another inspiration.

 

John C. 

[number6]

Couldn't agree more with your intentions. It was a photo of a rake of MR opens in some loop sidings on the Norris layout that inspired me for years. Just plain everyday railway 'landscape'.

[checkrail]

Another view of the returning branch goods.  (This one pic almost busts the 10 mb threshold.)

John C.

 

[checkrail]

And another ….

 

John C.

[checkrail]

The branch goods slows into Stoke C. 

 

Have compressed these jpegs so I can place more than 1 or 2 pics per post.  Guess that involves a certain loss of photographic quality (not that there was much there in the first place) but I honestly can't tell the difference.

 

John C.

 

[81C]

John your shunter has failed to chain down the container on the flat wagon, it needs side lining for attention to a dangerous load. 

[Barry Ten]

I hope this won't be considered cheeky, but I downloaded the last couple of these pics, brightened them a bit, and re-uploaded as below. I used GIMP which is a nice free alternative to Photoshop.

 

 

[Barry Ten]

And here's the top one:

 

[checkrail]

1 hour ago, 81C said:

John your shunter has failed to chain down the container on the flat wagon, it needs side lining for attention to a dangerous load. 

 

Who needs chains when we have superglue?  But seriously Bob, thanks for pointing this out.  Think I might have some fine chain in a bits drawer somewhere.

 

Cheers,

John.

[checkrail]

3 minutes ago, Barry Ten said:

I hope this won't be considered cheeky, but I downloaded the last couple of these pics, brightened them a bit, and re-uploaded as below. I used GIMP which is a nice free alternative to Photoshop.

 

 Not at all.  Thanks Barry.  Will have a look at GIMP. Still experimenting with this camera (when I have the patience).  Have tried all 10 different white balance settings in current photo sequence, but without getting exactly what I want yet.  Next step is the try them all again with various degrees of auxiliary lighting.

 

Anyway, this time next month you'll be able to see Andy Y's pics in BRM.  It was very pleasing to see a nice big 'trailer' pic of Stoke C. near the back of this month's ('Spring') issue.

 

John C.

[Barry Ten]

1 hour ago, checkrail said:

 

 Not at all.  Thanks Barry.  Will have a look at GIMP. Still experimenting with this camera (when I have the patience).  Have tried all 10 different white balance settings in current photo sequence, but without getting exactly what I want yet.  Next step is the try them all again with various degrees of auxiliary lighting.

 

Anyway, this time next month you'll be able to see Andy Y's pics in BRM.  It was very pleasing to see a nice big 'trailer' pic of Stoke C. near the back of this month's ('Spring') issue.

 

John C.

 

I had a particular problem with white balance on one part of my layout, which none of the built-in settings on my Lumix seemed to cope with, so I created a custom white balance setting by holding a large sheet of plain white card in front of the scenery. Worth a try?

 

Looking forward to the BRM article, most definitely!

[KNP]

Barry Ten beat me to it.

 

I got Serif Affinity to have a go where I tweaked brightness/contrast, exposure and shadows/highlights ending up with this.

With a bit more time I think I could get even better.

 

 

Hope you don't mind.

What editing suite do you use?

[Neil]

Several years ago, prompted by a suggestion here on RMweb, I started to use Irfanview to tweak photos that didn't come out of the camera the way I thought they should. It has fewer bells and whistles than Gimp but this is a strength as well as a weakness, as it's very simple to use. Most images can be corrected by the 'auto adjust colours' and 'sharpen' functions found under the 'Image' tab.  It is possible to alter images in a bespoke manner with 'Colour corrections', again under the 'Image' tab, if the auto settings don't deliver quite what you hoped for.

 

Worth a go if Gimp or Serif Affinity aren't to your liking.

[AY Mod]

42 minutes ago, Neil said:

, I started to use Irfanview to tweak photos that didn't come out of the camera the way I thought they should. It has fewer bells and whistles than Gimp but this is a strength as well as a weakness, as it's very simple to use. 

 

It's also a very useful tool for resizing images for web usage. It's easy to retain the original file and create a copy resized for optimum use and you can control the compression levels and/or resulting file sizes. I frequently use it when there's a lot to do, such as the 150+ images I needed to deal with quickly for Hornby's announcements; a few seconds later and all the hard work is done.