Beginners OO 1950's Banff

[aardvark]

The windows progress.

 

Following @Sasquatch's lead from his Grim Up North thread, I tried scribing muntins into the clear glazing sheet.  I think Sasquatch does this by hand, but I used my Cameo.  Here's the result with two layers of window parts loosely placed on top.

 

 

Sasquatch then runs paint into the scribes, wiping off the excess.  That'll be tomorrow.

[Graham T]

That looks top-notch imho.

[Tortuga]

That is a nicely detailed window! How did you do the frame? (Can’t remember if you’ve already said)

[aardvark]

17 hours ago, Tortuga said:

That is a nicely detailed window! How did you do the frame? (Can’t remember if you’ve already said)

 

Thanks. Window parts were also cut on a Cameo from 10-thou plasticard.

 

Here's the result of filling the glazing bar scribe lines with paint.

 

[aardvark]

Probably the last post on windows.

 

Here's the first 24x12mm window painted, assembled, glazed and installed in a mock-up wall.

 

 

Looks pretty good.

 

The stone work is a passing resemblance to the prototype, although it could do with being blacker.  Perhaps I can touch this up with some weathering powders?  The lintel, sill and quoins also from the ScaleScenes TX48 squared rubble set are a bit too brown for my taste.  I will investigate alternatives, perhaps from another set. or having maybe just them printed lighter.

 

The wall, Tamiya 3mm foamboard, is a reasonable facsimile of the prototype wall thickness, and I'm happy with the way the window sits in the wall.

 

 

 

Hmmm - perhaps I should measure the individual quoin blocks from the picture: 5 quoin blocks print at 27mm high, which I just trimmed down to 24mm without any thought as to whether this was right.  I also guessed the size for the lintel and sill, so I should probably measure those too.

 

[aardvark]

A second incomplete mockup (right) along side the first.

 

 

The new wall paper is printed darker than before, which I think is an improvement.  The new quoins are grey rather than brown which I also think is an improvement, but need to be a lot darker.  Looks like a return trip to the long suffering print shop on Monday.

 

Dissenting opinions are welcome, although I appreciate that that might be difficult.  The images on my screen never seem to capture the colours that I think I'm seeing in real life, which does nothing to help my inability to choose colours.

 

Perhaps I need a new computer. Or a new camera.  Or maybe my cataracts are worse than I thought they were.

 

[Ian Smeeton]

I think that your stonework looks good.

 

Remember that a lot of buildings in the North East were built of Granite- Aberdeen in in its entirety.

 

Granite is to an extent, self-cleaning, so even in the dim dark days of steam trains and coal fires, the soot build-up will be nothing like that seen on, say, sandstone tenements in Glasgow or Edinburgh.

 

I would start with whichever print you prefer, and either using a wash, or powders, darken it up a little at a time.

 

I did quiz Tony Sims chairman of the 2mm scale association about his methods recently, and although he uses a Canon Inkjet printer and Original Inks rather than compatible ones, he quite happily uses washes to darken brick- and stonework.

 

Why don't you lay out some paper on scrap card and try it before committing to the completed window sections.

 

Otherwise, looking good.

 

Regards

 

Ian

[aardvark]

Thanks Ian.

 

Aberdeen granite is quite silver compared to Banff, although this could be more about the state of cleanliness than the quality of the stone. The station was almost completely demolished in 1974 (I think), but there are plenty of other buildings still standing in the area, although I am wary that existing buildings would have been cleaned with high-pressure cleaners that didn't exist in the 1950's.

 

During the night, I half-remembered something about 50% grey in relation to photography, so I tried another photo of the mock-ups against a sheet of grey card (no idea how close this might be to 50%, but it's closer than my outdoor furniture).

 

 

At the very least, this is closer to what my eye reckons, and only serves to future highlight the ridiculous colour of the new grey quoins, which I suspect are beyond being saving, no matter how dark I print them.  I'll have another look at some of the other ScaleScenes patterns.

 

I've taken to laser printing the ScaleScenes print-at-home texture sheets at the local serviced print shop.  Despite my comment about "long-suffering", they're actually quite welcoming, and I figure are likely to have their machines colour-adjusted, at least periodically.

 

As for washes and/or powders, I will have to take another bravery pill and have a go.

 

cheers

 

[Graham T]

If you're going to use washes on prints then I'd recommend sealing the paper with a matt spray first.

[aardvark]

22 hours ago, Graham T said:

If you're going to use washes on prints then I'd recommend sealing the paper with a matt spray first.

 

Now, there's a point.

 

Although I might suspect that laser-prints would be more resilient than inkjet, is it good practise to spray the assembled model prior to "weathering", be it wash or powder? Is it ok to spray acetate/clear plastic/glazing?

 

Probably need to spray afterwards as well?

[Graham T]

1 hour ago, aardvark said:

 

Now, there's a point.

 

Although I might suspect that laser-prints would be more resilient than inkjet, is it good practise to spray the assembled model prior to "weathering", be it wash or powder? Is it ok to spray acetate/clear plastic/glazing?

 

Probably need to spray afterwards as well?

 

I spray the printed pages before assembly, actually.  You could spray after building I'm sure, but I think you might need to mask the glazing.  I haven't tried it, but I suspect that matt varnish would cloud the glazing material.

 

I haven't sprayed after weathering.  I think there's little need to with buildings, unless you're going to be taking them on and off the layout for some reason.

[aardvark]

45 minutes ago, Graham T said:

...  unless you're going to be taking them on and off the layout for some reason.

 

Precisely what I expect to be doing.

[Graham T]

29 minutes ago, aardvark said:

 

Precisely what I expect to be doing.

 

Ah.  Then yes, I'd seal everything once completed, especially if using powders.

[brylonscamel]

On 29/05/2022 at 01:34, aardvark said:

Aberdeen granite is quite silver compared to Banff, although this could be more about the state of cleanliness than the quality of the stone. The station was almost completely demolished in 1974 (I think), but there are plenty of other buildings still standing in the area, although I am wary that existing buildings would have been cleaned with high-pressure cleaners that didn't exist in the 1950's

 

You may remember a chat we had about the cottages on the approach to Banff station a while ago.

Aberdeenshire granite remains one of my preoccupations!

I have stared at a fair bit of it in recent years and travelled by bike on the 'Buchan & Formartine Way' trackbed, adding a trip out to Portsoy, Banff etc.

The soot and dirt that  accumulates on porous or textured stone seems less inclined to stain or adhere to granite. Also, coastal areas weren't troubled by the heavy chimney smoke that polluted city air. 

I also noted that 'rural' granite masonry has all sorts of variations in colour and tone, less consistent than the dressed grey granite you see in much civic architecture. I suspect the huge quarries like Rubislaw offered a greater consistency of shiny grey stone and why it was prized as a building material.

On my travels I noticed that buildings further north had a lot of red amongst the greys and know that quarries existed at Peterhead, known for this colour in the material.

A recent trawl of Google drew these examples ...

[brylonscamel]

.. also note the large block sizes  combined with small infill stones and 'pinnings' from this classic vintage photo of Banff.

The use of a broad spread of mortar, flush with the surface also seems typical of the area ..

 

 

Edited May 30, 2022 by brylonscamel

[brylonscamel]

PS I hope this is useful!

Cheers,

Brian

[Michael Hodgson]

1 hour ago, brylonscamel said:

That architecture is just so typical of the whole of that part of Scotland, the traditional small cottages with limited space in the upper storey with the sloping rooves encroaching.  Would have looked much the same when the railway first arrived.  The glazing in the gables look recent though and that dates the photo to the modern era, as do the pallets in the bottom right photo.

[brylonscamel]

28 minutes ago, Michael Hodgson said:

The glazing in the gables look recent though and that dates the photo to the modern era, as do the pallets in the bottom right photo.

You are right Michael, they are all recent images of much older buildings.

[aardvark]

Hello Brian: thanks for your comments, and yes, I recall our conversation about the cottages.

 

In comparison with your images, here's a crop of an early 1960's RCTS image that I think is reasonably colour-faithful:

 

 

I'd love to have the artistic ability (or the purse) to create a photo-realistic of Banff, but that's not going to happen, at least not in this lifetime.  I did fail Art in kindergarten.

 

And here's a photo I've taken of the ScaleScenes papers I'm working with.

 

 

Top to bottom: my preferred TX48 Squared Rubble dark-print, TX47 Coarsed Rubble, TX48 normal.  As before, the TX48 dark seems closest colour-wise, despite having incorrect stone size, shape and pointing.

 

I'm still somewhat puzzled about what to do for quoins.  Here's a picture of the best option against the TX48 dark.

 

 

Looking at this, I might try printing the quoin sheet darker too.

 

Another option is not to bother with quoins at all.  As you can see from the prototype photo, the quoins are not at all obvious, and the lintels and sills only barely so.  The RES03 cottage that I put together earlier has no quoins, and to be honest, I've only just noticed that.

 

Of course, it probably doesn't matter: I should just pick one and get on with things.  I elect to use papers so I didn't get stuck

hand-painting stonework.  Whilst I take pleasure in doing the best I can with my modelling, there is a limit to what "the best I can" is.

 

Onwards and upwards. Or somesuch.

 

[aardvark]

I've stopped complaining, bitten the bullet, and started manually restoring images that I've previously posted that were lost in The Great Crash.

 

I recently met a man with a collection of N-scale rolling stock. I think he buys what he likes the look of, and I'm unsure whether he has the interest or drive to construct a layout, but in the interests of being social (a rare thing), I thought to point him at this thread, but there seemed little point when there are no photos.  Second thought was to point him at RMWeb, but ditto.

 

I've got "only" got 12 6 pages to go, but it's a tedious chore, especially a number of my images are called image.png, which does nothing to identify what the original image was.  Since I've got such a short thread, I may well restore all of the images, not just those since May 2021 (or whatever the date was), as I see no progress in the images being recovered by RMWeb. My recovered image count seems stuck at 30, and has been for some weeks now.

 

They did say something about "indeterminate", which includes the possibility of never, I suppose.

 

Edited June 5, 2022 by aardvark

[Sasquatch]

Way overdue finding this thread mate. 

It's all looking grand so far and when I catch a break from the bottomless "to do list" I'll have a proper read through.

 

Regards Shaun

[aardvark]

I follow several threads where new posts are made on a weekly or even daily basis.  I've tip my hat to their productivity: not something that I'm capable of.

 

RMWeb tells me that it's taken me 3 weeks to produce 10 windows for the engine shed, plus two smaller ones for the attached bothy. I have no idea where the time goes.

 

 

The window on the left is the 24x12mm engine shed window as before; the one in the middle is an 18x8mm window for the bothy.  I didn't like this one: it just seemed chunky, so I tried again with a finer variant on the right.

 

I'm also looking for something to read.  Previously, I would read RMWeb layout threads whilst "watching" the programs Mrs Aardvark had selected for the evenings entertainment, but the loss of images makes this considerably less edifying.  I switched to WesternThunder, but missing images there suggests a similar calamity around 2020.  Any suggestions?

 

[St Enodoc]

2 minutes ago, aardvark said:

I'm also looking for something to read.

 

Any suggestions?

A book?

[aardvark]

1 minute ago, St Enodoc said:

A book?

 

I suppose I asked for that.

 

[aardvark]

Recently, we had house guests that actually wanted to see the layout. This is a rarity.  So, I got the train set layout out of storage, and put it together, to discover that one of the turnouts wasn't working.

 

Yesterday, I dragged the offending baseboard out for some remedial action.  Investigation showed that there was an open circuit in one of the servo extension cables.

 

 

The extension cables are segments of rainbow cable with plugs at one end and corresponding sockets at the other. I buzzed out a replacement, installed it, and it too failed. Weird.

 

Shaking my head, I buzzed out a second replacement, and it showed an open circuit before being installed, so a third was checked, installed, and failed.

 

I'm beginning to wonder whether I have a short somewhere that is frying the cables with excess current.  My experience is that such a failure mode normally makes the cable insulation smoke, or at least discolour.  However, this theory was discounted by the fact that the servo and associated circuitry worked fine when the servo was connected directly, without any extension cable. Moreover, it was different conductors in the various cables that were going open circuit.

 

I took a break for a while, and returned to recover 3 individual wires from the failed cables that were still functional. And everything is hunky dory again.

 

My best theory is that this is typical eBay cheapo stuff, and that I got what I paid for. I suspect some of the individual cores in the multicore wire were broken in their manufacture, and that the 40mA or so drawn by the servos was enough to fry the remaining core/cores.  At least, that's the best theory I have. I'm open to suggestions.

 

Edited July 6, 2022 by aardvark
proof-reading always improves after I click "Submit".