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Docks away!, or, making a virtue out of a necessity . . .


Booking Hall
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Next on the 'to do' list was coating the cliff face with something that would take paint better than the virgin polystyrene, and to give the water area some texture. After watching a YouTube video on how to create a sea texture I decided to go with the 'toilet roll sheets stippled into place with watered down PVA' method, and I have to say, it does look good! It did cause the cardboard I used to overlay the sea area to bow a bit, but it's returning to shape now as it dries. Tomorrow I can get some paint on both of them.

 

This build is certainly pushing me to use new techniques, and I must say, I'm enjoying myself.

 

 

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12 hours ago, sb67 said:

Looks good Paul, I like the texture that gives. Do you just paint it murky colours now? 

That's the idea Steve, browns, greens, murky blues etc, darker colours to suggest increasing depth of water. Then several coats of varnish for the shiny surface.

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3 hours ago, 37Oban said:

Hi,

 

and don't forget the faint rainbow swirls where there is sheen of oil on the surface, especially if the water is fairly calm.

 

Roja

Good suggestion Roja, though whether I can achieve that kind of subtlety is another thing entirely. Might try when I put the varnish on.

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Well, here's my attempt at painting the 'water'. As usual, I think I've made it too dark, but I assumed, being a dock, that the water would be deepish. Perhaps if I drybrushed the tops of the ripples with a lighter bluey whitish colour that might lift it?  What does anyone think please? I've also added some brick and stone prints sections to the cliff face before painting, to represent repairs over time to the crumbling and unstable stone, especially below where the bridge will spring from.

 

 

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Hi,

 

I really like the look of this, especially the textures in both the water and rock face.

 

As for the colour of the water I am not sure that there is necessarily a thing as too dark.  Until last summer I used to live close to the Western Harbour in Leith; the water there tended to range in colour from dark grey to a 'threatening overcast sky' sort of grey.  The only time it ever seemed to look blue(ish) was when there was brilliant sunshine and no cloud cover.  Newhaven harbour is a ten minute walk from there, is much shallower even after dredging, and still only really looks a lighter shade of anything in beautiful weather.

 

Hope that's of help.

 

Regards,

 

Alex.

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I think the water colour is fine. It might need a bit of depth, a couple of layers of varnish should do it, but the colour is fine.

Most docks I've been in were a sort of dark slatey grey and went a sort of muddy brown if anything moved. The only dock area I've ever been able to see the bottom of is Cirkewwa in the north of Malta but the others including Grand Harbour are pretty much dark grey even in full mediterranean sunshine. The old docks of East London are either dark grey or black depending on the overhead conditions. Ramsgate is a dirty brown colour that goes even muddier when a big boat moves and Dover is about the same.      

Regards Lez.

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Yep, like the other comments I think it looks pretty good. My experience of dock areas is fairly broad and in reality the water colour can be  everything from thick brown through blue green and grey depending on the light, depth and pollution. Compared to the mid 70's and before, today's rivers and coastal waters tend to be a lot cleaner, oil films which used to be a common site in harbours are now almost absent, likewise the amount of debris floating or submerged.  I would not add anything too light in colour to your scene. Half a dozen coats of clear varnish will help and the light will naturally reflect off the high points.

I've often looked at Paul Lunn's book and thought that this was one plan I would like a go at sometime. You've beaten me to it and a splendid job it is.

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Thanks for all your comments and reassurance about the colour. I'll leave it as is and look forward to seeing it after a few coats of varnish. All that's happened today is some colour splodged on the cliff face, the filled areas colour washed and the oil tank siding ballasted (hadn't done this when I took the photo).

 

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Looks a great background.   For a Lancashire coast location you could have gone in for dunes.   I still have to get down to Camber itself to get the actual sand I want to finish the background to my East Quay line - a section is looking naff with just the used toilet roll supports in place!!!

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Harbour looking really good .

 I don't know how hard it is to do but always thought swapping the Puffer funnel and wheelhouse position around  so wheelhouse is forward of funnel like most vessels would give a much more 'any port, anywhere '  small coaster.

A bit of photoshopping-

 

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7 minutes ago, JCB 3C no.2 said:

I don't know how hard it is to do but always thought swapping the Puffer funnel and wheelhouse position around  so wheelhouse is forward of funnel like most vessels would give a much more 'any port, anywhere '  small coaster

Hi JCB 3C no. 2, thanks for the positive words. I haven't made a start on the wheelhouse yet, but I think I've seen some other posts on RMweb discussing the same thing. Something to do with the difference between a 'Puffer' and a VIC32, but I didn't study it in detail. I'll have a look at it when I restart on it. Building the road bridge at the moment.

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I decided that the next job was to ballast the exposed track, and started off with the oil tank siding, using sieved soil to start with, graduating to bonfire ash where the rail tanks would unload, then back to soil again as the rails disappear under the bridge site. To be honest, when it was don, it all looked pretty much the same, there being only a few degrees of colour difference between the two materials. It was OK, but I would have liked a bit more contrast, so I went on a scavenger hunt and came back with a potful of gravel washed off the road. I washed and dried it and then dismantled the caravan roof vent to get the flyscreen out, it being the only piece of mesh available to me. Sieving the gravel through this produced a reasonable quantity of ballast-like grains, albeit still not lightish-grey, but I used it anyway with some of the darker stuff in the loco siding.

 

Now on to the bridge. This will be made from a sheet of 3mm balsa wood sandwiched between two layers of mounting board to stiffen it up. The piers will be made the same way. Ordinarily, I would design these in AutoCAD, then print them of and stick them to mounting board and cut them out - in the same way you make the base layers for Scalescenes kits, but I don't have a printer here so it was back to basics and carefully draw the shape out on some cereal box card to use as a template. I need four completed piers, so have to cut eight card outers. The balsa wood core will be 6mm thick for these items, painted when completed to represent concrete.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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5 hours ago, JCB 3C no.2 said:

Yes  the Puffer is typically Scottish and in the main seen in the West of Scotland  but small coasters like above were seen all over UK.

Here is the 'Basalt' making an unintended visit to Redcar beach!

 

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I suspect she’s making a fully intended visit to Redcar beach, evidenced by her sheerlegs being used to offload cargo.  Like puffers, ships like this were designed to be used in this way, unloading between tides in suitable weather.  She’ll float off on the next tide, as she has unloaded some cargo and will draw less water, and if the breeze is offshore she’ll have no trouble getting off slow astern. 
 

She’s a good bit bigger than a puffer, which is built to fit the locks on the canals of the Argyll coast, and the Caledonian.  Puffers also had folding masts and funnels to negotiate some of the Clyde bridges n Glasgow to reach their home wharves. 

 

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On 30/04/2020 at 16:28, coline33 said:

If the ship is about to sail in then do not forget the bollards!

Yes, I'll either have to make or buy some. The quayside will not look complete without them!

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I have an unfortunate tendency to make life hard for myself. I was planning to make the bridge piers simple rectangles covered with blue engineering brick paper, but having looked at some photos of the prototype inspiration for this model, Hakin docks at Milford Haven. I saw that the actual bridge was a 1930's concrete structure, and decided to build something similar. So, it's taken me nearly all day to make four piers!

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