Offerston Quay - 7mm Inglenook Plus

[Fastdax]

2 hours ago, Les Johnson said:

Brilliant buildings and weathering Duncan. Sorry if I’ve missed this previously but what size strip did you use for the sash windows on the extension?

Les

 

Thanks Les.

 

If I recall, the windows had a base layer of 0.03" x 0.08" (0.75mm x 2.0mm) with sections of 0.04" (1.0mm) square added on top.

 

[Les Johnson]

Thanks Duncan

Les

[Fastdax]

Tree

 

Still working on the station forecourt area, I fancied putting a large oak tree right in the back right-hand corner of the layout. It's probably the only chance to have a tree on OQ as the rest is pretty well industrial.

 

There will be just enough room between the tree and the station building's front door to squeeze a vehicle if I want to hide the transition from forecourt to backscene a bit more in the future.

 

To start (apart from watching loads of YouTube videos) I came across these plastic tree armatures on eBay. They are sold as tree/coral wedding/centrepiece general-purpose thingummies but they are cheap (less than a pound each), flexible and reasonably realistic:

 

 

 

I grouped six together, around a 10mm wooden dowel. The basic shape is a quarter circle in plan view, to fit into the corner. Some green florist's wire bound the whole lot together and formed roots. The trunk was then covered in hot glue. The hot glue sticks were sold as 'woodworking white glue sticks', a task for which they are spectacularly useless, so I had a big bundle of sticks sitting in the garage. They are fine for sticking the mess of plastic, wire and wood together though. As a side benefit, when the white plastic (it's not really glue at all) has cooled and set, it can be sculpted by the hot nozzle of the glue gun to give a first-pass bark texture:

 

 

 

The Chewbacca mug is a necessary part of this process.

 

You can see the wooden dowel inserted into an oak base and the roots, with the loops yet to be snipped open.

 

I had a tub of dried roots from digging up unwanted bushes from the garden. These give delicate and realistic branches:

 

 

 

The branches were attached with more hot glue and smoothed into the plastic armatures. A blast of black primer and white primer brought the whole lot together:

 

 

 

The tree is planted in a 10mm hole in the baseboard and will be removable.

 

Still some way to go on this, but it's getting there.

 

 

Edited December 21, 2023 by Fastdax
Reinstating photos.

[Fastdax]

Tree

 

The tree got a slathering of Duncan's Patent Bark Mix (an unholy mix of sawdust, glue, water, Polyfilla powder), stippled on to give some more texture:

 

 

 

Then some spray coats of black and white and some washes of grey and brown. I made concrete retaining slabs from mount board and filled in the gaps between the roots with loo-roll/glue mix:

 

 

A bit more highlighting on the bark, a few dabs of lichen and some base earth colour:

 

 

... followed by moss (Woodland Scenics Fine Turf over PVA glue dabs) and some static grass. Brown hairy string fibres for creepers:

 

 

Now this lot needs to dry for a day or so.

 

Edited December 21, 2023 by Fastdax
Reinstating photos.

[Fastdax]

Tree

 

The tree is about finished for now.

 

Some bushes round the base and and some ivy decorates the trunk:

 

 

 

 

 

   

I took advantage of some sunshine to grab an outdoors shot:

 

 

 

In its location:

 

 

 

Unfortunately you can't see much of it behind the station building unless you peek carefully between the buildings:

 

 

 

I did enjoy very much making it though!

 

 

Edited December 21, 2023 by Fastdax
Reinstating photos.

[Joner]

That is one damn good tree, shame its hidden so much 

[Regularity]

3 minutes ago, Joner said:

That is one damn good tree, shame its hidden so much 

Duncan knows it’s there. Does anything else matter?

[Fastdax]

10 hours ago, Joner said:

That is one damn good tree, shame its hidden so much 

 

Thanks Joner. I should have either thought about it more or titivated it less.

 

[Fastdax]

Pluggable Lamp-posts

 

The station area moves on, with some Midland-style fencing separating the forecourt from the platform and from the "works" area next to the signal box.

 

I added some station gas lamps, which started life as a DCC Concepts Super Value Pack Midland Gas Lamps: https://shop.keypublishing.com/product/View/productCode/GLMR6

 

These are 4mm scale but work out to be about 13' 6" in 7mm scale when using the tallest plinths supplied, which still looks OK to me:

 

 

 

Standard Joe (5' 10") is standing under the lamp.

 

The lamps would be terribly vulnerable to damage if permanently planted, so I made them removable. Not just removable but pluggable for ease of use.

 

The socket in the platform is a 3.5mm audio jack socket and comes from a short audio extender cable. This picture shows the original long cable, the cut-off socket ends and the matching 3.5mm jack plugs sourced separately as they are slimmer and easier to use than the ones embedded in plastic:

 

 

 

With the sockets dug out of the plastic shroud, this is what we are left with. the sockets are 6mm wide and the plugs have a 5mm flange and a 3.5mm body:

 

 

 

The jack plug was carefully soldered to the single-strand copper wire in the gas lamps. The plinth was opened out with a 3.5mm drill to take the plug, which could then be superglued in place (after testing that the grain-of-wheat bulb still works!):

 

 

 

The sockets were let into the platform surface (6mm drill) and wired up underneath. I left the sockets a bit recessed so that the brass plug at the base of each lamp sits below platform level. I'll add a tiny bit of greenery to hide the shiny brass:

 

 

 

The finished result is in the "Standard Joe" picture above.

 

I've converted all 6 tall lamps in the pack to plug'n'play. That's five in the platforms and one spare.

 

Edited December 21, 2023 by Fastdax
Reinstating photos.

[Fastdax]

Pluggable Lamp-posts

 

Second quick post as we're limited to 10MB of pictures per post.

 

Here's the station area with the lamp-posts in place. Two illuminate the steps of the footbridge, one illuminates the station forecourt and one is further down platform No. 2. I still need to add one on platform 1 to the left of the signal box.

 

Since they are nominally 12V, but I'm running them on 9V, I added only a bit of extra resistance (33 Ohm 5W resistors) to dim them to gas-like levels:

 

 

 

In reality they are not as brilliant as the photo seems to show.

 

Edited December 21, 2023 by Fastdax
Reinstating photos.

[sir douglas]

gotta have a go at that idea one day

[Dan Randall]

Those audio jacks are a great idea Duncan - it may well be the solution to one of my own lighting requirements....

 

 

Regards

 

Dan

[Mr chapman]

Bloody amazing! You don't seem to have a weak area! Honestly, I've seen film miniatures that aren't as good. Hat's off... 

[37114]

The jack plug approach is excellent, great idea and great layout.

[Fastdax]

4 hours ago, Mr chapman said:

Bloody amazing! You don't seem to have a weak area! Honestly, I've seen film miniatures that aren't as good. Hat's off... 

 

Thank you very much Mr Chapman!

 

[Fastdax]

1 hour ago, 37114 said:

The jack plug approach is excellent, great idea and great layout.

 

Thanks 37114!

 

[Fastdax]

More Station Lights

 

The station building has two wall-mounted lamps to match the tall lamps (the mirror makes it look like 4 wall lamps ), and warm white LEDs in each of its four rooms:

 

 

 

It looks all warm and homely now.

 

Edited December 21, 2023 by Fastdax
Reinstating photos.

[redsoldiergreen]

The mirror effect works well.

[Fastdax]

Fencing

 

Been working full-time lately (which is nice) but little progress on the layout.

 

In the few minutes here and there, I've been building Midland diagonal fences from Poppy's Woodtech.

 

A much-butchered template is glued to a bit of chipboard and a long run of fencing can be made, one 9' panel at a time.

 

 

 

As each panel is made, it's popped out of the template and moved along 9' to be glued to a fresh batch of 12 diagonal palings held on grubby double-sided tape in the jig:

 

 

 

The fences will separate the under-arch business area from the goods yard and also stop the little people from falling off the high-level platform onto the cobbles below.

 

Edited December 21, 2023 by Fastdax
Reinstating photos.

[Barnaby]

My my the patience of a Fastdax. 

As always very neat and tidy Duncan and by coincidence I've just had a 9ft middle fence post dug out and re-posted in concrete this afternoon, all sorted now.

 

Best

[Fastdax]

3 minutes ago, Barnaby said:

My my the patience of a Fastdax. 

As always very neat and tidy Duncan and by coincidence I've just had a 9ft middle fence post dug out and re-posted in concrete this afternoon, all sorted now.

 

Best

 

The other distraction on my time is the fact that the middle 5 panels of my 9-panel 12in:1ft fence blew down last week :-(

 

So I'm also playing with concrete and fence-posts.

 

[Fastdax]

Crane

 

Wow. It's been a year since I posted on this thread.

 

I haven't been idle, although it's a close thing due to work and other distractions.

 

I've recently been playing about with the idea of motorising the ubiquitous Peco LK-735 yard crane:

 

 

I'm not talking about radio control here, just some switches on the end of a wire, which directly control motors in the crane.

 

I used a tiny 3V 58RPM gear motor from ebay to operate the crank handle, replacing its axle. The other gears are as per the kit, except that the big gear axle was replaced with some 2mm brass rod for strength.

 

 

 

 

 

The whole crane rotates on a 12V 3RPM motor mounted under the plinth. I think it's the sort of motor that turns the turntable in a microwave. The motor spindle forms one path for the electrickery to reach the crank motor, and a slip ring under the crane provides the return path. This means that the whole crane can rotate freely and can also be simply lifted off its base, leaving only the sturdy rotation motor spindle protruding.

 

For even more safety, the whole plinth can be unplugged from below and removed. A very large, very ragged hole under the plinth gives clearance for the motor body:

 

 

 

Here's a quick video of the crane in operation on Offerston Quay, before being painted or detailed:

 

 

Since the jib doesn't raise or lower, there's an inevitable compromise on what bits of track it can access. It can reach both wagons in the video and the quayside setts to either side. If a barge was moored, it will just about reach that as well :-)

 

I'll post some more details here when I've made some more progress!

 

 

Edited December 21, 2023 by Fastdax
Reinstating photos.

[Barnaby]

Wow that is fantastic Duncan, I'll be watching out for some more details of your crane build.   

As it happens 2 things 1/  I've always wanted to have a crane for me to utilise on my layout and 2/  I have one of those cranes still in its packing so by watching your technique and build I may be inspired to copy copy build it.  

 All the other cranes and hoists I've looked at and try build have all ended up with me needing multiple motors but your version looks simple enough for me to try and be successful.  

 

Thanks for kick starting my inspiration to build a crane again.  

 

Thanks

 

[Fastdax]

2 hours ago, Barnaby said:

Wow that is fantastic Duncan, I'll be watching out for some more details of your crane build.   

As it happens 2 things 1/  I've always wanted to have a crane for me to utilise on my layout and 2/  I have one of those cranes still in its packing so by watching your technique and build I may be inspired to copy copy build it.  

 All the other cranes and hoists I've looked at and try build have all ended up with me needing multiple motors but your version looks simple enough for me to try and be successful.  

 

Thanks for kick starting my inspiration to build a crane again.  

 

Thanks

 

 

Cheers Mark!

 

The crane is currently drying in the airing cupboard prior to being painted, but I'll try to remember to take more photos when it comes out.

[Flying Fox 34F]

I’ve just read through your entire thread over the weekend. Very inspiring and the standard of the modelling is very high.

 

Looking forward to seeing more

 

Paul