Scotland Street

[Astir648]

Opinions/suggestions please!

 

Work is progressing nicely on the bonded warehouse. The masonry is almost complete and I have the windows and window grilles ready for painting before going in. I experimented with John's suggestion of painting the mullions with dilute polyfilla to create a stone effect and that works well (thanks John). Now I need to make some decisions about how to represent various aspects of the original building and I could use some advice!

 

1. Do I model the hoist box or leave it off? The earliest picture I have (labelled as 1966, but probably earlier) show a hoist box in place. It's above the right-hand platform but obstructed by the canopy, so it was presumably disused even then. A later picture shows it having been removed. Strictly speaking, as I am modelling the building in the 1970's I should leave it off. I rather like the character it adds to the building, so I'm tempted to model it (in a disused state), but will the fact that it will be above a canopy make it look odd?

 

This pic shows the hoist box and is supposed to have been taken in 1966. I suspect it's actually earlier as the 1962 railtour picture below shows the box. missing.

 

1962 railtour

 

1969, after the rails were lifted.

 

2. I don't have a picture which shows the structure of the platforms. The end on pic appears to show stone steps (I think?) at the platform ends, but not the platform itself. I'm thinking of modelling the platform edge as masonry matching the walls of the building and surface as flagstones, but I wonder if a timber platform would have been used with stone steps? If so that might look more appropriate to the building?

 

Close-up of the canopy and steps

 

3. I have a couple of simple laser-cut canopy kits from LCUT Creative, which I may use, but they have a planked surface to the top of the canopy, which I'm not sure about. My gut feeling is that the canopies would probably have had tar-paper over them, but that's little more than a guess and the photographs I have don't help. Again, any suggestions as to what would like right on a building of this type and era would be welcome!

 

4. I also need to decide whether to use proprietary slate sheets or make something myself. Scots slate is quite different to the Welsh slate which ready-made material I've seen represents - it's thicker and tends to have a shorter overlap and rough, weathered edges (see below). It would be a lot of work to replicate that and I'm just not sure how much impact it will have on the overall look of the building. I spend a lot of my professional life looking at roof structures which might have bats roosting in them, so I may be overly focused on what is actually a very fine detail?

 

 

 

Thanks in advance!

 

David

Edited January 17, 2016 by Astir648

[BG John]

3. I have a couple of simple laser-cut canopy kits from LCUT Creative, which I may use, but they have a planked surface to the top of the canopy, which I'm not sure about. My gut feeling is that the canopies would probably have had tar-paper over them, but that's little more than a guess and the photographs I have don't help. Again, any suggestions as to what would like right on a building of this type and era would be welcome!

 

This may not be the canopy you're using, as I think it's only available in 4mm so far, but it might be helpful. Being almost incapable of building anything according to the instructions, this is what I've done with mine. I turned the roof inside out, so the boarding is underneath. It's going on the front of the Scalescenes Low-relief Factory, so the pillar spacing had to be changed to fit round the doors. I cut a piece of 200gsm card the full length of my three kits, and stuck it to the top of the roof, then covered it with Scalescenes Corrugated Iron, before I added the trusses etc. So I had a one piece roof to work with, rather than three separate parts. I'm planning to add some square section wood the thickness of the trusses to the bottom of each truss that will fit into holes in the building at one end, and be supported on the L-Cut pillars at the other, to make a canopy over the platform and siding.

 

 

Edited January 17, 2016 by BG John

[John R Smith]

Hello David

 

The structure housing the hoist is called a "luccam", and they are common on mills and warehouses of this era. I think you should keep it, as your layout is inspired by Scotland Street rather than a slavish copy of it. I'm not sure about the platform in front, but it could be timber or masonry and still in keeping. I like your pictures of the slate roofs, which are oozing with character. As you say these Scottish slates are rugged beasts, far more chunky than Welsh or even Delabole. I think it would be worth having a go at representing them, as in 7mm these differences do start to show up.

 

I'm glad the Polyfilla trick worked out!

 

John

[Simond]

David,

 

I wonder whether the hoist box (is it a "Lucam"?) might have worked through the canopy? This would allow both to coexist, even if hoisting had stopped by the date you are modelling. Hopefully this might provide the (un)necessary excuse to invoke rule 1.

 

I'd also hazard an opinion that the steps at the end of the loading platform are wooden, open tread.

 

The roof is the most obvious part of any model structure, unless your baseboards are so high that you have to climb on a box to work on the layout. I therefore think that you probably do want to go for a very typical Scottish, thick, rough-edged slate. I have no suggestions as to how you might achieve this!

 

Best

Simon

[Simond]

John, posts crossed, lucam, luccam, apparently both spellings are acceptable!

 

Best

Simon

[Astir648]

Many thanks for the comments - all very useful!

 

The luccam (a fabulous addition to my vocabulary) is too nice a feature to miss out, so I think I'll have a go at including it. I'm intrigued at the idea of it operating through the canopy. I wonder if they might have had some sort of trapdoor in the canopy to keep the rain out below when it wasn't in use? 

 

Simon, I think you're right about the steps being timber. The close-up pic I used above is rather better than the previous one I'd looked at and you can see the gaps in between. There are plenty of images of timber goods platforms around, so that should be easy to recreate.

 

John, that's a nice bit of kit bashing. The LCUT canopy kit I have is similar but simpler. It's intended to be part of their rural-style goods shed kit. I'm not convinced that the crevices between the planks of wide enough to look effective in 7mm, but I think I'll fabricate something instead.

 

The more I think about it the more I want want to replicate the Scots slates. As an aside a professional client of mine is restoring a ruined house in the Scottish borders and is having to import slates from Spain as Scots slate isn't quarried any longer and flat, purplish Welsh slates wouldn't look right. I'm inclined to agree! How to do it is the next problem. Although the slates are thicker than Welsh ones they are still only about 3-4cm thick, which is under 1mm, so creating a weathered edge would be fiddly. The narrow spacing between rows and the dark colour are easy enough to recreate though - perhaps that will be sufficient to create the "look".

 

The other difficulty is the need to create an optical illusion with the depth of the roof. The building is cut off at the apex of the roof, and should be (at a guess) 10-15' deep at that point but is actually only a scale 3' deep. Thus far it looks ok, but I need to create a realistic roof surface without drawing attention to the abuse of scale.

 

Time for some experimenting methinks!

 

David

[John R Smith]

Many thanks for the comments - all very useful!

 

The luccam (a fabulous addition to my vocabulary) is too nice a feature to miss out, so I think I'll have a go at including it. I'm intrigued at the idea of it operating through the canopy. I wonder if they might have had some sort of trapdoor in the canopy to keep the rain out below when it wasn't in use? 

 

 

 

David

 

The way these hoists usually worked was as a sack hoist (in mills and breweries etc). Perhaps sacks are not appropriate for your application, but the hoist when let down had a rope with a loop of chain on the end. You pop this chain over the neck of the sack and as the rope lifts the chain it locks in place and up she goes. When you let the hoist down, as the sack hits the ground the chain slacks and you just slip it off. Now, when you have such a hoist indoors and it has to go up through various floor levels, the arrangement is to have double-door traps in the floor which have a circular cutout in the centre for the rope. The rope and chain go down through the cutout without having to open the trap, and on the way back up the sack simply pushes the trapdoors up, which then fall back down into position again after the sack has passed. Such an arrangement might possibly work through your canopy.

 

These old millwrights and carpenters knew a thing or two about dealing with heavy loads!

 

John

[Astir648]

I've seen that in action at a restored mill in Northumberland. A great example of simple yet effective engineering. A working model of that would be quite a thing!

I'm not sure if my prototype would have worked that way as, being a bonded warehouse, barrels would need to be lifted and they would later need to be lowered out again. This assumes that the building was a bonded warehouse when the luccam was in use - the building may have had a change of use.

David

Edited January 22, 2016 by Astir648

[Astir648]

Some more progress :-)

 

The bonded warehouse windows, grilles and mullions are all painted and in place and I'm rather pleased with the effect. There are one or two bits of fettling to be done and of course the whole thing needs weathering once its complete. The windows are painted a dark matt blue acrylic, though you can barely see them through the grilles. The grilles were painted a dark rust colour, then dry-brushed a mid grey, to represent the remnants of paint. I was going to glaze the windows, but it doesn't seem necessary as the glazing won't be visible.

 

I've also put the roof structure in place, made from styrene sheet, ready to receive slates, once I've decided how I'm going to make them.

 

 

 

The two warehouse doors and platforms are next. First I need to tone down the stark black paint of the interior, probably to a more muted grey. There is only about 10mm of depth so my plan is to model the doors partly open, or maybe one pair close and one partly open. 

 

I have also done some work on the coalyard. A set of Skytrex resin coal staithes have been painted and I'm quite pleased with the result. The sleepers have a slightly satin finish to them, which I'll need to tone down with some matt varnish. How to position them is a problem. I wondered about placing them the other way around (see the picture below), so that wagon doors could open onto the tops of the sleepers, for shovelling coal straight in. However they are too high and the uneven tops of the sleepers makes me think they look better the other way round. By the 1970s most coal was shovelled from the wagon straight into sacks and features like this would have been used for stockpiling, so I think it's probably ok as it is.

 

 

A Skytrex resin office has been built, moved around a lot and then reduced to a half-relief building. This required comprehensively re-modelling one of the walls to put the door in the front (modelled) half and a similar amendment to the roof, to put the chimney back into the model. I'm quite pleased with the result.

 

I have also been reading about Dock Green on RMWeb, which has started me thinking. Dock Green is fabulously three-dimensional, reflecting the reality of buildings squeezed into a inner-city industrial area, with overbridges and visual divisons. That's the sort of thing I want to do with Scotland Street and the two ends of the layout are looking promising. However the middle is rather flat and empty so far. I was planning to build a second warehouse/industrial building, at the rear, probably related to the distillery. However I'm now wondering about a diagonal overbridge, crossing the layout. This would lift the height of the middle section and break up the views of the layout. It may also help disguise the short length of the yard. Neither of of the two prototype yards had anything like this and I wonder if it might might make the layout too cluttered. It's something for me to grind up in the old thinking mill!

 

David

Edited January 22, 2016 by Astir648

[Simond]

David

 

For what it's worth, I would not go to an un-prototypical arrangement, in a case like yours where you are modelling a real location, unless it was the only way out...

 

Please, get other opinions too.

 

Best

Simon

[Astir648]

Oh bum!

 

I've just discovered that the first floor of the bonded warehouse is slightly too low  and that the platform canopies will be awfully close to the roofs of box vans :-(  The building is too far advanced to go back to the beginning. I can move the canopy up slightly, so that they foul the windows and pretend that this is because they were a later installation, but that will look awful. Instead I'm slimming down the height of the canopies in the hope that I can get a reasonable-looking compromise. Failing that I may reduce the depth of them, so they cover only the platform and resolve the problem that way, though this wion't mathc the prototype. Whichever the solution I end up going with it's very frustrating!

 

Hey ho, progress has been made in other areas. The platforms are built and in place, though still to be painted. I may add angled braces later. I didn't use the LCut kits for the canopies, so I snaffled the planked sections from them to use as the platform surface and that seems to look ok. I've also painted the warehouse doors, ready for fitting.These are quite nice resin mouldings from Highland Castings (via the incredibly useful Invertrains website). They have one fault, which is that the "door within a door" (as ever I'm sure there's a proper name for this feature, but I don't know it!) looks nice on the front, but is entirely missing from the rear! Happily the rear won't be visible, so this Narnia-esque feature won't be a problem.

 

 

I'm really enjoying scratch-building the buildings for this layout. The only previous experience I have of creating buildings without using kits is on my part-finished GN15 narrow-gauge layout, based on the railway cartoons of Rowland Emett. These are build of balsa and scribed polyfilla and are very liberating to make, as precision simply doesn't enter into it. The cartoons are  rather vertically stretched and Emett rarely drew a feature the same way twice. Plus the cartoons are whimsical so nothing needs to look like it could really function! With Scotland Street's buildings, having to pay close regard to a prototype and to realism is an interesting challenge.

 

 

I have decided to abandon the notion of an over-bridge in the centre of the layout (I think you're right Simon). I'm far from sure it would work and it would draw me away from the original yards I am trying to recreate. Instead I will probably add taller buildings in the gap at the rear and hopefully fill the void that way. St Leonard's bonded warehouse was abutted by a narrow four-storey building with some interesting chimneys and pipework. Presumably it's something distillery-ish and I think it will be a nice protoype and will fit in well. There should then be room to include the rear of an Edinburgh tenement block, which will help to capture the sooty urban Edinburgh feel I'm looking for.

 

David

 

 

[Simond]

Hi David

 

Might be a horrid job to do, but could you solve your problem by a horizontal cut between the lower & upper Windows, and insertion of a course of stones? It might well be largely hidden by the canopy.

 

Or easier, a row of stones below the lower windows (although this might be an issue with door sill heights)

 

HTH

Simon

[peter220950]

Oh bum!

 

I've just discovered that the first floor of the bonded warehouse is slightly too low  and that the platform canopies will be awfully close to the roofs of box vans :-(  The building is too far advanced to go back to the beginning. I can move the canopy up slightly, so that they foul the windows and pretend that this is because they were a later installation, but that will look awful. Instead I'm slimming down the height of the canopies in the hope that I can get a reasonable-looking compromise. Failing that I may reduce the depth of them, so they cover only the platform and resolve the problem that way, though this wion't mathc the prototype. Whichever the solution I end up going with it's very frustrating!

 

 

David

 

 

Hi David,

 

I'm sure there are many ways around this, I had similar problems with the size of plastic sheet on my layout, in the end I just added a further layer of brickwork to the bottom of two of the buildings to lift them by about 20mm, disguising it by making it a thicknessing of the wall for strength. A sloping coping along the top hides it all nicely.

 

 

 

You might need to lower the doorway thresholds, but the loading decks should cover up any problems there.

 

And I'm still thinking about the roof slate problem, can't think of a suitable solution yet but as we've currently got a 10 month old grandchild in residence I will doubtless have a lot of time to think about it when he's keeping me awake tonight!

 

Peter

 

 

EDIT - One Hour later.............

 

 

First pass at the roof tile problem,

 

I was thinking along the lines of individual tiles from something that would crack like slate, but having tried breaking glass cover slips, plastic card, thin balsa, and resin, I wasn’t finding a decent solution.

 

I then had a play with a piece of board I am experimenting with for the paved areas of my loading dock.

 

 

On a section of the untreated material around the perimeter I think I have got close to what I would be happy with after only a couple of minutes. It might be worth a try (Ignore the punched out sets, its just the bit at the edge that was left plain that I’m talking about, I only had about 10mm width to play with, and it will take a couple of days to get another sample prepared):-

 

Cover the roof with a layer of PVA then while still wet thumb a thin layer of DAS modelling clay onto the roof, smooth it with a wet spatula and leave to dry. (This is the ‘standard’ Gordon/Maggie Gravett, and Giles Favell starting point for stone walls and pavings, and what I was trialling)

 

Mark the horizontal lines onto the roof, then with a metal straightedge run a craft knife along the blade, at an angle, to create the step in level and a sloping plane. (After a few rows you end up with a surface that looks like it’s been rubbed with a saw blade, or mini North light roof profiles)

 

 

 

Then scribe the vertical tile joints in, like a brick bond, with the sharp point of a craft knife blade.

 

 

Brush out the dust and it seems to look quite good, certainly worth spending a couple of quid on DAS to try? And it’s likely to be less hassle than individual slates. The close ups are a bit cruel and the splash of black was just to highlight the slates, a bit of brown and green would help no end.

 

 

I would certainly spend some time on the roof, as Simon notes it’s the bit that you see from a normal viewing point.

 

I will keep an eye out for obvious alternatives but think I would continue to experiment with this process if I needed to replicate that type of slate. If you think it might be a goer let me know and I will lay a panel of DAS down and try a bigger area.

 

Peter.

Edited January 25, 2016 by peter220950

[Simond]

Peter,

 

I think that method shows considerable promise

 

Nice one!

Simon

[Astir648]

Well, you take your eye off RMWeb for a day and it's full of brilliant ideas! 

 

Peter - that looks ideal, thanks very much for doing that. I'd bought some thick grey card to experiment with, but I wasn't feeling very hopeful about it. I read somewhere that the best effects are achieved by using a raw material for the model that's similar to the original material, balsa etc for wood, gritty type materials like DAS or Polyfilla for masonry and so on. This has always seemed to make sense to me. So your technique looks a much more promising prospect. I'd been hoping to use scribed DAS for the stone setts around the track, but the location of the railway above my desk makes it hard to spend long periods working over it. The slates of course can be built away from the layout, so I'm looking forward to giving this a try.

 

As far as the height of the building is concerned, the rather low height of the lower windows means adding a little height at the base and then adjusting the doorways/platforms should work quite well - thanks again! Simon's suggestion of a "cut and shut" part way up would have maintained the height of the lower windows more accurately, but the level of the courses in the Redutex masonry wavers a little, so I'm not sure I could do that without messing up the appearance of the masonry too much.

 

I don't think I've described the semaphore signal on the yard exit road. I have created a fiction that a main line junction is just around the corner, with the sight-line blocked by the bridging building. Thus the signalling engineer positioned it in front of the building, giving me the excuse to have a working signal on the layout! It probably needs a sighting board as it sits in front of a building.

 

 

(Hmm. Not quite sure why this is showing sideways...sorry!)

 

I built the signal from a Scale Signal Supply kit. The etchings and castings in this were excellent, but the instructions were very poor and it took a lot of research to work out how to create a reasonably realistic signal. I guess next time will be easier, now I have a better understanding of singal structures and mechanisms.

 

It is motorised with a servo below the board, controlled by a Heathcote Electronics bouncing semaphore controller board, A removable panel on the baseboard gives access to this as there are six separately adjustable parameters. I've put a brief video of it in action here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/m7rmjnw8as49mcn/20160126_192434.mp4?dl=0

 

 

David

Edited January 27, 2016 by Astir648

[peter220950]

Just a quick update on the roof slate experiment, I put a layer of DAS onto foamboard, which had dried out by this afternoon, and marked it out with a pencil about 5mm apart

 

 

Then, in a slight change of process, I ran a file along a steel rule, at a slight angle, to make the steps

 

 

 

The vertical joints were than scratched in with the sharp point of a scalpel

 

 

and a quick wash with dirty thinners brings out the detail

 

 

I think it's worth a try, I shall certainly store it away for another day, as all the roof's on my current effort are finished, (I think). Hope it may be of help.

 

Peter

 

 

 

 

[Astir648]

Thanks Peter - that looks much closer to the real thing than any of the commercial products I've seen.

 

I'm almost finished adding two scale feet to the bottom of the building. The goods platforms are done and canopies are almost complete. I just need to put the luccam in and then I'll be ready to finish it off with the roof.

 

A realistic and well made roof will, I think add a lot to the building. Hopefully it will distract from some imperfections in the redutex masonry. This material looks good but the 7mm material does not bend easily (possibly better in the smaller scales as the material is thinner)

 

Looking forward to some slate-making!

 

David

Edited January 29, 2016 by Astir648

[peter220950]

Bearing in mind that my trial was only a play for half an hour this afternoon, I suspect a bit more care and you will get a better result, particularly if you get the dimesions right, I was only guessing.

 

There's also scope to get more uneveness in the bottom edges of the tiles by fettling them with a blad. - I certainly feel it's worth a trial piece, as these things look different on camera to real life.

 

Hope to see the results soon,

 

Peter

[Astir648]

Well, the first attempt at making slates from modelling clay ended with a score of roof one, me nil!

 

 

I used fairly stiff plasticard (sanded to key the PVA) as a base and it clearly doesn't have the rigidity of the foam-board Peter was using for his setts. I need something thinner than foam-board as the slates need to overhang the wall-head without being too thick. It looks like I either need a stiffer material or to brace the plasticard.

 

The clay has also cracked. This would probably have been worse if the plasticard hadn't curled. I used Hibbycraft's own brand of modelling clay, rather than the DAS Peter used, so perhaps I need to invest in the real thing!

 

Onwards and upwards...

 

David

[Giles]

Modelling Clay shrinks like anything! Das less so.... Also, structures can be braced to withstand the curling (although the surface material may still crack and break off).

 

I always put a wipe of PVA over whatever material I am using, so the Das, clay or cement is glued down. This of course still leaves cracking with shrinkage, but gaps can be files with more of the same.

 

The other trick is to 'balance' the board, so you put a layer of Das, clay or cement on the reverse side as well. This may sound silly, but it works, and boards remain straight. This is what I have done on the buildings for Denton Brook (using fire cement)

 

I've been using Hobby crafts modelling clay for the setts on Denton Brook, as I like the texture, so I feel for you regarding the shrinkage (.....the gaps I've filled!) Daz doesn't do it for me in most instances as it's fibrous, appearing to be paper-based (do correct me if I'm wrong!)

 

Good luck,

 

Giles

[John R Smith]

Hello David

 

I must admit I am very dubious about the modelling clay methodology for representing roofing slates. If I were you, I would go back to first principles. Measure the thickness of the real Edinburgh slates you are striving to represent, then convert this to 1:43 scale. You may well find it is a lot thinner than you might think, in O Gauge. Then select an appropriate material of the correct scale thickness and make some test strips of cut slates in the standard fashion. Lay a few of them up and see how it looks. If all is well, then the problem you have is to represent the spalling at the edges which is so characteristic of your example. I would think that if you made the slate strips in plasticard you could bevel the exposed edge of each slate using lino-cutting tools (obtainable cheaply from most art shops). It would be a tedious job, of course, but with a 'V' tool you could bevel each vertical joint quite quickly, and the horizontal lower edge of the slates could be bevelled in one pass.

 

Perhaps it is worth a try !

 

P.S. On further thought, perhaps it would be better to use good old-fashioned shellacked card for the slate strips. This will at least give a bit of texture, unlike plasticard, but will still cut cleanly with the bevelling tool. And it takes paint beautifully.

 

John

Edited February 3, 2016 by John R Smith

[Astir648]

As it happens I'm experimenting with thick grey card as an alternative material for the slates, though I had to go and look up shellac...

 

"Shellac is a resin secreted by the female lac bug, on trees in the forests of India and Thailand. It is processed and sold as dry flakes and dissolved in ethanol to make liquid shellac, which is used as a brush-on colorant,food glaze and wood finish."

 

How many lac bugs does it take to make a roof... :-)

 

I wonder what the purpose of shellacking card slates was? Card takes paint reasonably well I would have thought?

 

David

Edited February 3, 2016 by Astir648

[John R Smith]

As it happens I'm experimenting with thick grey card as an alternative material for the slates, though I had to go and look up shellac...

 

"Shellac is a resin secreted by the female lac bug, on trees in the forests of India and Thailand. It is processed and sold as dry flakes and dissolved in ethanol to make liquid shellac, which is used as a brush-on colorant,food glaze and wood finish."

 

How many lac bugs does it take to make a roof... :-)

 

I wonder what the purpose of shellacking card slates was? Card takes paint reasonably well I would have thought?

 

David

 

 

Hmm. Make sure that your thick grey card is not too thick. A micrometer is a model-maker's best friend . . .  Shellac is wonderful stuff. I always have some around and it transforms card into just about the finest material you can imagine, damp-proof, warp-resistant, cuts superbly with no fraying or fluffing - just like plastic really, except that it has a much nicer texture and "tooth". You purchase the shellac flakes and dissolve them in methylated spirit - I have some made up in a bottle which I prepared 30 years ago and it is still absolutely fine. Once you have used shellacked card you will never use untreated stuff again . . . and use the best card, of course. For the thicker stuff, artist's mounting board is the business!

 

John

Edited February 3, 2016 by John R Smith

[Ben Alder]

Shellac -that takes me back to my youth, making card wagons using ERG parts and working from E R Grey's book on cardboard rolling stock - crude by today's standards, but setting the foundations of a lifetimes model making. It has dropped out of favour due to the rise of plasticard, but as said, it transforms card, and I would agree that it should be applied to all card structures.

[BG John]

It's something I'm going to start experimenting with. Rather than mixing up the crystals, I was recommended to try knotting. It's in quite a few different products. This is what was suggested, and I bought, but haven't tried yet.