Cake Box Round 4 "Industry" - Voting

[Phil Parker]

It's time to vote for your favourite Cake Box from the final round of the 2019 season. Please take time to look at all the pictures and read the descriptions. The link to the voting form is at the bottom. Voting closes at noon on 9th January.

 

Balfour Beatty Rail Yard

Builder: Joe Laurence

 

 

This theme gave me the perfect excuse to combine my day job with my hobby. At work, I digitally design how construction equipment will sit and function within tight spots. I thought, why don’t I give it a go 76 times smaller?

 

I used images of both the Sandiacre and Toton Rail Plant sites as inspiration for the project.

 

 

I started in SketchUp for the digital model, and then moved on to the actual build. With it being so small, I fancied trying out some new modelling techniques. The first being a lighting effect where a welder is working on a section of track. The second being a 3D printed site office – again designed using SketchUp. The third new item I tried was weathering my Sentinel – I’d never weathered a locomotive prior to this project. The fourth came as a surprise during the build, where I picked up a Plasser unit on eBay for £20 – I resprayed this using car sprays and decaled it up in Balfour Beatty.

 

I’ve also really enjoyed filming the entire build, it’s been quite rewarding watching back the diorama take shape, whilst editing my video for YouTube.

 

 

Colliery Terrace

Builder: Chris Chewter

 

 

I wanted to model the human aspect of Industry, where the people lived.  Anyone who has been to South Wales will know the thousands of identical stone terraces spread across the valleys and beyond.  I also wanted a diorama with lots of small cameos within. 

 

Look inside the cab of the Andrew Barclay to see the loco crew enjoying a quick brew.  Tilt the diorama to look down the alleyway to see one of the workers walking home.  You can see the tin bath is hung up on the wall of the outbuilding and the mangle stands ready in the back yard.  Each house has the essential rabbit hutch reflecting when miners kept rabbits to eat when resources were tight.  You can see one of the miners discussing something with his wife, whilst it must be washing day next door.

 

 

The diorama is generally scratch built from card with Scalescenes.com building papers. Details are from Langley Models, figures generally from Modelu, and the Andrew Barclay from an ARC models resin kit.

 

Hopefully the diorama captures the essence of life in the industrial valleys of South Wales when coal was king.

 

 

Fifteen Inch gauge industry

Builder: Pat James

 

 

I have mostly focused on modeling in 4mm, but on the side enjoy a brief foray into 7mm from time to time. I model in 09 gauge. This is 9mm track in 7mm to the ft scale, which represents 15” narrow gauge railways. Heavily used underground within the British mining industry’s. These railways were purchased for many private collections once the lines were closed and left derelict. 

 

In the summer I visited the Moseley Heritage Museum in Redruth Cornwall, which houses a collection of Small diesels and battery mechanical locomotives that have been lovingly restored by friendly volunteers. I suppose this diorama is a nod to their hard work on such a collection. 

I started this build with a scratch built three way point that didn’t work. Modified to fit on the diorama, from that the track plan came together, and then I started building the shed from coffee stirrers and kids corrugated card. 

 

 

The locomotive is a kit bash from Nonneministre models white metal kit, and runs on a Kato 11-103 tram chassis. I used the hair spray chipped paint technique and added some static grass to finish. I had been built using mostly household materials so it kept the costs low. 

 

 

If you go down to the woods today...

Builder: Richard Rycroft

 

 

I have long been fascinated by geared steam locomotives; some of the most charismatic of which must be the Shays that dragged trains of lumber out of the North America forests.  The discovery of a reasonably priced static model on eBay and further research into the American logging industry convinced me that here was a rail based industry uniquely developed for a single purpose.  I was well aware of America’s huge timber trestle bridges but was amazed to find pictures of long timber trestles or ‘cribs’ used to cross crossed uneven or marshy ground without going to the huge expense of building conventional embankments.  Here, I felt, was an unusual and highly impressive industry of great character well worth trying to capture in the confines of a cakebox.

 

 

The trestle is made from dowelling on a baseboard of Styrofoam covered with a J-cloth soaked in PVA and Pollyfilla with a covering of garden topsoil.  The timber derrick and the steam donkey winch which could either work the derrick or skid timber around the yard are also scratch built.

 

For more details please look at my build thread on RMweb.

 

 

L.Coucher

Builder: Ralf Edge

 

 

Finally I’ve made the jump into active and scenic modeller after years of thinking about it… So what have we here? An Industrial themed cakebox. Born from having a 8” ScaleModelScenery diorama baseboard, a ScaleModelScenery laser cut Workshop kit which I’d just built and a Narrow Planet Motor Rail 65/85hp 009 kit which I wanted to start with… All of this lent itself to a modern-ish (1990s?) industrial scene involving the workshop on a peat bog / works similar to those I visited at Bolton Fell but sadly closed around 5 years ago. 

 

 

Quickly realised the project was going to need the workshop cutting down and track inlaying into concrete, so card, DAS clay and saw later things took shape. Free magazine gifts used including the huts and Busch Cattails Bulrushes, other bits found in the drawer from ScaleModelScenery. The muddy damp puddle / bog with the Bullrushes is layers of stippled on Modge Podge with a dark brown base coat. 

 

Building the loco kit was a big learning curve as a extreme novice, but hey I’m reasonably happy with the result in the end despite several dramas with superglue and paint! The back scene a de-saturated and slightly blurred photograph from Bolton Fell hopefully extending the scene. 

 

 

 

Mountain Ash

Builder: Chris Chewter

 

 

I came across an atmospheric photograph of one of the railway bridges forming part of the Mountain Ash colliery complex. It had a mix of industry and wild beauty that made me want to model it for this round of the Cakebox competition. I wanted to create the illusion of a three-dimensional painting.  The box is designed to slide into a cake box, with an aperture on the side where you can view an Andrew Barclay crossing a representation of the River Cynon.

 

The bridge is a Wills kit, with the Andrew Barclay from ARC models.  Telegraph poles are from Express Models with loco crew from Modelu.  The river bed is Woodland Scenics Talus with the water formed from Woodland Scenics E-Z water.  I wanted to model a clear autumnal day.  The tree is a wire armature twisted together with rubberised horse hair branches covered with Noch autumnal leaves.  Ground cover is a simple herbal teabag split open and spread around to create the ground cover.

 

I decided that this diorama deserved a frame, so to keep with the theme of a 3D painting, an old photo frame was used to complete the scene.

 

 

Take a little walk to the edge of town...

Builder: Ben Bucki

 

 

"Take a little walk to the edge of town..." represents a fictional industrial concern in Langley Green (West Midlands), specifically the 'Spon Lane Mechanical Engineers', in the early 1980's.  The gradual collapse in local heavy industry has seen their customer base declining and their premises becoming more neglected.  Nevertheless, their ancient locomotives continue to shunt wagons in and out of the machine shops, trundling along cobbled lanes and crossing over filthy, abandoned canal branches on rusting bridges.

 

 

I wanted to capture some of the atmosphere I remembered from the real area in the 1980's, in the period between industrial decline and urban regeneration.  I also wanted to incorporate working lights and fog effects (using a USB-powered steam generator) shooting a scene set at night, and the model was planned around being built as a box with limited points of view into the scenes. 

 

To combat the amount of straight lines, I arranged things so that a lot of conflicting diagonals would create a jumbled, hemmed-in composition of decaying buildings.  The structures were mainly built from a hodgepodge of Dapol/Airfix kits, along with sundry details from the bits box, or acquired cheaply from bargain bins at my local model shop. 

 

 

The lost days of Ironstone

Builder: Pat James

 

 

Having read about the midlands ironstone railways, i considered a small layout, but as a friend informed me that the cakebox challenge round 4 was focused on ‘Industry’ it seemed like the perfect opportunity to model this industry. 

 

The diorama is loosely based on the Wellingborough ironstone tramway in Northamptonshire. This was a meter gauge system, so I used 12mm track as it is closed enough to the correct gauge. The scene is set in 1974 a year or so after the steam locomotives had been abandoned for a short stint of dieselisation. Shunted into an old siding to be forgotten about, it awaits rescuing. 

 

 

The Peckett & sons locomotive is a kit bash, using an old Airfix austerity kit and styrene sheet, with brass motive parts. A little nod to Hornby’s Peckett’s releases. 

 

I wanted to experiment with clear pour resin as I wasn’t very happy with the results of the puddles on my first cakebox challenge. I also wanted to fine tune the hair spray paint technique that I had tried a couple of times before, but never in 4mm. 

 

By using basic household materials and digging through my bits box I have kept outgoings to a minimum, and I have thoroughly enjoyed creating this view into a lost industry in its closing years.

 

There is a build thread on RMweb.

 

 

 

Voting is now closed.

[Huw Griffiths]

Whoever wins this challenge, I could imagine a number of magazine articles based on entries here.

 

Well done everyone.

 

 

Huw.

[GWR57xx]

The standard of all the entries is really high - it's difficult to choose just one to vote for as winner.

I can't find any guidance on the voting system.

In previous challenges I just voted once for my favourite entry, but wondered what the rules were and didn't query the rules.

Are we allowed multiple votes?

Can I vote for a number of different entries?

Can I vote multiple times for the same entry?

There appears to be nothing to prevent me voting multiple times, and the voting button works whether I am logged into RMWeb or not.

If I vote multiple times will all my votes be (a) counted, or (b) disallowed?

[Phil Parker]

Ideally, you vote for your favourite once.

 

Without forcing you to log in to Google, we have to rely on you to play fair and not vote multiple times. If you do and are spotted, the votes are deleted. I do have a look through the list before announcing a result and very obvious multiple votes tend to stand out a mile.

 

Not perfect I know, but it's not worth developing a completely secure system for the Cake Box competition, so we use Google forms which is at least free.

[railroadbill]

Very difficult choice as the standard is very high.  I do like Ben Bucki's very atmospheric  photography.  But the detail and planning of all the layouts is very well done.

Can we have another CB challenge some time Phil, (I might get to finish one another time!)

Well done!

Edited January 8, 2020 by railroadbill

[Phil Parker]

OK, voting is now closed.

 

Results will be announced on Friday 17th January on here and the same day in the BRM Express newsletter.

 

We'll also have photos in the Spring issue of BRM (It was supposed to be March, but one of the layouts Andy photographed needs the extra space as the pictures are so good. It gives me time to tidy things up and do a good job without having to work on this over the weekend!)