Copenhagen Fields

[2mm Andy]

22 minutes ago, bécasse said:

Quite apart from the logistical difficulties involved in adding lighting, it shouldn't be forgotten that in the inter-war period lighting would have been far more subdued than tends to be the case today. The majority of lighting, in both premises and streets, would have been by gas; indeed many premises would not have had electricity supplies at all. The two tube stations would have stood out as being electrically lit but would still not have been beacons of light, while the lighting in passing trains on the surface would have been so dim that it would have been difficult to see that they were lit. 

 

True, but I think subdued lighting looks far more effective than the somewhat bright lights that a modern layout might need. Pendon is very effective when they dim the main lights and switch on the lights in the model buildings, and I'm fairly confident that there would have been better lighting in North London than the Vale of the White Horse in the 1930s (which would presumably have been almost exclusively lit by oil lamps). Of course Pendon has the benefit of being able to almost completely control the environment in which the model is displayed - you might get a few grumbles if you turned out all the lights in an exhibition hall, and I'm not sure that a blackout tent is practical for a layout the size of Copenhagen Fields...

 

Anyway, I would like to see Copenhagen Fields completed in my lifetime (I was 8 when the layout was started) so I think we can forgive Tim and his team for not wanting to add to their workload.

 

Andy

[CF MRC]

Julia, PM sent.

 

Tim

[bécasse]

22 hours ago, 2mm Andy said:

 

True, but I think subdued lighting looks far more effective than the somewhat bright lights that a modern layout might need. Pendon is very effective when they dim the main lights and switch on the lights in the model buildings, and I'm fairly confident that there would have been better lighting in North London than the Vale of the White Horse in the 1930s (which would presumably have been almost exclusively lit by oil lamps). Of course Pendon has the benefit of being able to almost completely control the environment in which the model is displayed - you might get a few grumbles if you turned out all the lights in an exhibition hall, and I'm not sure that a blackout tent is practical for a layout the size of Copenhagen Fields...

It is a coincidence that you should offer Pendon as a comparison. In the mid-1960s, when I was an Oxford undergraduate, I used to sometimes help Roye England with the showings at what was then a very different Pendon. Although Roye would never say it to visitors when he proudly showed them his illuminated and carefully modelled interiors (which he had recorded as methodically as he recorded the exteriors, often decades earlier), he was concerned that the level of illumination was excessive, but accepted that that trade off was necessary if visitors were to be able to see anything of them. Rather sadly, I eventually came to realise that the one major flaw in his brilliant long term plans for Pendon Parva and its Vale setting (now quite close to fruition, of course) was that it would be near impossible to see any detail of interiors once the buildings were in situ within the village, no matter how well they were illuminated.

[RJS1977]

On 14/09/2020 at 21:45, 2mm Andy said:

 

 

 

Anyway, I would like to see Copenhagen Fields completed in my lifetime (I was 8 when the layout was started) so I think we can forgive Tim and his team for not wanting to add to their workload.

 

Andy

 

Simple - just wind the date on a few years to the 1940s and say it's the blackout!   ;-)

[CF MRC]

We have been doing quite a lot of planning and plotting for the York Road tube station site and its alignment over the last week, having tried the board and station out at Keen House with the southern end of Belle Isle in place. Not a huge amount to show for these efforts but at least the steel baseplate is now the correct shape. 

The paper plan can be seen under the steel, showing the lift shafts and cars (only the left hand, southern, one was ever used) and the stairs down to the basement. To the left of the steel plate the layout will be expanded slightly to square off the York Road and we will merge Bingley and Randells Road at the front on the right. There is room to accommodate this in the storage box.  

The magnets for holding the steel down are ordinary ferrous type at present but these will be replaced with modern materials with a stronger flux very shortly. The station building and platforms are a bit further out than originally intended, but this allows us to make the lift shaft operational.  The shafts will be made from 51mm brass tube. I now have drawings for parts of the lift mechanism.  
 

We’re away in the van this weekend so I expect I’ll make a start on some of the rear interior detail, such as the staff room and basement stairs. 
 

Tim
 

Edited September 23, 2020 by CF MRC

[£1.38]

Just came across this video, which shows a few street scenes around KX and elsewhere in 1924. It is a great video in its own right - a canal trip along the Regents Canal from a time long gone.

 

 

[CF MRC]

Thank you. Very realistic isn’t it?

 

Tim

[£1.38]

1 hour ago, CF MRC said:

Thank you. Very realistic isn’t it?

 

Tim

Yes - delightful. The video channel this is on has a lot of others of interest, mainly Dutch.

 

You can still walk the towpath all the way from Limehouse to Paddington - tunnels excepted, of course. It gives a very unique and sometimes surprising view of London. Particularly interesting to those motivated by industrial archaeology. The approach to Paddington, with the canal at a much higher level than the railway, for example, or Battlebridge Basin - right next to Kings Cross but completely hidden from the road. Highly recommended if anyone has the time and the energy.

[CF MRC]

I finally reached quite a momentous stage in the construction of the tube station today when it was finally assembled on the steel plate.  The rare earth magnets to hold the plate are simply placed in holes in the plywood sun-base and locked in with super glue. 

The strong flux from these little magnets really holds down the steel plate extremely well. This was chemically blackened so that it won’t show any shiny edges. The weird tongue-like shape at the southern end of the building is the roof of the basement passageway that meets up with the spiral escape stair shaft. 

As mentioned previously, the roads adjoining the building plot will be extended to put it into better context. 

As I have also alluded, more and more information has appeared as this project has progressed. I now have drawings of the lifts and so the image below was taken from them, scaled to size and used to improve the accuracy of the visible lift lobby. 

These were painted and fitted over the weekend.  It will be good to now be able to get on with some proper modelling rather than civil engineering. 
 

Tim

 

[east barnet andy]

Tim , not wishing to appear foolish , i hesitate to ask  . . . .but  are all the buildings on CF mounted , so to speak , on metal sheeting? 

and

my son works for TfL, who annually produce a small selection of badges for Armistice day ; one of which ,  i realised , represented the York Road style of UndergrounD

sign, horizontally  , and surrounded by poppies.

if i can photo it , and get it on this machine , would you be interested in a snap? don't feel bad about saying " not b likely" !

 

regards

 

Andy.  

[CF MRC]

There is never a foolish question, Andy. This steel plate is used because we need a flat pavement area in front of the tube station building: we have used plenty of magnets for fixing things to the layout elsewhere but this is the first under a building.  The best place to lose the pavement joint is at the road side gutter and the area in front will protect the very fragile lamps that will be fitted to the front.  It needs to be held down firmly because the main mass of the building is cantilevered over the baseboard edge. That will change when the lift and stair shafts are modelled along with the Up platform. 
 

The horizontal UndergrounD sign is very common, but I have only seen one other picture of the vertical type.

 

I am currently making the staff room, which had a butler sink. Anyone any ideas for how they would heat up water for tea making?

 

Tim

 

 

Edited October 2, 2020 by CF MRC

[Andy Reichert]

Not sure if you have done this already? If so please excuse

 

As someone who uses neodymium magnets a lot in my track building jigs, I would recommend having a thin spacer layer that prevents the steel plate actually becoming in contact with the magnets. They will still hold tightly, but occasional removal will be easier and there will be no potential ceramic magnet damaging "smack" when the plate is put in place.

 

Andy

 

www.proto87.com

[CF MRC]

The ground floor and basement of York Road tube is going to be a it like a dolls house at the back, visible to the public from the layout front. The ladies toilets will be on the left (brown and red tiles) and the gents in the bit that sticks out.  There will be Perspex walls along the front face.  We should be getting a delivery of porcelain fittings fairly soon. 

We can now have a peak into the staff mess room.

The armchair has definitely seen better days.

Richard W has now made the definitive visible track plan. The sector plate arrangement at the south end would not be used when YR is attached to CF as there would not be room; up trains will reverse direction at YR and the baseboard will stop at the platform end. The crossing will be modelled exactly to scale, with the cut away tunnel bores correctly portrayed (we have copies of  the original drawings). Only the front line will be visible. The curvaceous purple line is the CF baseboard edge. 

 

Tim

 

 

[CF MRC]

I have started to make good progress on the basement and stairs to the spiral escape stairs on YR. the only part that is really visible is a store room, but it will get interesting in the vicinity of my left hand where there is a further sub basement, top of the spiral stairs and a ventilation plant room.  This will be modelled and visible as a cutaway. The ducting is in place, but not visible in this view, being tucked under the corner of the main building.

The escape passage can be seen when the components are separated, following the outline of the lift shaft at one point. I will probably use magnets to locate these components, at least during the early stages of construction. 

it doesn’t look like a great deal of work, but it takes quite a while to work out how everything fits together.  Seeing inside the workings of  a tube station is not an everyday occurrence for me...

 

Tim

[CF MRC]

The plant room and stair shaft were made yesterday. All I need to do now is find a good M & E engineer (Richard W?) to make the machinery and ducting...

When separated from the main building it does bear a resemblance to one of those diagrams of a Pharaoh’s secret tomb system. 

Tim

Edited October 7, 2020 by CF MRC

[Grafarman]

Seriously,  are you going to install a camera inside so people can see the internal details...?  It surely warrants it IMO...

 

David 

[bbishop]

Pharaoh Cyril I ?  Bill

[CF MRC]

2 hours ago, Grafarman said:

Seriously,  are you going to install a camera inside so people can see the internal details...?  It surely warrants it IMO...

 

David 

We will have clear cutaway walls on the interesting bits. Paying homage to the models in the Science Museum that used to enthral me as a youngster (not sure if they still have them though). 

Tim

Edited October 7, 2020 by CF MRC

[maico]

Is the Church on the other side of the line from Caladonian Rd station fictitious? There is no Church there these days but another one further down the road.

Edited October 7, 2020 by maico

[CF MRC]

 

2 hours ago, maico said:

Is the Church on the other side of the line from Caladonian Rd station fictitious? There is no Church there these days but another one further down the road.

ST.MARY'S LIBERAL CATHOLIC CHURCH (pro-Cathedral Church of St. Mary), 471a Caledonian Road. Sir Francis Lycett secured the site.
Was originally opened 25th May 1866 as Caledonian Road Wesleyan Methodist Chapel to seat 1000, but closed as such in 1916. From 1916-26 J.Hibbard & Sons Ltd used the building as a furniture repository for removals and constructed an extra floor on gallery level, but left the steeple standing. The semi-circular apse was designed by Sir E.L. Lutyens (1869-1944) whose wife, Lady Emily, had been a worshipper there. The last services were held in the winter of 1976. Demolished early 1980s.
 

We had a postcard showing the church in the background with cattle being herded to the Market: reproduced on the model. However, we played pretty fast and loose with the road geometry at that end of the layout though...

 

Tim

 

 

Edited October 7, 2020 by CF MRC

[Joseph_Pestell]

30 minutes ago, CF MRC said:

 

ST.MARY'S LIBERAL CATHOLIC CHURCH (pro-Cathedral Church of St. Mary), 471a Caledonian Road. Sir Francis Lycett secured the site.
Was originally opened 25th May 1866 as Caledonian Road Wesleyan Methodist Chapel to seat 1000, but closed as such in 1916. From 1916-26 J.Hibbard & Sons Ltd used the building as a furniture repository for removals and constructed an extra floor on gallery level, but left the steeple standing. The semi-circular apse was designed by Sir E.L. Lutyens (1869-1944) whose wife, Lady Emily, had been a worshipper there. The last services were held in the winter of 1976. Demolished early 1980s.
 

We had a postcard showing the church in the background with cattle being herded to the Market: reproduced on the model. However, we played pretty fast and loose with the road geometry at that end of the layout though...

 

Tim

 

 

 

Although I am an atheist, I was brought up in a religious family and reckon to know a lot about churches. But this one is new to me. Liberal Catholic seems like an oxymoron.

[CF MRC]

Googling them does take me beyond my pay grade...

We have four chapels / churches on CF. 

 

Tim

Edited October 7, 2020 by CF MRC

[Sithlord75]

3 hours ago, CF MRC said:

Googling them does take me beyond my pay grade...

We have four chapels / churches on CF. 

 

Tim

The Liberal Catholic Church tends to use the word "catholic" in the Latin sense of universal rather than the Roman sense.  However, how "catholic" the LCC is depends entirely on your own point of view!

[bbishop]

The Old Catholic Church split from the Roman Catholic Church c.1870 regarding papal infallibility.  There are small congregations dotted around, especially in Germany, often aligned with the Anglican Church in Europe.  This is how the Liberal Catholics seem to have started, but they soon drifted into the esoteric before schisming and re-schisming.  Bill

[maico]

15 hours ago, CF MRC said:

 

ST.MARY'S LIBERAL CATHOLIC CHURCH (pro-Cathedral Church of St. Mary), 471a Caledonian Road. Sir Francis Lycett secured the site.
Was originally opened 25th May 1866 as Caledonian Road Wesleyan Methodist Chapel to seat 1000, but closed as such in 1916. From 1916-26 J.Hibbard & Sons Ltd used the building as a furniture repository for removals and constructed an extra floor on gallery level, but left the steeple standing. The semi-circular apse was designed by Sir E.L. Lutyens (1869-1944) whose wife, Lady Emily, had been a worshipper there. The last services were held in the winter of 1976. Demolished early 1980s.
 

We had a postcard showing the church in the background with cattle being herded to the Market: reproduced on the model. However, we played pretty fast and loose with the road geometry at that end of the layout though...

 

Tim

 

 

 

Lots of nice details in the picture