Copenhagen Fields

[CF MRC]

This is from Lawrence Boul’s New Zealand Finescale Facebook page:

“I get all sorts of requests for model projects.  Since these are inevitably things not stocked by your local model shop they generally present something of a challenge in some way.

The latest distraction has been a herd of 2mm scale horses.

In the past I've turned down horses in small scales, but this job piqued my interest:
+ Firstly it is for the Model Railway Club's 2mm finescale 'Copenhagen Fields'.  (If you aren't familiar with it, have a look at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3h7-PEB908). You don't often get a chance to contribute to something as significant as that.
+ They are primarily to populate the cart road for the Kings Cross goods shed, but doubtless will be used elsewhere too.  So there are plenty needed, which does justify a bit of effort.
+ The base modelling was on hand.  A bit of rework was needed around the tack and everything needed resupporting for printing but it was not a huge task.

So here they are.  Surprisingly good for things so tiny.”  

 

 

We really are very privileged. The New Zealand Fine scale web site is well worth looking at.  I am very much looking forward to the herd’s arrival. 
 

Tim

Edited May 11, 2021 by CF MRC

[DuncanFogg]

Those horses look so much better than anything I have seen before. Is there any chance of getting them added to the list New Zealand Finescale sells to the public, or sold through the Association?

 

Duncan

[CF MRC]

We will be making this office building on the south ends of our Goods Shed. 

It has been contracted out to Tom Knapp in Hawaii, so a bit more international effort under a flag with a Union Jack on it.  The building is only 15’ deep (30mm in scale) and therefore adds very little to the actual layout length, but will produce an excellent end view for the south end operator. It will also add to the photographic potential across the roof scapes. The base extension has been made and I will complete the gable end of the goods sheds very shortly. 

 

Tim

Edited May 13, 2021 by CF MRC

[Ian Morgan]

 

Nice model, but I don't think much of the doors and windows. You could have at least made an effort and got some glazing sheets .... 

 

[CF MRC]

With a fairly un-interrupted day, there has been a bit of change at the Midland Shed office site.  A new gable end was made, which neatens up the goods shed ends, but Pip really can’t be bothered...

The main roof will hopefully have a clerestory ventilator fitted next week; it is currently being made by Alan Budgen. The view over the rooves is beginning to look quite busy, especially now I made a mock up of the Midland Shed office building. With Tom’s expert ministrations it should frame the foreground of a photo very well, with the rest of York Way viaduct & Belle Isle making a decent back drop.

The new structure acts as quite a good visual stop, but a bit of paint sploshed on will help.

 

Tim

 

 

 

[CF MRC]

This photo shows the building mock up in the context of the whole scene:

After painting the gables, roof and the mock up:

It always fascinates me how a bit of colour and suggestion can make the eye ‘see’ far more detail than reality.  A few chimney stacks will improve it. 

I suppose that’s where the art of model railways takes over from engineering. Fun to do both, though. 
 

Tim
 

 

Edited May 15, 2021 by CF MRC

[CF MRC]

A herd of horses arrived from New Zealand this morning. Here is a selection with a puff of undercoat. 

Some need to go to the farrier to have their hooves trimmed, but that depends on him seeing what he is doing - they are very small!

 

Tim

 

[Kylestrome]

43 minutes ago, CF MRC said:

A herd of horses arrived from New Zealand this morning.

 

Those are excellent. Amazingly well detailed for 2mm scale.

 

David

[Cowley 47521]

On 18/05/2021 at 20:12, Kylestrome said:

 

Those are excellent. Amazingly well detailed for 2mm scale.

 

David

Not as well detailed as the dog though...

[CF MRC]

A moody moonlit view over Kings Cross goods sheds. 

What may not be immediately obvious is that there have been substantial changes to this scene, which have involved a great deal of work. More to follow when it’s nearer complete. 
 

Tim

Edited May 31, 2021 by CF MRC

[bécasse]

It looks very nice, Tim. 

 

One minor point, assuming that the scene is intended to be normally set during the working day, the gates at the top of the ramp would almost certainly have been open. No gatekeeper would give himself the extra work of having to keep going out and opening and shutting them. A realistic little cameo could be set up here of a horse and wagon stopped at the top of the ramp with the driver standing in front of the guichet.

[CF MRC]

Looking at photos, David, it would appear that that entrance was seldom open. It was possibly used in the early days when there were cattle pens in that location. The goods would have all gone through the main, more southerly entrance, which was also near enough flat access. 

The potato market cart road entrance was through the fairly conspicuous canopy. 
 

Tim

Edited May 31, 2021 by CF MRC

[bécasse]

OK, Tim, I didn't realise that there was a main entrance elsewhere and was somewhat mislead by the presence of the gatekeeper's cabin. I would obviously have expected the ramp to be wider if there were regular two-way traffic through the gate but assumed, perhaps wrongly, that the narrow width resulted from your necessary "adjustment" of the local geography. It still looks great!

[CF MRC]

Apologies for what is going to be a very long post. This was the state of play with the KX goods sheds up until two weeks ago.

However, I have been in correspondence with Malcolm Tucker, who knows a great deal about the KX Goods Yards. A little bit of knowledge can be a bad thing for some, i.e. me, and one of the comments he made was that the cart road was too low relative to York Road.  He was correct, of course, so I raised the whole section by 10mm and the scene was much improved. Unfortunately, this also raised the already tall long shed, especially in relation to the York Road viaduct,  simultaneously altering its horizontal relationship with the tracks going into the sheds. The solution to the height issue was to lower the roof of the main building by 17mm and take out the top story. 

The roof was re-instated and a clerestory vent made by Alan Budgen, which actually then bring it back up by 10mm. That didn’t do much to help the relationship with the YR viaduct and track, so I chopped 90mm off the length of the building, to take it away from the road bridge. The height differences are very apparent when the two sections are juxtaposed.

The overall improvement by lowering the rear roof is, I think, quite significant. The raised 10mm is also apparent in this image: the gap at the baseboard end will obviously be filled in at some point. 

The solution to how to handle the north end of the sheds is also just visible in this image; albeit only sketched in. The prototype had some large E-W canopies added in the 1890s and I thought that one of these would make an interesting addition at the north end. 

On the prototype, these were supported and braced at one end by the walls of the potato warehouses and so a suitable wall was incorporated on the model. Ironically, it is the base of the chopped off building section and is more or less back where it started a decade ago, when Mike Randall started off the whole scene.

A placeholder building can be seen, to give some idea of the effect aimed for. 

This placeholder has a roof pitch that is too shallow and is 10mm over wide. The actual model will be of etched construction, courtesy of Jim Watt, because this roof was mainly glass.  The view through to the yard below should look quite effective. 

The benefit of raising of the whole area becomes apparent when you look at the cart road canopies. They can now be seen underneath, albeit an intriguing view, but at least the new vehicles and horses will be more visible.

Finally, in this early morning deserted view, one can see that the streets around Copenhagen Fields have quite a lot of cr@p on them, despite comments to the contrary from some quarters. 

Worth all the effort? I hope so... the layout will be erected for the first time in over a year this weekend. 

 

Tim

 

 

 

Edited June 4, 2021 by CF MRC

[Jan W]

It looks wonderful and I still can't understand how you chop up and modify existing structures and make them look as if nothing has ever happened.

But... where is "Kings Cross Goods Station Refreshment Club”?

 

Jan

 

 

[east barnet andy]

Tim , looking forward to seeing some snaps of CF  this weekend ! 

 

brilliant stuff as ever

 

E B Andy

[CF MRC]

3 hours ago, Jan W said:

It looks wonderful and I still can't understand how you chop up and modify existing structures and make them look as if nothing has ever happened.

But... where is "Kings Cross Goods Station Refreshment Club”?

 

Jan

 

 

It’s original position on the layout has gone, Jan. However, we may move the back scene rearwards by 100mm behind these sheds and put in another.  There is a hint of it in one of the pictures above. That will enable the refreshment club to go in a more correct position, but tucked back a bit.  At that point, it might be possible to extend the rooms, as the prototype, to look more like this:

The extended building is visible through the potato sheds. It might be useful for hiding the trains exiting through the back scene. I’ll have a better idea after the weekend.  I have highlighted the areas of the goods yard we have modelled in this picture:

In the immortal words of Eric Morecambe, “All the right notes, but not in the right order.”

 

Tim

 

 

 

[Cowley 47521]

It’s taken me quite a while to read through the thread over the last week (since I discovered it) bit by bit. It’s amazing and very inspiring stuff.

[Grafarman]

Wow!

Small scale construction at its best...The placeholder building looks better than some of my finished ones...

Have to keep reminding myself that it's 2mm...

 

David 

[CF MRC]

It was great to get the new bit tried out at Keen House today. Having a back scene makes photography much easier.

The back scene at the south end has always been relatively crude, because the layout was unfinished. It now needs more finesse and one of the silhouette boards is also missing in the first picture - hence the greenery in the background. The line of the back scene has now been shifted back by 100mm at this point which opens the scene up quite well, but throws out the track alignment.  This allows another long shed to be built, but that will have some tricky geometric compression, whilst still allowing the refreshment club building to go on the end, with a correct roof profile.  The plywood profile sections are visible in this image:

I will need to put some extra track in to ‘feed’ this shed. As it’s at the back & non working, it could be smaller i.e. N gauge. Does anyone have a 12 -18” panel of Finetrax they could donate to a worthy cause?

 

Tim

Edited June 6, 2021 by CF MRC

[nick_bastable]

2 hours ago, CF MRC said:

It was great to get the new bit tried out at Keen House today. Having a back scene makes photography much easier.

The back scene at the south end has always been relatively crude, because the layout was unfinished. It now needs more finesse and one of the silhouette boards is also missing in the first picture - hence the greenery in the background. The line of the back scene has now been shifted back by 100mm at this point which opens the scene up quite well, but throws out the track alignment.  This allows another long shed to be built, but that will have some tricky geometric compression, whilst still allowing the refreshment club building to go on the end, with a correct roof profile.  The plywood profile sections are visible in this image:

I will need to put some extra track in to ‘feed’ this shed. As it’s at the back & non working, it could be smaller i.e. N gauge. Does anyone have a 12 -18” panel of Finetrax they could donate to a worthy cause?

 

Tim

pm sent

 

Nick B

[Jan W]

I really can't wait to come to the Diamond Jubilee meeting next year and see CF there!!

[Sithlord75]

22 hours ago, Jan W said:

I really can't wait to come to the Diamond Jubilee meeting next year and see CF there!!

Here's hoping I'm allowed out (not by the Boss, but by the PM!)

[CF MRC]

The saga of the goods yard rumbles on, with the extension of the Eastern Transit Shed(ish). 

This was trial fitted on the layout last Thursday evening. 

The shift rearwards of the back scene will allow the various huts and the round house to be better positioned and more visible from the front. Quite appropriately, a Refreshment Club mug was used to mark out the recess for the model building on the end wall of the transit shed.

The somewhat ugly far ‘leg’ of the main shed was hidden by an internal office structure made with clapboard: these show in some images of the prototype.

 

This whole assembly will be masked a bit by Jim’s new canopy (shown as a ply rectangle in the first image above), but it will all look very interesting.

 

Tim

 

[Caley Jim]

Artwork for the canopy parts (among other things) went to PPD last night and was acknowledged today.  Awaiting their quote.  Delivery is presently around 3-4 weeks following acceptance and payment.

 

Jim