Alexandra Wharf - OO gauge A4 diorama

[TechnicArrow]

It seems it's new layout time, again... or rather, diorama time.

 

I've been inspired by the recent Scalescenes low-relief Grain Silo that came free with the November 2020 issue of Hornby Magazine:

 

This kit, rather than printed across a number of glossy tear-out pages, was provided as a single matt A2 sheet - this is much better for the quality of the finished building, but does make it impossible to scan, so now I can't really build a duplicate or an extension. My build still needs window glazing fitting as soon as I come across some transparent plastic.

Once I had built it I tested, it on the front siding of Arrow Paints - only it was a little too tall, and the lack of depth looked odd since it's away from the angled backscene.

 

So instead, I've decided I need to build a stand-alone, A4-sized diorama. Two parallel, straight tracks, with a warehouse closing off the left hand end and a pipe or road bridge covering the open end. The front will feature a canal wharf, and I'll probably make room to fit the working crane & mechanism in somewhere. All the track will be inset into concrete, with various bollards and other furniture to keep it interesting.

 

The scene should be relatively timeless, so it can be used to display most eras of rail and road stock. For now though, I'm restricted to my BR wagons, and the BR 04 or the 04-based industrial shunter.

 

 

Ignoring the anomalies such as the enouromous clothes-pegs holding up the pipe bridge, I think it's a good sign that the low-level shots are already looking promising to me. But I'm not quite sure how that poor worker has ended up under that 13T wagon...

Hopefully, next time I post I'll have a base built up with some track on it!

[Adrian Stevenson]

If you do decide you need another one, I have one going a begging as I do O gauge.

 

Cheers, Ade. 

[TechnicArrow]

1 hour ago, Adrian Stevenson said:

If you do decide you need another one, I have one going a begging as I do O gauge.

 

Cheers, Ade. 

 

Thanks for the offer, but I'm sorted now!

 

A helpful member has pointed me towards the Scalescenes Modellers Facebook group, where the kit is available to download in PDF form on A4 sheets. I shouldn't need it, but it's nice to have the option to extend it if I want to.

[Spotlc]

Bravo!   Looking good already!

 

Cheers,  Mike

[TechnicArrow]

On 31/10/2020 at 22:48, Spotlc said:

Bravo!   Looking good already!

 

Cheers,  Mike

 

Thank you, I'm glad you agree!

 

A lack of any timetabled live or pre-recorded lectures for this morning meant I could progress with this project a little. I've made a good start on the foundation structure for the layout - the usual sandwich of two sheets of corrugated card, with the corrugations perpendicular to eachother, and a cereal-box card surface layer. The sandwich also incorporates a 35mm-tall bracing structure, cut down a bit at the front where the canal sits below the dock surface. Everything was left under weights for a while, and the resulting 'board' is level and pretty sturdy.

 

 

And then I couldn't resist posing everything else in place. The scene is now longer than a sheet of A4 by 39mm, since that's how long setrack sections are!

 

 

 

The current top surface is set below the surface on the crane mechanism. This means that when the track is laid the crane's surface should be level with the rail tops, so it will seamlessly blend in when the rest of the surface is brought up to the rails to create the inset track. That's the plan, anyway! We'll see, when the track arrives later this week.

[Kevin Johnson]

The foundation structure to the wharf looks really good.

[Karl]

I think this will have an even more 'cramped' feeling than mine, but it just works for these industrial settings!

 

Have you modified that 04? It's a neat job.

[TechnicArrow]

Thank you @Kevin Johnson and @col.stephens, I'm glad you agree!

 

3 hours ago, Karl said:

I think this will have an even more 'cramped' feeling than mine, but it just works for these industrial settings!

 

Have you modified that 04? It's a neat job.

 

I think you're right - since this is only 335mm long there's just enough room for a loco and two wagons on each track, I think that's less than your layout. The loader structure over the tracks takes up space too.

The shunter D24 is indeed an 04-bash, using a modified Dapol (ex-Airfix) kit sitting on the chassis from a Bachmann 04. I regularly swap over the kit-bashed body and original, just for variety. I made a post about it here:

 

In today's news, a parcel arrived containing (amongst other things) some brick paper sheets and the track I need for this project - but only one length, not two!  It's not worth paying postage for just one length of track, so I'll probably wait for my local model shop to re-open when the Welsh lockdown ends next week. In the meantime, I suppose I should start work on the tall end-warehouse.

[Karl]

Thanks for the reply, I'll have a look at that rebuild thread! I think my box file overall is slightly longer but I've just measured the rail length and to my surprise my sidings are actually shorter than yours by 1.5cm! They're only 320mm long.

 

I do like the higher than wide look of this type of model to just make it very imposing and claustrophobic, I think they are very effective a recreating the feel of this type of place.

[coastalview]

Thats looking good @TechnicArrow . I agree with @Karl about higher than wide look. 

 

What is the backscene you used on Arrow Paints?

 

Looking forward to seeing more.

 

[TechnicArrow]

Thank you @Karl and @coastalview. I've never really experimented with quite this large a ratio of height-to-length (currently 267:335), so we'll see how this turns out. 

 

On 05/11/2020 at 19:23, coastalview said:

What is the backscene you used on Arrow Paints?

 

Arrow Paints uses the standard Peco "Old Industrial Town Centre" and "Old Industrial Town Extension" backscenes, PESK-25 and PESK-26 respectively. I've seen them used many times, but I think it fits that layout perfectly.

 

Alexandra Wharf, on the other hand, won't have a backscene to speak of - instead, it's got some pretty tall buildings...

 

As you can see, work on the end warehouse has progressed, using nothing more than Superquick sheets, cereal box card and Pritt Stick. The fictional building is based on a 1930s-ish brick-and-concrete structure, drawing inspiration from the scalemodelscenery and scalescenes factory/warehouse kits. It's clearly lacking in windows at present, the doors are only drawn on, and it has to be propped up to stay in place. But it gives a good impression for how the end of the layout will look.

 

Now the left-hand end is well under way, my thoughts are turning to the right-hand end. Currently there's only the pipe bridge structure, originally built for Arrow Paints but retired from service there since I decided it cluttered up the centre of the layout too much. There will certainly be some form of wall or extension to the Grain Silo for the rear of the layout, but I'm wondering whether to "close up" the end a bit more, or leave it as it is for viewing purposes.

[coastalview]

4 minutes ago, TechnicArrow said:

Arrow Paints uses the standard Peco "Old Industrial Town Centre" and "Old Industrial Town Extension" backscenes, PESK-25 and PESK-26 respectively. I've seen them used many times, but I think it fits that layout perfectly.

 

It certainly works well and the way you have incorporated it makes it look bespoke

[TechnicArrow]

Another small update: Windows! Or window openings, at least.

 

A fairly simple process; I just cut a load of holes and add some window sills. I also added a pair of doors.

 

I went over all of the untreated cereal box card with many blotchy layers of thinned black paint, to give it more of a weathered concrete look. I then carried on to work the dilute paint into various corners and crevices across both buildings, as well as staining the Grain Silo over the large door and beneath the vents.

 

I think it looks a bit better in person than it does on camera; maybe I'll have to go back and add some more layers in the future.

Even a couple of wagons got the treatment, since I'm pleased with how the test wagon I did a while ago has turned out. Nothing is clean and shiny around here anymore!

[Kevin Johnson]

Starting to look more like a building now with the sills added and the window openings cut out. Once the windows are fitted the building will transform even further.

[TechnicArrow]

On 07/11/2020 at 16:38, Kevin Johnson said:

Starting to look more like a building now with the sills added and the window openings cut out. Once the windows are fitted the building will transform even further.

 

Thank you! Instead of putting the windows in, I've made another building with gaping holes...

 

 

 

After a little experimenting with mock-ups, I decided to fill the remaining space with a half-relief tower building, with similar proportions to the elevator of the grain silo. This has new building has two doors at ground level, and one at second-floor level onto the pipe bridge - which will be refurbished as a footbridge.

 

The building is absolutely standard construction - cereal box card and brick paper. It still needs window and door sills, and of course the windows and doors themselves!

Now I know how many windows I need, I will make some "grimy" ones and print them - saves looking for transparent plastic, and none of the buildings are really deep enough to have detailed interiors anyway.

 

 

It feels a lot more complete now the entire length of the scene has something on it. This diorama is also a good place to use the open-doored van, posed with a forklift and lorry parked across the tracks. 

 

Hopefully I can find another piece of track this weekend, and then I can get on with laying the surfacing!

[TechnicArrow]

This evening's little projects: refurbishing the lattice pipe bridge into an industrial footbridge, and dirtying up the tower building.

 

 

The bridge was fairly simple - I broke away the top layer of horizontal rungs, and laid a card deck along the base. The latticework walls were lined with the net that supermarkets tend to sell cloves of garlic in - it's a bit stretchy and fiddly to work with, but it looks the part here.

A couple of the broken rungs were used to form crude overhead lighting supports, then the whole thing got a fresh coat of black paint (that mesh is really fiddly to brush, I can still see some white bits!), with a brownish colour for the deck. A simple rectangular brick pillar was built to support the bridge as it leaves the front of the scene.

Et voila, one rarely-used pipe bridge converted to a functional (if a little narrow) industrial footbridge!

 

Hmm. A slightly cruel close-up here, I'm sure the edges don't look that messy in real life!

 

Not a bad view from underneath, though.

 

The tower building had it's sills and lintels added, before the 'concrete' and brickwork was blended a bit with some thin, watery brownish-black paint. The weathering helps to disguise some of the seams in the brick paper, and gets rid of the white edges. I think I'm beginning to get the hang of this weathering business, the overall scene has the right blend of variety and uniform-ness to me.

 

 

It's still the case that none of the buildings are fixed down, and I don't think it ever will be - it makes the scene a bit more pack-able. That said, the three main buildings are held together from behind with paperclips, to keep them rigid and  tight.

 

Finally, I've been doing a little research into the prototype of the Scalescenes grain silo, the one that stood at Water Eaton. It seems the brick 'elevator tower' of the original was much larger, and housed the grain driers as well as the elevator augers. There were also many more grain bins than the 4 (or 8, if you assume them to be 2 deep) represented here. But then it occurred to me that perhaps this scene is part of a brewery or cereal factory, with it's own small granary for initial processing and storage. I have no idea if this is realistic, but it doesn't seem implausible to me. It also makes sense with the forklift transferring sacks from the van, although I should probably find a more suitable road vehicle than the "Marshalls Paving" truck!

[TechnicArrow]

Three updates in three days, is this Christmas? No, not yet, I'm just procrastinating...

 

This morning's supermarket trip included a detour to my local now-reopened model shop, to collect the missing length of track. It was promptly glued to the base along with it's partner. Whilst the track was left under weights, I finally decided to get my laptop and my housemate's printer to co-operate, eventually resulting in a sheet of variously-sized windows and a handful of signs.

 

On 07/11/2020 at 16:38, Kevin Johnson said:

Starting to look more like a building now with the sills added and the window openings cut out. Once the windows are fitted the building will transform even further.

 

 

It turns out you're absolutely spot on here, Kevin - the windows have made a massive difference to the scene...

 

The scene is suddenly properly closed in, and a little more detailed to boot. It all feels so much more complete now.Of course, I had a bit of a play with the camera, and finally worked out a good low angle I can use...

 

Of course, I had a bit of a play with the camera, and finally worked out a good low angle I can use...

 

...as well as the shot under the footbridge again. I'm not sure that "Limited Clearance" sign on the right-hand side is really necessary, it's fairly obvious it's an incredibly tight fit!

 

Next up is the task of building up layers of card to rail height, to create the inset track. At least it's all straight parallel rails here, no curves or point blades to worry about!

[coastalview]

This is really coming together now @TechnicArrow Giving me all sorts of ideas 

[Karl]

This has developed since I was last on here. Looking very effective with a real industrial overbearing quality from the buildings!

[SteamingWales]

Looking good so far. Really do love Scalescenes kits

[TechnicArrow]

Thank you @Karl and @SteamingWales! I agree the scalescenes stuff is excellent - I've steadily learnt the common techniques, and used them to create the two scratchbuilds either side of the grain silo. They're always a little better with some subtle weathering too, something I'm only just learning making up as I go along.

 

One final update for this weekend - the surfacing is done! Two more layers of corrugated card and a final surface of cereal box card (that's a total of 5 layers now, for anyone keeping score) have brought the ground level up to the tops of the rails, and I think it look gorgeous. I'm not sure what it is, but there's something incredibly pleasing to me about looking at these long, parallel rails set deep in their "concrete" surface. As such I don't really have an overall photo to show you; I got too carried away with the camera angles 

 

 

 

Of course, the camera always shows up the little inconsistencies, such as that miss-cut on the front line there. What it doesn't show is how I've shaped the ground to fit around the buildings, so they sit "in" the ground, rather than "on" it. This means the inevitable little gaps that occur when buildings aren't fixed down are vertical not horizontal, and thus don't let light through. They can also be hidden by, say, a ladder lying along the base of the wall...

The portions of concrete between the rails are also a little narrower than they could be, but that's in order to allow some fairly coarse-wheeled Hornby locos to visit. But for now, it's the lightly-weathered Bachmann stock, and I've had a play with some black-and-white photos to leave you with...

 

[Kevin Johnson]

The scale scenes building do look really good. I still need to try purchase and try out one of the kits.

I think once the weathering is complete on the concrete it will help to blend in any inconsistencies. This is a a great little layout.

[coastalview]

That looks great, I was wondering what you use for weathering on the buildings as that is an art I am yet to master.

[TechnicArrow]

Thank you both!

 

On 16/11/2020 at 09:31, coastalview said:

That looks great, I was wondering what you use for weathering on the buildings as that is an art I am yet to master.

 

The weathering I've added is nothing more than some very, very watery black/brownish paint, applied with a small brush to areas that look like they might get damp or sooty. It's not a lot, but enough to break up the evenness of the brick paper.

 

As a little thought experiment, I ran through what this layout has cost me so far. Turns out it's abut £13 - the magazine the scalescenes kit came in, the lengths of track and the brick paper. Of course, I already had things like rolling stock, vehicles and figures - not to mention the large collection of cardboard from various parcels and cereal boxes! I don't envisage needing to spend any more money, unless I want to experiment with water for the canal.

[coastalview]

2 minutes ago, TechnicArrow said:

I ran through what this layout has cost me so far. Turns out it's abut £13 - the magazine the scalescenes kit came in, the lengths of track and the brick paper.

 

Not a bad enjoyment to cost relationship