Scotland Street

[BG John]

 There's also a dodgy bit of perspective, but I don't think it's too apparent!

 

David

 

2016-10-07 18.26.32.jpg

You may not want to know this, but I spotted it straight away, before I noticed anything else in the photo!

[aac]

You may not want to know this, but I spotted it straight away, before I noticed anything else in the photo!

If the perspective irritates, count the chimney stacks from the left. Cut away the brickwork that is the dark left-hand side of stack 5 (the grey one) and remove totally stack 6 (it's to the rear of the ridge anyway). I draw buildings quite often, and I think that would cure it.

 

Enjoying your thread.

 

aac

[Simond]

Hi David,

 

I like the tenement background, but as soon as I looked closely, I spotted your subterfuge, buildings 4 & 5 from the left are clones of building 2...

 

Building 3 seems to have the perspective problem. I think if you clone (and possibly mirror) buildings 1 & 2, and possibly change the curtains (I bet that roller blinds were uncommon in steam days) to differentiate between the buildings, and lose building three, you'll have a more convincing backdrop.

 

Sorry if you didn't want suggestions...

 

Best

Simon

[Ben Alder]

Seeing images on screen does accentuate any "shortcomings" and I suspect that when the whole build is complete, it will not be too apparent - the eye has a useful habit of ignoring what the digital camera picks up only too readily. I like what you have done here and it is certainly capturing that corner of Edinburgh well.

[John R Smith]

David

 

I know it's a bit late now, but when making up a backscene from photos -

 

In Photoshop, desaturate (all colours) perhaps 30% or to taste and add brightness to lighten the whole scene. This will create a sense of distance between foreground and the backscene.

 

John

[Astir648]

Thanks everyone - very useful comments, as always on here (opinions are always welcome Simon!).

 

John - interesting suggestion. I plan some more roofs behind these, so that may help to place them further back in the scene.

 

I've tried aac's suggestion, which I think helps. See the pic below - I've added some more rolling stock as a reminder that this is a backdrop, rather than the main event. They are currently taped together and blu-tacked on, so further amendment is possible if necessary. Can I have the votes of the RMWEB jury please? :-)

 

 

In the meantime I've turned my attention to a Dingham autocoupler production line. They are rather fiddly to put together but strangely satisfying! Once I've enough to equip a loco and several wagons I'll add an electromagnet to the layout and see how reliable they are.

 

 

David

Edited October 9, 2016 by Astir648

[Simond]

David

 

Sorry to be picky here, but building three is still not doing it for me! Its a clone of building 1, but is it a photo do a real building, or a photoshopped composite? I ask, because the central chimney stack is not apparently carried down through the building as the others are, it looks a bit structurally worrying at eaves level!

 

As you say, the backdrop is not the main event, so perhaps I'm guilding mossier's todgers, but I do like John's suggestion of desaturation / less contrast / paler.

 

I asked my wife's opinion, she could see nothing amiss. Which adds weight to the belief that it's all in the eye of the beholder!

 

Best

Simon

[Astir648]

David

Sorry to be picky here, but building three is still not doing it for me! Its a clone of building 1, but is it a photo do a real building, or a photoshopped composite? I ask, because the central chimney stack is not apparently carried down through the building as the others are, it looks a bit structurally worrying at eaves level!

As you say, the backdrop is not the main event, so perhaps I'm guilding mossier's todgers, but I do like John's suggestion of desaturation / less contrast / paler.

I asked my wife's opinion, she could see nothing amiss. Which adds weight to the belief that it's all in the eye of the beholder!

Best

Simon

That's the tricky part isn't it? What level of detail and accuracy is necessary is a very individual thing.

 

I tend to focus on overall impression, rather than detailed perfection. If it looks right then I'm generally happy. But on the other hand, once I know something is wrong my eye will always get drawn to it!

 

David

[81A Oldoak]

That's the tricky part isn't it? What level of detail and accuracy is necessary is a very individual thing.

 

I tend to focus on overall impression, rather than detailed perfection. If it looks right then I'm generally happy. But on the other hand, once I know something is wrong my eye will always get drawn to it!

 

David

David,

I think you are right. The backdrop is designed to create depth and to close off the scene. It should complement the setting of the layout not become the focus of attention. Muting the clours is essential. 

Chris

[aac]

Thanks everyone - very useful comments, as always on here (opinions are always welcome Simon!).

 

John - interesting suggestion. I plan some more roofs behind these, so that may help to place them further back in the scene.

 

I've tried aac's suggestion, which I think helps. See the pic below - I've added some more rolling stock as a reminder that this is a backdrop, rather than the main event. They are currently taped together and blu-tacked on, so further amendment is possible if necessary. Can I have the votes of the RMWEB jury please? :-)

 

2016-10-09 18.15.48.jpg

 

In the meantime I've turned my attention to a Dingham autocoupler production line. They are rather fiddly to put together but strangely satisfying! Once I've enough to equip a loco and several wagons I'll add an electromagnet to the layout and see how reliable they are.

 

2016-10-09 18.16.38.jpg

 

David

if you consider the obvious blocks as 5 buildings, and counting from the left, the horizontals of the gutter line and the various friezes in numbers 4 and 5 need dropping a bit to the right. I would experiment with that and then draw away the eye by growing a tree or some telegraph poles, or inserting a billboard somewhere around the blank wall of the wide chimney line of number 4. You look like you are nearly there.

 

aac

[Alex TM]

Hi David,

 

Those look like awfully posh flats - the stonework is so clean!  I spent most of today between Leith and Newington, and the majority of the tenements were grey to filthy.

 

Enjoying the progress of this.

 

Regards,

 

Alex.

[Astir648]

Ok folks, here's the latest version. I have adjusted the roof and chimney, to make it look less angled. It still isn't perfect, but I think it's now at a level where I can live with it (I have to - it sits right above my desk, where I see it every day).

 

 

Alex, you're entirely right. You wouldn't believe how hard it is to get a picture of the rear of a tenement. All the pics on line are b&w or are of the front, so I had to get my photographer OH to take some for me. The trouble we found, wandering around the grubber bits of Edinburgh was that many aren't grubby any more! Those that are are the bits which are hard to get a square-on view of or are obscured by trees, mostly because they're at the back!

 

The upshot is that the pics I'm using aren't actually the rear of a tenement and are far too clean. Happily the front of this particular tenement looks quite rear-ish, when the front doors are obscured by the fence.

 

Grubbiness I will deal with as I did with the tenement over the tunnel: a thin spray of black paint.

 

And I thought pasting pics onto the backdrop would be the easy, relaxing bit of this layout :-)

 

David

[Alex TM]

Hi David,

 

Don't worry about the tenements, as they do capture the feel of Edinburgh.  The fact that the stonework has been cleaned will simply make some think that the layout has moved to Morningside!

 

Please keep up the good work.

 

Regards,

 

Alex.

[81A Oldoak]

David,

I think they look good and would probably appear even better from a lower angle. I recently installed a long procrastinated backscene to Cwm Bach. Here are a few shots. Fortunately, the backscene for my new project Tonfanau Camp will be mostly a cloudy, grey sky with a little strip of fields along the bottom.

 

Regards,

 

Chris

[Astir648]

David,

I think they look good and would probably appear even better from a lower angle. I recently installed a long procrastinated backscene to Cwm Bach. Here are a few shots. Fortunately, the backscene for my new project Tonfanau Camp will be mostly a cloudy, grey sky with a little strip of fields along the bottom.

 

Regards,

 

Chris

Chris, that looks fantastic. You've captured the layered look of row upon row of houses so well. The acid test of course is the b&w pic, which is really hard to tell from the real thing.

 

David

[Astir648]

I had a great day out yesterday at the ScotGOG show in Linlithgow. As usual it was a small but friendly show, with some really nice layouts and all the right retailers/stands. I had a long look at a Tower Collection class 20 kit. Very tempting, but there's just something about whitemetal kits that I'm not keen on: too much time spent de-clogging files.

 

Apart from spending far more than I should at Douglas Blades' book stall I couldn't resist a second-hand Bachmann Brassworks Class B tank wagon. It's an absolute work of art: beautifully made and detailed. The filler hatch on the top even opens!

 

 

 

One odd thing is the coupling hooks. They are connected to springs under the centre of the wagon by massive brass rods. The springs themselves are so powerful I can't move the hooks at all! They seem massively over-engineered.

 

 

My problem now is painting it. There's something really beautiful about a brass wagon and I'll have to steel myself to take paint to it!

 

David

Edited October 16, 2016 by Astir648

[aac]

Ok folks, here's the latest version. I have adjusted the roof and chimney, to make it look less angled. It still isn't perfect, but I think it's now at a level where I can live with it (I have to - it sits right above my desk, where I see it every day).

 

2016-10-12 19.57.17.jpg

 

Alex, you're entirely right. You wouldn't believe how hard it is to get a picture of the rear of a tenement. All the pics on line are b&w or are of the front, so I had to get my photographer OH to take some for me. The trouble we found, wandering around the grubber bits of Edinburgh was that many aren't grubby any more! Those that are are the bits which are hard to get a square-on view of or are obscured by trees, mostly because they're at the back!

 

The upshot is that the pics I'm using aren't actually the rear of a tenement and are far too clean. Happily the front of this particular tenement looks quite rear-ish, when the front doors are obscured by the fence.

 

Grubbiness I will deal with as I did with the tenement over the tunnel: a thin spray of black paint.

 

And I thought pasting pics onto the backdrop would be the easy, relaxing bit of this layout :-)

 

David

Look great!

 

aac

[Simond]

The rods are more or less representative of the real thing, the hooks were connected by springs, so they took the drawbeam loads, rather than the chassis of the wagon.

 

There was a recent discussion regarding springs on the GOG forum, the views ranging from "no need - make it solid" to "most helpful", which, if not a conclusion, at least it suggests that either will do!

 

It is a thing of beauty, but it will be when painted, so enjoy it now, and enjoy it painted!

 

Best

Simon

[Astir648]

After a quiet couple of weeks with a nasty flu bug I've turned my attention to the rear of the coal-yard. This needs a scenic break to disguise the blank space behind. The plan is for a tall stone wall, with a small space allowing access for the coal lorry. I want to create the impression that the remainder of the coal yard is out of sight, so I may try to have pictures of the tops of coal-yard equipment poking over the top of the wall.

 

Now however I have to work out how to make a suitable wall. A quick and dirty Redutex job is tempting, but the simple truth is that it wouldn't look right for an urban Edinburgh wall. There is a very common type of vernacular stone wall found all over Edinburgh, formed of rocks of many shapes and types, positioned with flat edges to the outside. The spaces are then mortared over with lime mortar to create a smooth outer surface (for the first hundred years anyway - after that the stones often weather faster than the mortar, leaving the mortar proud of the stones).

 

One of Ron Leckie's two Youtube videos of St Leonard's shows a brief glimpse of just such a wall at the back of the real coal-yard - about 15-20 feet high, so how could I not try to replicate it? (You can see the video here: 

)

 

 

It's a bit fuzzy, so here's a better picture of a similar wall.

 

 

As you can see, these walls have been made from whatever stone was lying around - leading to a great variety of shapes and shades. Another feature of these walls is that the mortar is smooth, in line with the stones, so scribed plaster/polyfilla really won't work. However the surface needs to looks slightly rough - it is stone after all. As an experiment I thought I'd try painting a wall onto 400 grit sandpaper. I started with an overall wash of a lime mortar colour and then painted in shapes with a fine brush.

 

 

I think it looks ok, though it's clearly far too bright - without thinking I used the colour of fresh lime mortar and of course it should be much greyer. I think perhaps it needs to be a little less flat, so perhaps it would be better to use a thin skim of polyfilla as the base for the paint.

 

David

[Simond]

David,

 

You've set yourself a challenge there. I'm sure there should be some repeatable texture, but I guess you don't need enough wall to make a mould worthwhile, and then there's the question of how to make it.

 

Perhaps making some "rocks" from Das, painting them, and gluing them together with something like tile grout, which can be washed to create the "flat mortar with rough rocks" look? Or perhaps, could you roll out some plasticine, press real gravel into it, and then pour something like plaster on top. When it's set, peel off the plasticine...

 

Very interested to see how this goes.

 

Best

Simon

[Astir648]

David,

 

You've set yourself a challenge there. I'm sure there should be some repeatable texture, but I guess you don't need enough wall to make a mould worthwhile, and then there's the question of how to make it.

 

Perhaps making some "rocks" from Das, painting them, and gluing them together with something like tile grout, which can be washed to create the "flat mortar with rough rocks" look? Or perhaps, could you roll out some plasticine, press real gravel into it, and then pour something like plaster on top. When it's set, peel off the plasticine...

 

Very interested to see how this goes.

 

Best

Simon

 

Well, if it wasn't a challenge I guess it wouldn't be so much fun. I rather like the real gravel and plaster idea but it would need to be pretty tiny gravel. I wonder if horticultural grit might do the job. I've approached it from a different direction. These walls have a surface which is essentially flat, but has a lot of minor humps and bumps. The challenge is that the humps and bumps are as much related to the mortar as to the rock, so there is little logic to where they are! 

 

My first attempt used sandpaper as a base, but the humps and bumps were missing, so that really didn't work. Plan B was to use a thin layer of polyfilla over a plywood base, but how to make it bumpy? Leaning back in my chair and looking at the artex ceiling gave me an idea. I used a wet finger to smooth over the polyfilla and then tapped the surface repeatedly, each tap creating a little peak. These are far too pointy, but once the polyfilla dried I attacked it with 400 grit sandpaper, flattening the peaks so that I was left with a nice, slightly uneven surface.

 

A coat of mortar colour, followed by painting in some rocks and I'm quite pleased with the result. Now to replicate it on a larger scale for the actual wall. I will also need to create a semicircular top to the wall, but hopefully the same method should work for that.

 

 

Polyfilla with little peaks

 

 

Sanded down to a suitable texture

 

 

Painted a weathered mortar colour

 

 

Stones painted in in various shades

 

Another step forward 

 

David

Edited November 9, 2016 by Astir648

[Astir648]

Another day and another few baby steps forward.

 

In common with seemingly dozens of other people I've taken delivery of a blue Dapol class 08. This has turned out to be surprisingly good quality, with superb slow speed running. My plan is to run the layout as essentially two separate operations: the BR yard and the distillery/bonded warehouse private line, with stock transferred back and forth. The Ixion Fowler is excellent as a private locomotive, but until now the only BR loco I had was the Heljan class 20, which is a nice model, but not great for shunting (and occupies a fair bit of space!).

 

 

Even better I now have a second private engine running successfully. You may recall the casualty Ixion Hudswell Clarke I snapped up on eBay. Chris (81A Oldoak) was kind enough to find a replacement footplate for it. I possibly could have resurrected the damaged one, but the front buffer beam was not only split but slightly out of shape, so it wouldn't have been easy. The replacement footplate was in green, so needed a respray. I've re-fitted the chimney, which had obviously been broken off when it was dropped and then glued back on wonky.

 

I've replaced a couple of minor parts (thanks again Chris) and quartered the centre axle, which turned out to be ten times easier than I thought and has fixed the jerky running. The outcome is a really nice model, which I think adds a lot to the layout. It still needs some paintwork touched up and, like almost everything on Scotland Street, needs me to take a deep breath and do some weathering!

 

 

Meanwhile I'me working on and off on the Dingham auto-couplers and electromagentic de-couplers, which are slowly coming on. Plus I've been working on the coal-yard wall. I'll say more about that next time, but the hard part was actually working out how to position it. There are several conflicting issues to work through, to get the right compromise between modelling interest, looking realistic and the simple reality that it's a tiny space!

1. I want a small space (c. 10 mm) behind it, so I can slip in the tops of some coal-yard machinery, to make it clear the coal-yard extends behind the wall (which sits in front of the back-scene.

2. There needs to be a lane coming into the yard, past the wall, otherwise the coal-yard would have no vehicle entrance. Ideally I want this to be angled, so you can't see directly down it, which would create some back-scene challenges, but by angling it I lose too much scenic space, which I need t make the coal-yard look busy.

3. I want to include the coal lorry, as I think this will make the yard look busy. I had thought about cutting it in half, to fill the lane but as the lorry is simply die-cast Corgi the front of the cab isn't brilliant. The rear bed would be great, as it could be the scene of some loading activity, but would extend to far onto the board and obstruct the coal-yard line.

4. The wall itself needs to be high enough to provide a good back-drop, but not so high as to look wrong. I experimented with a scale 20 foot and that looked mad. 15 foot still looks too high but 12 foot seems to look "right".

 

I've decided to bite the bullet and include a head-on entrance lane and accept that some clever back-scene work is going to be required. The wall will have a slight angle in it, to make it slightly more interesting, but not enough to occupy too much space. This will give me about 10 mm behind the wall for most of it's length and nearer 20 mm at the left-hand end. (I now need to devise some tall coal-yard stuff to be visible over the top). I will have enough room for the lorry to sit parallel with the track, being loaded from the staithe, without it conflicting with the track.

 

 

The wall structure, made from 3mm balsa sheet, braced and topped with 6mm diameter dowel, to provide the semicircular top. This will later be coated in Polyfilla, as in my previous post.

 

 

To give a stiff joint where the wall is angled I half-cut through and bent a piece of aluminium plate and Araldite-ed it to the rear of the balsa.

 

 

The wall structure roughly in place

 

Arguably I should have sorted out all these issues before building the layout, but I find it easier to be able to shuffle things around and see how they look and making a cardboard model o the model first has never appealed somehow, so this slightly chaotic process is what I'm left with!

 

I have less than 5 months left to finish the layout, build a bigger "exhibition" fiddle yard and sort out more stock, if it's to be ready for the Tweeddale MRC show in March. Better get a move on!

 

David

[arran]

Ok folks, here's the latest version. I have adjusted the roof and chimney, to make it look less angled. It still isn't perfect, but I think it's now at a level where I can live with it (I have to - it sits right above my desk, where I see it every day).

 

2016-10-12 19.57.17.jpg

 

Alex, you're entirely right. You wouldn't believe how hard it is to get a picture of the rear of a tenement. All the pics on line are b&w or are of the front, so I had to get my photographer OH to take some for me. The trouble we found, wandering around the grubber bits of Edinburgh was that many aren't grubby any more! Those that are are the bits which are hard to get a square-on view of or are obscured by trees, mostly because they're at the back!

 

The upshot is that the pics I'm using aren't actually the rear of a tenement and are far too clean. Happily the front of this particular tenement looks quite rear-ish, when the front doors are obscured by the fence.

 

Grubbiness I will deal with as I did with the tenement over the tunnel: a thin spray of black paint.

 

And I thought pasting pics onto the backdrop would be the easy, relaxing bit of this layout :-)

 

David

HI All

 

Is there a way to change the look of the windows as some of them are PVC not a 1950s come 60s look in sure they would all have been Sash in case in the newtown area

 

Regards ASrran

[Astir648]

HI All

 

Is there a way to change the look of the windows as some of them are PVC not a 1950s come 60s look in sure they would all have been Sash in case in the newtown area

 

Regards ASrran

Hi ASrran.

 

That's a really good point. When it comes to realism I think everyone has their own things that they notice, but now you've pointed it out it will bug me every time I look! That section of the backdrop has still to be darkened down, which will make it a bit less apparent, but I may take a white ink pen and draw in some extra lines on the windows first.

 

Thanks,

 

David

[Astir648]

Hi all.

 

Time for an overdue update. I've been pottering about with several different overdue projects for the layout over the last couple of weeks and now I finally have some time to sit down and talk about them. 

 

The coal-yard wall is completed and you can see it in place below. It's a bit too bright but the weathering process will liberally cover it in dirt and coal dust so it should end up about right I hope. There's a small gap behind - hopefully enough to squeeze in the end of a coal-yard hopper, poking over the top. I'll have a play with some styrend and see if I can get it to look right - hopefully it will add a little extra depth. So much of this layout is about trying to create the illusion of space and depth.

 

 

In the same vein there's a 5mm space behind the sleeper fence and I may try and squeeze in a washing line, though it may look like it's crammed up against the fence (which of course it is), whereas it needs to look like it's on a drying green between the fence and the tenement. Not sure how that will work out, but it's worth a shot.

 

I'm keenly aware that this layout needs to be exhibition-ready for March and there's a lot to do. Never having exhibited before I'm sure there's something I'll forget - all hints and tips gratefully received!  I'll certainly need more stock so I've been adding to the wagon fleet and doing some long overdue fettling of existing wagons. Almost all of my kit-built wagons lacked transfers (except the Parkside Dundas pipe wagon - the supplied transfers went on like a dream). I've been using the lack of transfers as an excuse to put off weathering the wagons and my lack of skill with transfers to put off putting the transfers on! I decided this prevarication must end! I read somewhere (apologies - I can't remember where) that  Microsol and Microset helps to get waterslide transfers to fix cleanly onto models, especially when they don't have a gloss finish (mine are all matt). Well, I have to say that it worked fine and I don't know what I was worrying about. A drop of Microset on the model before applying the transfers seems to help them adhere very cleanly, followed by a thin coat of Microsol , to soften them and makes them conform to irregularities in the surface.

 

I've been using Old Time Workshop transfers from the former Modelmaster range and their advice that the shiny varnish can be removed with low tack masking tape after 24 hours didn't seem to work for me, but it's not too obtrusive. Before weathering I'll apply a think coat of matt varnish, which will hopefully do the job.

 

 

 

 

 

So now I am running out of excuses to avoid weathering the stock (and the incredibly bright and shiny Dapol class 08). I've invested in some Humbol weathering powders, as I'm not too keen on the air-brushed look (and I don't yet own an airbrush), but I'm open to any and all advice on the subject. I've seen some beautiful examples of weathering on here and in magazines, but a look through eBay shows some absolute horrors, so there are clearly plenty of things to get wrong!

 

My other advance on the wagon front is a Lowmac, built from a Majestic brass kit. It's an NBR wagon, which in truth was withdrawn in the late 1960s, so I'll have to pretend it soldiered in into the late 1970s and also think up an excuse for it's presence on the layout. I think this will be the delivery of some specialist piece of heavy machinery for the bonded warehouse/distillery, hidden under a tarpaulin. The reason for this slightly tortuous excuse for the wagon's presence is that it has some family importance and so I really want it to have a place. My partner's late father, Bill Peddie was a railwayman all his life and in the later part of his life was a leading member of the Scottish Railway Preservation Society and played a pivotal part in setting up the Bo'ness and Kinneil Railway. Sadly I never met him but a box of his O Gauge bits and pieces came our way, including this kit, which Bill must have bought some time before he died. Somehow it seems important to build it and have it on the railway.

 

 

Knowing that Bill had a reputation for taking pride in his work and always striving to achieve the best standards I felt a need to do the best I possibly could with this wagon and it has sat on the shelf for months, before I plucked up courage to build it. However it actually turned out to be a lovely kit to build - excellent quality etches and clear instructions, plus of course a Lowmac is a relatively simple wagon structurally.

 

The only changes I made were to replace the whitemetal wire-sprung buffers with some turned steel ones (only the shanks are present in the pics). The sprung wire would obstruct the Dingham couplings, which are my other change. The wagon has a very deep buffer beam, so the Dingham couplings will need a little fettling to fit.

 

 

 

 

Onwards and upwards.

 

David