Scratch-built card and styrene structures (based on real buildings around London Bridge)

[Jim Martin]

13 minutes ago, grahame said:

 

They're called something like Fretcetera. I was recently looking at the etched ladders and scaffolding they do. Unfortunately not quite what I was after.

 

 

 

I knew it was a pun of some sort, but I couldn't remember what!

[Joseph_Pestell]

2 hours ago, grahame said:

 

They're called something like Fretcetera. I was recently looking at the etched ladders and scaffolding they do. Unfortunately not quite what I was after.

 

 

 

 

Sorry to hear that. I drew those, many years ago now. :-)

 

Yes, they are more domestic scale ladders (including window cleaners') and mobile scaff tower rather than the sort of scaff you would need.

[grahame]

I've not done any modelling recently but today I've taken a few snaps for an article I'm writing for 'N Gauge Now' about London buses in N gauge. Here's one of them:

 

[acg5324]

20 minutes ago, grahame said:

I've not done any modelling recently but today I've taken a few snaps for an article I'm writing for 'N Gauge Now' about London buses in N gauge. Here's one of them:

 

Ha ha......I’ve just written one for the London buses on Kensington Olympia. Not sent it in yet. I assume it’s for the NGS mag?

[grahame]

16 minutes ago, acg5324 said:

Ha ha......I’ve just written one for the London buses on Kensington Olympia. Not sent it in yet. I assume it’s for the NGS mag?

 

My article is not for the 'NGS Journal' but for 'N Gauge Now'. Howard, the editor/proprietor, asked if I could write some articles for him. 

 

 

[acg5324]

That’s good, didn’t want to clash. Would photos of the RML, Leyland Nationals and looky-likey Metrobus be of any use for you?

Edited June 18, 2020 by acg5324

[grahame]

Yesterday I received a delivery of a recent Shapeways order I placed. Today I've given some of it a good clean with cream cleaner and a toothbrush and then when dry a quick squirt of primer to see the details:

 

 

There's pallet loads of cinder/breeze/celcon/acrylic resin blocks, strap banded cubes of bricks (as suggested and designed by Ian) and a cement mixer with pile of cement bags and pallet. They should certainly help with appropriate detailing of the construction site when I've painted them.   

 

1 hour ago, acg5324 said:

That’s good, didn’t want to clash. Would photos of the RML, Leyland Nationals and looky-likey Metrobus be of any use for you?

 

Yep, they'd help and be welcome.

 

 

[acg5324]

9 hours ago, grahame said:

Yesterday I received a delivery of a recent Shapeways order I placed. Today I've given some of it a good clean with cream cleaner and a toothbrush and then when dry a quick squirt of primer to see the details:

 

 

There's pallet loads of cinder/breeze/celcon/acrylic resin blocks, strap banded cubes of bricks (as suggested and designed by Ian) and a cement mixer with pile of cement bags and pallet. They should certainly help with appropriate detailing of the construction site when I've painted them.   

 

 

Yep, they'd help and be welcome.

 

 

No problem. I’ll get some photos done with the camera rather than iPad.

[acg5324]

Have you seen these items from Red Imp on eBay 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/333294348863

Quite a few items of construction stuff too.

[grahame]

4 hours ago, acg5324 said:

Have you seen these items from Red Imp on eBay 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/333294348863

Quite a few items of construction stuff too.

 

I've still got loads of pallets from a pack of Ratio ones (that you assemble from two parts) that I bought over 20 years ago. And I've plenty of skips (the fold up etched brass ones from BHE which look a lot better than cast resin/plastic or 3D printed ones) but his range does seem to have expanded a lot these days. So I've ordered a pack of his air-con units (I seem to need lots of those for buildings) to see what quality they are.

 

 

[Ramrig]

14 hours ago, grahame said:

Yesterday I received a delivery of a recent Shapeways order I placed. Today I've given some of it a good clean with cream cleaner and a toothbrush and then when dry a quick squirt of primer to see the details:

 

 

 

 

 

 

What is the cream cleaner you use please? I've a 009 body arrived from Shapeways I will need to clean and I've not worked with 3D printing before.

Steve

[grahame]

46 minutes ago, Ramrig said:

 

What is the cream cleaner you use please? I've a 009 body arrived from Shapeways I will need to clean and I've not worked with 3D printing before.

Steve

 

I used the cream cleaner that was in the kitchen - a normal domestic household cleaner. I'm not sure of the brand but I don't think it matters. However, the advice is not to use washing-up liquid detergent as that usually contains glycerine (to make the crockery shine) and lanolin (to keep your hands soft and counter the detergent drying them out), neither of which will help with paint adherence. But equally important is to thoroughly rinse the models whatever is used to clean them.

 

[Ramrig]

Thanks for that. I’ll go and have a dig and see what’s under the sink. I’m sure we had some Jif or Cif  or what ever it’s called now. If not a trip to Tesco’s will be required at some point. 

[grahame]

I've started to get some paint on some of the building site details. These are tiny models - smaller than a small finger nail - so apologies for the messy finish although I was trying to replicate well used and scruffy site equipment:

 

 

As you can see I've now got three cement mixers. The centre one is a white metal kit (Thameshead Transport Models I think) that I've had for a while. The other two are 3D printed efforts recently acquired - one from Shapeways and one from DM Models. I've added new larger wheels to one of them as they both had tiny things (as can be seen on the other) which I'd guess would make it hard to manoeuvre over a building site. If I can find something suitable I'll probably upgrade   the other as well.

 

Next to paint is the steel strap bound brick cubes - that's going to be tricky on two counts. One is to make the bricks look individual and secondly will be painting the very fine straps. And I could do with some N gauge wheelbarrows . . . . 

 

 

 

 

 

[alangdance]

try severn models they do a tool set including wheel barrows. Their kits are very good and not too hard to build.

Edited June 20, 2020 by alangdance

[grahame]

22 hours ago, grahame said:

 

 I've ordered a pack of his air-con units (I seem to need lots of those for buildings) to see what quality they are.

 

 

The air-con units turned up this morning. At less than 24 hours that's a very quick service. Anyway here's a pic of them. The white ones are the Red Imp Models ones while the two on the right are 3D printed ones from Ngineer at Shapeways that have been roughly painted.

 

I'm not sure what the thin panels are for on the left of each. They are very small and they appear to be those temporary room type that fit in a window along the bottom with the panel infilling the open section to the side of the unit. I think I prefer the Ngineer ones which seem a little sharper modelling/printed.

 

 

[Siberian Snooper]

Perhaps the white panels are for you to hold it whilst you paint them, once done cut off and touch up. I certainly don't think i've seen actual adjacent panels.

 

 

 

 

[Ian Morgan]

They are common in the US for 'portable' units that fit into an opened window, and screen the rest of the opening. I always thought installing one like that on a high-rise apartment was pretty risky.

[grahame]

1 hour ago, Siberian Snooper said:

Perhaps the white panels are for you to hold it whilst you paint them, once done cut off and touch up. I certainly don't think i've seen actual adjacent panels.

 

 

I did think that initially when I saw them in the packet but they have relief moulded in them so assumed they were window opening infill panels like this:

 

 

They do seem small so probably only suitable as single room a/c units (rather than whole floor or building) and the panels could easily be trimmed to fit the window width. That does tend to make them not very suitable for what I want them for - to go on commercial building roofs. I don't think I'll order any more.

 

 

[grahame]

The banded brick cubes are even smaller than the cinder/breeze block pallets and a nightmare to paint effectively. I'd considered various methods for how to represent or paint the bands and even tried very thinly cut strips of parcel tape (about the right colour) but gave up with that. Far too fiddly and too many to do. In the end I just opted for painting them with acrylics and obscure the finish with a wash to fuzz the issue and hope it looked representational:

 

 

Hopefully when spread around the site the poor faint finish won't stand out and be obvious. Here are some roughly in position on the construction site. They are not glued in place as no doubt someone will  hopefully provide feedback about where they should be located. I've still got to sort the scaffolding and get some ladders and wheelbarrows:

 

 

 

This steel framed building construction site is taking far longer and getting more expensive that I initially thought.

 

 

 

 

 

[grahame]

Would these palletised bricks and blocks been unloaded from the delivery lorries and shifted around the site (in the mid/late 70s) by forklift truck:

 

 

Or unloaded directly in to position from the delivery lorry by crane such as a hiab fitted truck?

 

 

The fork-lifts are American GHQ pewter kits which represent 1970 forklifts and are finer and better detailed than blobby British white metal kits and even the plastic Japanese efforts. The truck is a DAF cab-of-four truck (they started using the CoF cab in 1975) 3D printed model kit from RailNscale.

 

 

 

[MikeHemmings]

That type of forklift would not be able  to operate on  the unmade up ground  of  a building  site.

 

Mike

[grahame]

2 minutes ago, MikeHemmings said:

That type of forklift would not be able  to operate on  the unmade up ground  of  a building  site.

 

 

Although, presumably, it should be able to run around on the concrete floor of the building and roadway, and rear delivery access?

 

 

[MikeHemmings]

Todays build they do install the  concrete  slab first ,In the 60s and 70s the slab was layed after the building want up and the roof on.

Any work to roads and parking areas would have been near the completion of the work.

Mike

[grahame]

20 minutes ago, MikeHemmings said:

Todays build they do install the  concrete  slab first ,In the 60s and 70s the slab was layed after the building want up and the roof on.

 

I did initially do some research, and looked through lots of period photos, but couldn't find anything conclusive about a specific general approach and when it changed. Although some steel framed building construction sites didn't have concrete floors there were others, including from the 50s and 60s that did. I guess that changes wouldn't have occured at around the same time everywhere. And perhaps that to some extent it would have depended on the site location and building contractors.