Copenhagen Fields

[CF MRC]

It is fascinating how adding one architectural feature suddenly ‘places’ the goods sheds as being based on KX. That feature is a ‘knee’ on each corner of the main, long, sheds. 

This part image is from ‘An Exceedingly Commodious Goods Station’ an archaeological survey by Haslam & Thompson.  A very useful book, if you are making a model of Kings Cross Goods Depot. 
On the model

And in the overall scene

I am very pleased with the effect these have. I wasn’t convinced that the atmosphere of the sheds was quite right for KX, it’s probably getting better now.

 

Tim

[Caley Jim]

1 hour ago, bécasse said:

these are presumably wartime or immediate post-war replacements for slate roofs damaged during air raids (when bomb blasts would lift roof coverings almost within a wider radius than they would blow in glass windows).

According to my father, incendiary bombs would break through the slates and set the house ablaze.  this didn't happen to the same extent in Scotland where there is usually sarking (boarding) under the slates, so the incendiaries slid off and landed in the road or garden doing less damage.

 

Jim

[bécasse]

12 hours ago, Caley Jim said:

According to my father, incendiary bombs would break through the slates and set the house ablaze.  this didn't happen to the same extent in Scotland where there is usually sarking (boarding) under the slates, so the incendiaries slid off and landed in the road or garden doing less damage.

Actually, sarking was commonplace anywhere, the slates have to be nailed to something and in the days before the Great War when timber (and labour) was relatively cheap it was probably simpler to lay planks rather than battens. After the Great War new roofs, at least in the London area, tended to be tiled rather than slated and, although they were laid on battens (the tiles having moulded projections so that they didn't need nailing), they were also stronger and incendiary bombs were less likely to break through them. The great danger with incendiary bombs was that they would lodge somewhere on the roof structure (those gulleys, for example) and that is why neighbourhood fire watching (and the provision of equipment to enable the bombs to be quickly dealt with) was organised in urban areas during WWII.

[bécasse]

16 hours ago, CF MRC said:

It is fascinating how adding one architectural feature suddenly ‘places’ the goods sheds as being based on KX. That feature is a ‘knee’ on each corner of the main, long, sheds. 

Part image from ‘An Exceedingly Commodious Goods Station’ an archaeological survey by Haslam & Thompson.  

 

 

As you have doubtless spotted, Tim, those "knees" are there to help support a cantilevered walkway with handrail that runs the length of each roof outside the guttering whose purpose was to facilitate the maintenance of the slate roofing. The walkway could have been either wooden planking or a steel/iron grill, the photo suggesting the former. 

 

Such walkways were actually quite common on roofs on large buildings, indicating that provision for (relatively) safe working at a height didn't start with an EU directive on the subject (or even the UK's own H&S legislation of the sixties). Glass roofs over passenger stations tended to have even more elaborate provision of walkways for access. When I worked at 50 Liverpool Street in the mid-1970s my office in the "attics" had a special window which gave direct access to the roof walkways over Liverpool Street station and it wasn't unknown for the younger and more intrepid members of my staff to go "exploring" while I was out even though this was at the height of the IRA bombing campaign. With the window open, we could hear clearly the station announcements and the initiation of the "Will all passengers and staff please leave the station immediately" announcement gave us a good thirty seconds to pack our bags before the building evacuation bells started ringing!

[CF MRC]

The individual potato warehouses at KX featured offices, many of which had a stove to heat them, so there is quite a forest of chimneys coming out of the M roof sections. These were made as a stick, by laminating the brick styrene around a solid core of the appropriate size. The sides were made over-width and then pared back with a scalpel and dressed with a file. 

They were then cut to length and let into the relevant rooves with extra details added in layers as required.  The corners of the stacks were notched with a fine saw to soften the edges.  

These are a little crude at the moment, but are improved with further painting and chimney pots.  These are from strips of white metal pots set into the flaunching: we had these made for the layout and they have been a boon, as our buildings need industrial quantities of chimneys. They are simply cut to length and bedded in with some epoxy adhesive.

The ground around the yard was the next to be sorted. This was made good with a sheet of 1.5mm thick steel, in much the same way as I did for the tube station.  The steel sheet will also be held down by magnets, as before.

The styrene sheet cobbles are dead flat in this area as the whole will be covered over with a canopy, supported on some of Tom E’s 3D printed Handyside stanchions.  The ‘out door’ bits will have drainage represented. The baseboard joint is now at the bottom of the retaining wall and will be completely invisible to the viewing public.  Slowly but surely, the buildings are beginning to show the right colour, but there is a lot of detail painting and weathering yet to come; especially around the ramp and retaining walls. Some of the potato warehouses will have name boards. I will need to get some artwork made up and printed off: I expect the Clifford’s grocery empire will be represented. 
 

Tim

 

Edited January 17, 2021 by CF MRC

[grahame]

Great to see how you go about the modelling to make the changes and improvements. It's very inspirational and interesting.

 

I appreciate that you've done a lot of renovation and development of this area of the CF layout during the pandemic period and presumably at home. Are there others working on other areas of the layout?

 

 

[queensquare]

1 hour ago, CF MRC said:

 I expect the Clifford’s grocery empire will be represented. 
 

Tim

 

Spuds are a favourite crop with the Cliffords, young Ted bringing in the harvest!

 

Jerry

 

[CF MRC]

1 hour ago, grahame said:

I appreciate that you've done a lot of renovation and development of this area of the CF layout during the pandemic period and presumably at home. Are there others working on other areas of the layout?

 

 

The other main projects away from the layout is Matthew Wald making Goods & Mineral Jcn. signal box, whilst Eric Sainte, in Belgium, is making Five Arch SB.
 

Of course, around YR, Richard Wilson is beavering away at the underground crossing and tunnel infrastructure whilst Mark Fielder is making some advertising hoardings for YR as well as  re-motoring Stewart Hine’s original tube mechanism. Mike Randall might be turning up a tunnel vent for Gasworks tunnel - I’m not sure whether that will look right, but worth a try.  Jerry C has a slew of road vehicles in hand for the south end of the layout. The main goods shed roof has its vents being made  by Alan Budgen: fairly obvious that he will get his name on a potato warehouse unit. 
 

Further towards the middle, Rob Stewart is making an automatic shuttle circuit for the 2mm scale Oerlikon set on the NLR and someone might be persuaded to have a look at a decent auto set up for the T gauge Oerlikon. Two others are making signals for the NLR and the GNR goods lines. 
There are other bits and pieces being made e.g. more carriages - a triplet diner is in hand.

 

So lots of little jobs and some big ones; we usually run a list of jobs to be done before the next show - whenever that might be...
 

Tim

Edited January 18, 2021 by CF MRC

[east barnet andy]

and there was me Tim , thinking you were the only one beavering away in these  dark days . . . . 

maybe if they have the time , some of the others could show us how their projects are coming along ? 

 

regards

 

Andy.

[Kylestrome]

18 hours ago, CF MRC said:

So lots of little jobs and some big ones

 

It would be interesting to know how many people have been involved with the layout in total. It must be quite a number by now.

 

David

[CF MRC]

Back of an envelope calculation is around 30 in all, David.  Five are unfortunately no longer with us and there are about 18 still with active connections to the layout. The really active team is a baker’s dozen.

 

Tim

[bécasse]

1 hour ago, CF MRC said:

Back of an envelope calculation is around 30 in all, David.  Five are unfortunately no longer with us and there are about 18 still with active connections to the layout. The really active team is a baker’s dozen.

That is an interesting comparison with the construction of Bembridge in P4 fifty years ago which, although privately owned, was largely built at Keen House and was always billed as "by members of the Model Railway Club". Its total stand frontage probably wasn't very different to that of CF, it was just as pioneering and it was almost totally scratch built, but we had an active team of just five (with odd bits of help from other members) and, starting with a site visit in mid-September 1969 through to exhibiting at the Easter Central Hall show in 1971, it took us just over 18 months.

[CF MRC]

I remember seeing Bembridge at Keen House in the mid 1970s, by which time it was looking a little tired, but was still a tour de force for what it set out to do.   However, I think you are comparing apples and oranges, David, with Bembridge having three buildings in total: how many on CF?  A more comparable layout  would have been Chiltern Green, which was started in 1977, first exhibited in 1979 and built by about six Club members. 
 

Tim

[CF MRC]

The Goods Sheds and Potato warehouses are now roughed in, but awaiting further detailing, weathering and the addition of further skylights and ventilators on the main building, nominally, the Eastern Transit shed. 

On the prototype, at the northern end there existed the “Kings Cross Goods Station Refreshment Club”, eventually quite a large building with facilities for all the staff in the GY. It is given a good deal of coverage in the definitive archaeological survey of the yard by Haslam & Thompson “An immense and exceedingly commodious goods station”.  The building grew from fairly modest beginnings, to the large structure visible in the middle of this aerial photo:

The Haslam book contains useful plans and survey drawings of the building remains, although I have not (yet) located any ground level photos of it.

Further posts will outline how it will be modelled on CF. It will usefully sit on the end of the Eastern Transit building and further  serve to hide one of the goods through lines rather well.  The hut, visible in the following image, will be replaced by the new building. 

During the archaeological dig these cups were found: 

Does anyone think there might be a market for a modern-day reproduction?

Tim

 

Edited January 23, 2021 by CF MRC

[grahame]

Very nice and effective looking progress.

 

It's difficult to tell from the pics but on the pitched roof skylights are the glazing bars on the outside or inside?

 

[CF MRC]

1 hour ago, grahame said:

Very nice and effective looking progress.

 

It's difficult to tell from the pics but on the pitched roof skylights are the glazing bars on the outside or inside?

 

They’re on the outside Grahame. Heavily scribed into the surface, but not showing up very strongly. I think there would be a good market for glazing with window bars printed on, for north light type rooves. 
 

Tim

[grahame]

16 hours ago, CF MRC said:

They’re on the outside Grahame. Heavily scribed into the surface, but not showing up very strongly. I think there would be a good market for glazing with window bars printed on, for north light type rooves. 
 

Tim

 

Thanks. The light reflecting off the glazing makes them difficult to see.

 

'Scenesetters glazing sheets' (from Freestone Models) are printed glazing bars but they're grids, although in a choice of sizes. He also does other printed windows including skylight types with grey bars but they're in a folder book you need to look through.

 

 

I thicken up the frame area with a Posca paint pen.

 

 

 

Edited January 24, 2021 by grahame
add pic

[CF MRC]

After a bit of head scratching and some doodles for the ground plan the refreshment club is now beginning to take shape. I have found an image of the building but it is of the major extension made in the 1900s, which we will not have space for: useful for some architectural details though.

The windows came from printed sheets that I acquired years ago.  By using two per window it is possible to make a simple sash window. 

The stairs were made from the ever useful Evergreen strip and the side walls from 1mm scribed sheet.  It’s always useful to pre paint difficult-to-reach areas prior to assembly.

The window bars are very fine and so to make them stand out I scored them on the back to give them a bit more presence. This had the unintended effect of slightly distorting the glazing between different panes, but that is a really serendipitous finding because it prevents that rather ‘flat’ look that sheets of glazing can sometimes show. 

This arty image, sitting on the iPad, shows the side stairway on prototype and model - this gained access to the clerk’s mess rooms, which were on the first floor, guards and shunters used the ground floor entrance. The building will be well endowed with fireplaces: it was kept well heated because staff could become very cold, especially goods guards and shunters. There was a cosy toilet under the stairs. 

The final image shows it held against the end of the, nominal, eastern transit shed.  

If you compare it against the vertical layout view in a previous post, it is evident that it should do a quite good job of hiding trains as they make a dash for the hole in the back scene.

 

Tim
 

 

Edited January 26, 2021 by CF MRC

[CF MRC]

The evolution of a building. Can you spot the differences?

Tim

[-missy-]

 

They are all different filenames?

 

J :p

[Caley Jim]

They're on different positions on the mat? 

 

Jim

[CF MRC]

There’s always troublemakers in a class...

 

Tim

[Kylestrome]

15 minutes ago, CF MRC said:

There’s always troublemakers in a class...

 

There are ... 

[Caley Jim]

2 hours ago, CF MRC said:

There’s always troublemakers in a class..

Been there, done that.....! 

 

Show me a student that hasn't! 

 

Jim 

[john new]

4 hours ago, CF MRC said:

The evolution of a building. Can you spot the differences?

Tim

Roof line above front elevation

Window ledges on the stairs wall and some cleaning off around the windows etc.

Roof.

 

Are there other more hidden changes too.?  Cracking work as usual in such a small scale .