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Great Southern Railway (Fictitious) - Signalling the changes...


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Well, the steps are now painted, the signalman has been fitted, and all that remains is fitting the lighting and the box name boards. Overall, I'm very pleased with it, and I'm now pondering what to build next! There's a nice little pile of Petite Properties house kits awaiting my attention... 

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They are lovely kits. I've only built one and a half of them so far but they've gone together beautifully and they don't suffer from the chocolate-box village look that some kits do, which is a bonus if I'm trying to represent a decently-sized town! 

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Having inspected them at the Great Central, and chatted to the proprietors, I reckon that they could easily be adapted for use with brick-papers, so their future use would be consistent with the character of CA buildings.

 

Your flint cottage is really special, however.

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Looking at your Saxby & Farmer signal box Linny I've just realised that a digital GER signal box model I use is a Saxby & Farmer signal box.  True enough it's in GER colours and there are photos about of the prototype, but since it was built by Saxby & Farmer that means that I can reskin it it into other company liveries with a clear conscience (Provided they used Saxby & Farmer signal boxes of course).

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4 hours ago, Caley Jim said:

And signalling equipment!

 

Jim

My usual go-to for old railways is the excellent series of McKenzie & Holland split post signals made for Trainz because they do what they say on the tin and work flawlessly without any conflicts with other signals from other content creators.  For Saxby & Farmer I do a fudge and use some older types of GWR signals to represent them.  There are a lot of gaps in signalling for Trainz especially in the pre-grouping era.  A small number of MR signals has only just become available and the same for the LSWR.  There's no LNWR signals at all and the same for a lot of the other pre-grouping railways.  Most of the good signals for Trainz have been made by just one maker who belongs to the creator group I belong to, but he's a busy chap with all the usual job and family things to attend to so he can't be expected to churn out signals for everything on request.

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Most of pre-grouping companies tended to buy in their signalling kit from a fairly small number of firms (Saxby & Farmer, Stevens, Mackenzie & Holland etc), it was only later that the bigger companies like the Midland started designing their own...

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That said, there are slight noticeable variations between products supplied by the same firm(s) to different companies. Stevens stuff in particular seems to have varied a little bit - An LSWR signal is quite noticeably different from an NBR one.

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So, with the signalbox behind me... I've started on the Petite Properties Station Road Semi kit. It's being clad with Slaters English Bond Plasticard, and this is my first experience with this material. It has been... interesting. On the one hand, I'm delighted by the neat brickwork, and the relief. On the other, trying to trim it neatly to fit the window opening is rather fiddly - the knife will quite happily follow horizontal mortar courses, but vertical ones seem more challenging.

However, for an evening's work, it is already looking a bit more refined than a Metcalfe kit!

 

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8 hours ago, Skinnylinny said:

So, with the signalbox behind me... I've started on the Petite Properties Station Road Semi kit. It's being clad with Slaters English Bond Plasticard, and this is my first experience with this material. It has been... interesting. On the one hand, I'm delighted by the neat brickwork, and the relief. On the other, trying to trim it neatly to fit the window opening is rather fiddly - the knife will quite happily follow horizontal mortar courses, but vertical ones seem more challenging.

However, for an evening's work, it is already looking a bit more refined than a Metcalfe kit!

 

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I love working with textured plasticard. Trust me, you'll get used to it. 

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Unfortunately I can't seem to access that Web page - I'm getting an error that the page is timing out. What do you been by the courses not lining up with Slaters bricks? 

 

I mainly went with what was available at my local model shop - as I was just trying out the material it didn't make sense to pay for postage too, if I decided I didn't like it! 

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1 hour ago, Skinnylinny said:

Unfortunately I can't seem to access that Web page - I'm getting an error that the page is timing out. What do you been by the courses not lining up with Slaters bricks? 

 

I mainly went with what was available at my local model shop - as I was just trying out the material it didn't make sense to pay for postage too, if I decided I didn't like it! 

Keep an eye out for Auhagen ones and for Wills ones. They're what I use and they're very good. 

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8 hours ago, Skinnylinny said:

I've tried the Wills sheets but found them extremely difficult to cut, and not flexible at all. I think I'm currently preferring plasticard glued to the laser cut wood. 

have you tried an Olfa cutter?  Makes working with thicker plastic much easier/

 

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A little more work has got the houses further on. I'm not quite convinced by my join at the far end in this photo, so I may try to hide it under a drain pipe from the guttering.

I have a vague memory that I read somewhere that white window frames weren't common during the Victorian/Edwardian period, due to how quickly they showed the dirt - can anyone confirm this? The windows that have been fitted so far are fitted with Glue-n-Glaze, so should be easily enough popped out. I've gone for dark colours for front doors (black and bottle green). I'm also wondering whether to fit the dormer windows in the roof, or just to make the whole roof flat - were dormer windows common in properties like this in the late 1890s-early 1910s, or were they more a product of loft conversions?

 

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2 hours ago, Skinnylinny said:

- were dormer windows common in properties like this in the late 1890s-early 1910s, or were they more a product of loft conversions?

I can't comment on the south of England, but I've had a quick look through some of my Stenlake books of old photographs of towns and villages in central Scotland in the late c19th and early c20th and dormer windows are not uncommon. Some have very elaborate barge boards. 

 

Jim 

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I think the topic of window frame colours was over in Castle Aching some months ago. Certainly when I've seen properties that have been abandoned for what would appear to be a considerable length of time, the window frames appear to have been painted in green or other darker shades.

 

I think it's also to do with what the paints were based on.

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Many white paints were based on white lead, which quite rapidly discoloured in sulphurous ( read that as coal burning) atmospheres.  However by the late 1880s and maybe earlier, white paints were being based on zinc rather than lead - but at a cost.  This was a much more stable white colour.

 

So simplistically there is no easy answer.  Poorer owners of properties might well resort to darker colours (green and brown seem to have been common), but those owned by people of means could have been painted with the new improved "white".   

 

Edit to add:  properties with accommodation for the servants in the attic (aka Dormer bedroom) and with very ornate windows at the ground level suggest people who could and would afford zinc based white paint.

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