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


Booking Hall
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Hi Booking Hall, I've been hoping to post a few photo's, thought they might help with the layout or just for interest sake.  Unfortunately, I've been really ill with the virus, and continue to be so, and it seems that even afterwards it takes forever to recover.  Worst of all brain and organisational skills seem to be severely affected.  Anyway have managed a bit of scanning this morning and here are the results (only low res I'm afraid).  Kind regards Paul  PS Hope they help

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On 01/05/2020 at 22:02, Booking Hall said:

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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This is the kind of joke that only someone in isolation would post -

"What's the difference between Sir Alan Sugar and your caravan? One is a Peer of the Realm and the other is the realm of the ..."

 

Best wishes and possibly apologies.

 

Cam

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7 hours ago, Dzine said:

Hi Booking Hall, I've been hoping to post a few photo's, thought they might help with the layout or just for interest sake.  Unfortunately, I've been really ill with the virus, and continue to be so, and it seems that even afterwards it takes forever to recover.  Worst of all brain and organisational skills seem to be severely affected.  Anyway have managed a bit of scanning this morning and here are the results (only low res I'm afraid).  Kind regards Paul  PS Hope they help

Hello Paul, firstly I'm very sorry to hear you've been got by the virus, and I hope that you're soon back to good health and don't suffer any lasting effects. The additional photos are much appreciated as they show views that no-one else seems to have photographed! I particularly like the small industrial diesel shunters. There are certainly ideas there I can use, so thanks once again. The bridge is taking quite a lot longer than I expected, but another few hours should see it completed and fitted in place. I'll post some more photos then.

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3 hours ago, CameronL said:

This is the kind of joke that only someone in isolation would post -

"What's the difference between Sir Alan Sugar and your caravan? One is a Peer of the Realm and the other is the realm of the ..."

 

Best wishes and possibly apologies.

 

Cam

Very good Cam, I enjoyed that. Thank you.

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12 hours ago, Booking Hall said:

Hello Paul, firstly I'm very sorry to hear you've been got by the virus, and I hope that you're soon back to good health and don't suffer any lasting effects. The additional photos are much appreciated as they show views that no-one else seems to have photographed! I particularly like the small industrial diesel shunters. There are certainly ideas there I can use, so thanks once again. The bridge is taking quite a lot longer than I expected, but another few hours should see it completed and fitted in place. I'll post some more photos then.

Hi Booking Hall,  Many thanks for your kind thoughts and concern.  Pleased the photo's might be of help.  I don't know if you're aware there was a scheme for preservation planned using the shunters and track, plus a museum in the stone building near the loco shed.  Unfortunately, a marina was deemed a better option and the scheme was lost for all time.  Kind regards Paul

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Thanks again Paul. I didn't know about the proposed preservation scheme, but then, Milford Haven was not a place I paid any attention to before starting this model. It seems like it was a fascinating place, and I feel that I'm beginning to know a small part of it quite well now! I hope the shunting engines found good homes.

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Well, building the bridge has taken considerably longer than I anticipated, but I'm happy with the result. The deck is 3mm balsa wood sandwiched between 1.3mm mounting card facings. The balustrade is 2.5mm mounting board with facings and detailing cut from cereal box card, the capping being 2mm grey board. To get the curved section I dampened the core board and clamped it to a biscuit tin overnight and applied the facings afterwards, to avoid wrinkling. The shaped beams below the deck (spandrels?) are cut from 1.3mm card. The pavement is some ancient Superquick stuff glued to card and the whole lot is painted with grey emulsion paint. It needs weathering, but I'll wait to do that with my airbrush when I finally get back home.

 

For the photos the bridge has just been placed on the layout and the balustrade is not yet glued in place. I'll do that after fixing the main structure down.

 

All the mounting board I use I get from a picture framer who has boxes of the stuff taking up space in his workshop. Some of the pieces (the 'waste' cut from the centre of the card he makes the frames from) are quite large, and to get rid of it he burns it in his stove! Following my first visit to 'acquire' some I returned to show him a model I'd built using it. Result - an endless free supply of good quality card!

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Just now, Booking Hall said:

Well, building the bridge has taken considerably longer than I anticipated, but I'm happy with the result. The deck is 3mm balsa wood sandwiched between 1.3mm mounting card facings. The balustrade is 2.5mm mounting board with facings and detailing cut from cereal box card, the capping being 2mm grey board. To get the curved section I dampened the core board and clamped it to a biscuit tin overnight and applied the facings afterwards, to avoid wrinkling. The shaped beams below the deck (spandrels?) are cut from 1.3mm card. The pavement is some ancient Superquick stuff glued to card and the whole lot is painted with grey emulsion paint. It needs weathering, but I'll wait to do that with my airbrush when I finally get back home.

 

For the photos the bridge has just been placed on the layout and the balustrade is not yet glued in place. I'll do that after fixing the main structure down.

 

All the mounting board I use I get from a picture framer who has boxes of the stuff taking up space in his workshop. Some of the pieces (the 'waste' cut from the centre of the card he makes the frames from) are quite large, and to get rid of it he burns it in his stove! Following my first visit to 'acquire' some I returned to show him a model I'd built using it. Result - an endless free supply of good quality card!

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Coming along realy well..

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The bridge looks fantastic and the layout is really coming along nicely. Nice touch with the free card, I asked in my local art/photographic  shop and he wanted to sell me a few bits for a fiver, and it was a few bits! 

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Looks absolutely great, well done.   Good job you dated the bridge '1934' otherwise I would expect to see Burnley or Blackburn trams on it!!!   By that date the MoT had refused Blackburn permission to place its tracks in reservation and Burnley's were in their last years.

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10 hours ago, coline33 said:

Good job you dated the bridge '1934' otherwise I would expect to see Burnley or Blackburn trams on it!!!   By that date the MoT had refused Blackburn permission to place its tracks in reservation and Burnley's were in their last years

Ha! I've more than enough trouble with trams on the club layout we're building!

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Things have slowed down a bit. I spent a day playing testing the track having painted the concrete and ballasted, to check everything still worked. A few areas needed cleaning and some minor adjustments carrying out, but otherwise all was good. I checked the line and level of the bridge and added some packing pieces to some of the pier bases for good support and then decided to tackle the goods shed.

 

The angle of the track serving the shed, and its location, means that it has to be an odd shape, a trapezium in plan, which in turn means an asymmetric roof and a bit of arithmetic to work out the fall on the rear wall to maintain an even roof slope. I designed the shed with openings to utilise the Scalescenes sliding and roller shutter doors from the low relief factory free download, but having cut the sides out and blutacked them together on the layout I wasn't happy. It's too large on such a small footprint. So I spent a day thinking about it and as a complete change, made a 7mm scale model of the caravan I'm living in for the present.

 

I think it will be possible to reduce the overall height and still have workeable door openings, although I may ditch the sliding doors and just have roller shutters instead. Hopefully that will result in a building more in scale with its surroundings. The intended finish is red brick walls and a corrugated iron roof.

 

 

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With the virus control situation improving, I've moved out of the caravan back to home, to be reunited with my full array of model making equipment. After a couple of days of readjustment, I had another go at the goods shed, reducing it in height by 15mm. I decided to retain the sliding doors on the side facing the crane, with the rail entry door having a roller shutter in the raised position, but I ditched the central opening and raised unloading area. The scale now feels more appropriate, and I will build a separate building to go at the rear, possibly a small boiler house with a modest steel chimney, to mask the track exit at the rear of the baseboard. I've also given the sea a couple of coats of varnish, with some more to come.

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The roof is finished at last. Made from some very fine ribbed corrugated cardboard which I saved from I know not where, there are 71 separate pieces on here! It's a bit overscale for corrugated iron, but about the right size for corrugated asbestos sheeting. I was going to make scale corrugated sheets in my usual way from foil takeway containers embossed on a ribbed surface, but there was rather a lot to do and I didn't have enough material, so this way was chosen instead. I'll weather it with my airbrush and weathering powders along with the rest of the shed. Still to add are gutters, rainwater pipes and dummy lights.

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The last few days have been spent making some more buildings - a small hut to go at the rear (a Wills kit with my own corrugated iron roof), the boiler house is taking shape (scratchbuilt using Scalescenes papers and elements 'borrowed' from other kits), and I decided that this docks area was considered sufficiently 'at risk' during WW2 to merit having a type 24 Pillbox placed there, so I scratchbuilt one to the dimensions given on the Pillbox Study Group website http://www.pillbox-study-group.org.uk/types-of-pillbox/type-24-pillbox/

 

The most fiddly part of all this was working out how to make the glazed lantern light to go on the boilerhouse roof. It still isn't 100% right, but having invested the better part of a day on it, I'll live with it! Painting of the pillbox and hut still to be done.

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A pill-box within a dock is like shutting the door after the horse has bolted!   Yes, pill-boxes were on the approaches to a dock on river banks, roads and railways.   A dock was most likely to receive a direct aerial bombardment so those inside would not have stood a chance.   However, it looks great and I have kit-built one to bury in the sand dunes of Camber beach on my "East Quay" line.   Current problem is the lock-down now prevents me from travelling to Camber to get the sand!!!   Yes, I want the real stuff!

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12 hours ago, coline33 said:

A pill-box within a dock is like shutting the door after the horse has bolted!

Hi coline33, thanks for commenting. You have voiced what I was actually thinking, but I like it too so I'll 'invent' a bit of history to justify its presence! I hope your visit to the seaside isn't too much longer in coming. I have a bag of black sand which a Canadian friend brought back from a holiday to Puerto Rico I think it was. Then she brought it with her when she visited us a few years ago. Goodness knows what Customs control made of it! She gave it to me because I happened to mention I was looking for a material to resemble ash, but I found that this stuff is magnetic, like iron filings, which would not do loco motors any good if a loose bit got in there!

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