Burton-on-Trent South - Adding Buildings

[ISW]

Platform Buildings - A Little Jigsaw

 

After I had another look at my Platform Buildings Drawing, I found that the building 'ends' weren't right. This lead me to adjust the whole of the facade, by lowering the windows / doors by a tad. This was a painful process, as it impacted on all the subsequent work I'd done on the 'layers' for the facade. However, it was all worth it and the facade / canopy / upper floor do tie-in much better now.

 

At the end of all that I had each 'type' of Panel drawn up and split into 5-layers, one of which gets duplicated either side of the window pane (clear plastic sheet). 

 

The next step was to 'assemble' the various layers that build up the Panels of the facade into a full 9-Panel length. Because of the limitations of my Cricut cutter, and the overall size of cereal packets (!), I found I was limited to cutting 3-Panels at a time. The individual layers have to overlap to create a strong facade, and so the following assemblage was formulated:

 

And, yes, there does seem to be something wrong with the Cyan & Purple coloured layers. Mutter. I'll have to investigate that before I send the various elements off to the Cricut.

 

Hopefully the above 'explains' how I'm slowly building up the Platform Building facade using cereal packet cardboard.

 

Ian

 

[ISW]

7 hours ago, ISW said:

And, yes, there does seem to be something wrong with the Cyan & Purple coloured layers. Mutter. I'll have to investigate that before I send the various elements off to the Cricut.

Investigation complete. Those Panels I 'added' towards the end of the design process failed to follow the principles of the former. Simple but silly mistake to make.

 

Here's the 'corrected' version:

 

Much better. Now it's off to the Cricut to see if it can make a good job of the cutting, and if I can keep tabs on the various elements  ...

 

Ian

[ISW]

The Cricut gets a Workout

 

Now that went much better / easier than I expected. Makes a pleasant change ...

 

The relevant part of the Xara Drawing was exported as an SVG file, which was then imported into the Cricut cutter software. Once in the Cricut software it was relatively easy to 'group' the various elements to fit in the cereal packet size sheets I have to hand. Basically, I could fit two 3-panel sections of the facade at a time. So it took quite a few sheets of cereal cardboard to print cut it all out. I had a few 'wobblers' where the cutting was either too near to the edge of the cardboard or it partially went off the cardboard, but in general it went very well first time. Those few needed to be redone.

 

Here's all the bits cut out. It would make an interesting comparison to the Xara drawing, except that I cut the Northbound, and I uploaded the Southbound earlier (oops ...):

 

Ian

 

 

[ISW]

Some Textures and Assembly Time

 

In case you were wondering about the 'Cricut' cutter mentioned in the previous posting, here it is in action cutting out some parts for the NB Platform Building facade:

 

The printer, also shown in the above photo (on the right) has also been busy, printing out the various textures needed for the facade. The textures themselves were downloaded from Textures.com, and were imported into Xara Designer Pro X10 for scaling to the 'correct' size of bricks. I also had to do some colour correction as they printed out too 'light' when tested.

 

Assembly of the NB Platform Building facade was actually more complicated than I though it would be due to the necessity to wrap some of the textures around more than one 'layer' of the carboard. Getting it all aligned was another challenge. The window glazing is just roughly cut out from some acetate sheeting (scrounged from some old work Reports) and sandwiched between the appropriate layers. The window frames had to cut out twice! The first ones were a 'perfect' size, and were an exact fit in my test 2-panel sample. However, the wrapping of the textures around the window openings was enough to make them 'too big' for the remaining (slightly reduced) opening. I had to reduce their overall size by ½mm (width & height) and cut them out again. I did try sanding them down that ½mm, but it that just didn't work.

 

Here is the entire 9-panel NB Platform Building facade assembled, but without the window frames installed:

 

The entire assembly was kept under a length of plywood, loaded with containers of model ballast to keep it flat while the glue dried overnight. The textures were glued to the cardboard layers with clone 'Pritt' sticks, and the layers were glued together with clear PVA from The Works shop.

 

The window frames will be airbrush painted a dark grey/black before installation.  I still have the windowsills to print, cut out, and glue into place.

 

The observant amongst you may have noticed the 'water stain' at the top of the 2nd panel (from the left). I've no idea how this happened, but it's going to be a real pain to hide. My plan is to reprint that area, sand the back of the paper to a feathered edge and, carefully, glue into place. Fingers crossed on this one. Anyone know of a better way to fix the issue?

 

Ian

[young37215]

14 hours ago, ISW said:

Anyone know of a better way to fix the issue

 

Could you not weather the stain and treat it as some form of natural damage?, much simpler and probably not to far removed from reality. Pristine building can look smart but reality is most buildings have some discolouration from being exposed to the elements. Your Burton building is a good age in your era modelled, I doubt it was not showing signs of wear and tear.

 

I love using weathering to hide my mistakes and faux pas along the way, it probably explains why so much of my layout is weathered!

Edited November 22, 2022 by young37215

[ISW]

On 22/11/2022 at 08:46, young37215 said:

Could you not weather the stain and treat it as some form of natural damage?, much simpler and probably not to far removed from reality.

Rob,

 

Nice idea, but it's such an isolated 'blob' that it'd probably still stand out. However, weathering is a good idea, but for the entire Platform Building (minus the canopies) once completed.

 

I think I'll just have to 'hide' it with a patch over for the time being, and then blend it in with the building weathering later.

 

Ian

[ISW]

Platform Building - Assembly Time, Part 2

 

I've been slowly working my way through the cutting, application of textures, and assembly of the Southbound side of the Platform Buildings. This is just a repeat of the Northbound side (predictably) and was therefore a little easier. Here are both the NB (top) and SB (bottom) sides of the Platform Building:

 

On 21/11/2022 at 18:30, ISW said:

The observant amongst you may have noticed the 'water stain' at the top of the 2nd panel (from the left). I've no idea how this happened, but it's going to be a real pain to hide. My plan is to reprint that area, sand the back of the paper to a feathered edge and, carefully, glue into place.

 

If you look really closely at the NB side, just below the 2nd aperture from the right, you can just about make out my 'repair' to the water stain. Once the canopy is installed (quite a way off yet) and some light weathering has been applied, it should just about disappear.

 

The 'inside' of the walls has also been treated to some 'textures' that are meant to represent the likely inside of the rooms of the Platform Building. Given the total absence of any photos, I've gone with a simple Midland Railway cream on the walls, with a 'representation of' timber panelling around the base of all walls:

 

What is missing is the brickwork texture around the 'top' of the walls, which will be visible on the parapet walls even after the roof is installed.

 

If you are wondering about the 2mm thickness 'under' all the doors / openings, that because the building is designed to be 'sunk' ~2mm into the surface of the platform surface. That is to avoid unsightly 'gaps' between the base of the building and the top of the platform. The whole building will have a 'base', which will afford some rigidity, and give me a surface to apply some flooring textures.

 

All the separate window frames have been cut out by my Cricut and some have already been airbrushed in a basic very dark grey/black (aka; not quite black, if you know what I mean). I chose that 'colour' as all the photos I have of the station (in black & white) sort of imply it was very dark. However, now I think about it, I should have checked with photos of the GCR and, for example, Skipton Station. Those clearly show such window frames to be sandstone. My 'black' simply represents ~100-years of grime! I'll be going back to the window frames and re-spraying them in a more 'sandstone'-like colour (Vallejo Pale Sand, most probably).

 

Next, it's on to the End Walls ...

 

Ian

[61656]

These are looking really good. I’m always impressed by someone that can spend so much time planning before doing - I’m so much more a plan the rescue after I’ve made a mess of it sort of person!

 

Is the concept of this your own idea or copied? It certainly looks to be worth the effort and achieving the results. 

[ISW]

54 minutes ago, 61656 said:

Is the concept of this your own idea or copied? It certainly looks to be worth the effort and achieving the results. 

 

I can't really lay claim to using several thicknesses of carboard to achieve a 3D look. I've seen many others do the same thing. Using textures (from a printer) is also hardly a 'new' thing, nor is using a cutter (mine's a Cricut) to cut out the various bits.

 

My way of drawing up the design (Xara Designer Pro X) is very similar to that I saw being used on the Wordsworth model kits website (http://www.wordsworthmodelrailway.co.uk/). It was a free download of one of their 'kits', back in ~2016, that got me started on the 'bespoke' building track. I could see how I could 'improve' their simple, free, kits. I liked the fact that all the materials were cheap and readily accessible. Back then I used 'new' cardboard!

 

Obviously, I've created my own 'work flow' for creating buildings. Each time, my method gets improved / tweaked to make it easier for me. One of my over-riding principles is that I should be able to go back to the design Drawing in several years time, and still be able to understand it enough to re-build the creation. The Drawing files therefore contain 'notes' and 'Titles' to help make them understandable. This is probably a cross-over from my work on various railway Projects around SE Asia, where most Drawings end up as As-Builts and are used by the Operator for inspection & maintenance.

 

1 hour ago, 61656 said:

I’m so much more a plan the rescue after I’ve made a mess of it sort of person!

 

I sometimes wish I could do that. However, I'm not very good at undoing work and really object to having to do anything twice! That probably explains why, when I built my MPD building, the original mistakes were overcome by a complete re-design and build, not fixing the original one.

 

Ian

[ISW]

Stay Flat, Will You

 

The Platform Buildings continue their creation with work moving on to the building 'ends'. Given what has come before, these are quite simple affairs with 4-layers but no windows.

 

The biggest challenge, and one that is currently being rectified on the 2 building sides, is keeping them 'flat'. Given its ability to pull just about anything down to the floor at the slightest touch, you'd think that gravity alone would be enough to flatten a few bits of flimsy cardboard. But no, it needs a little help from some clamps:

 

The 2 building sides are currently under a length of plywood (weighed down with anything 'heavy' that came to hand) and clamped down to an Upper Level baseboard after some glue was added to the exposed top & bottom edges where the exposed individual layers hadn't glued sufficiently.

 

Ian

[ISW]

Roof Test Article

 

While the glue was setting on some of the Platform Building walls, I thought I'd better work out how I was going to make the roof. This has a rather 'odd' end detail:

 

So, back at my Drawing I measured off the basic width / height dimensions and then spent quite some time 'scribbling' on a notepad, trying to work out how it 'flattened' to 2D so that I could cut it out on the Cricut. In the end, I realised that the 'vertical' triangle at the end has to be a separate piece. I still wasn't convinced though.

 

To check I drew up a 'test' length of roof to see if my calculations were correct and sent the file off to the Cricut for cutting. A few bits of masking tape later, and:

 

Yep, that's just 2 bits of cereal packet. I was very surprised that it worked first time. It needs some 'tweaking' to the overlap 'flaps' I put on the inside (to eventually glue them together), but overall a success.

 

There is one part of the photo (above) that's confusing me. Is that a large skylight on the LH side, just before the chimney? Or is it a 'patch' over the old slates? 

I can't really see it being a skylight for the platform rooms, as I'm guessing there is a flat ceiling for the room (and that's what I'll be building). Would it be to allow light into space under the roof? Storage area?

 

Ian

[5BarVT]

3 hours ago, ISW said:

There is one part of the photo (above) that's confusing me. Is that a large skylight on the LH side, just before the chimney? Or is it a 'patch' over the old slates? 

I can't really see it being a skylight for the platform rooms, as I'm guessing there is a flat ceiling for the room (and that's what I'll be building). Would it be to allow light into space under the roof? Storage area?

Agreed, confusing.  On the end elevation it looks like roof boards just left there.  Could it be more of them just the other way up?  The canopies have gone, is the photo taken during demolition and the bits on the roof are part of that?

No idea really!

Paul.

[Din]

4 hours ago, ISW said:

There is one part of the photo (above) that's confusing me. Is that a large skylight on the LH side, just before the chimney? Or is it a 'patch' over the old slates? 

I can't really see it being a skylight for the platform rooms, as I'm guessing there is a flat ceiling for the room (and that's what I'll be building). Would it be to allow light into space under the roof? Storage area?

 

Ian

 

I'd say it was most likely a patch. One of the reasons my father said they demolished the old station was because it had become old, leaked like a seive in a number of places and had generally been left to run down completely as it had been slowly stripped of services in the decade prior. The other boards are roofing boards and the shadowing in the brickwork on the left hand side suggests this photo is from 1971.

 

No skylight or anything like that were in those positions so far as I can tell, but you can see others here, which suggests the NSR method was on long runs.

 

http://www.burton-on-trent.org.uk/wp-content/images/Railway/NewStation00.jpg

 

Taken from: http://www.burton-on-trent.org.uk/station-history

Edited December 9, 2022 by Din

[ISW]

3 hours ago, Din said:

The other boards are roofing boards and the shadowing in the brickwork on the left hand side suggests this photo is from 1971.

Indeed. The photo is a crop from one of the demolition photos in one of the H.N.Twells books.

 

3 hours ago, Din said:

I'd say it was most likely a patch. One of the reasons my father said they demolished the old station was because it had become old, leaked like a seive in a number of places and had generally been left to run down completely as it had been slowly stripped of services in the decade prior.

I'm pleased to hear that. As I said before, a skylight didn't make sense. Makes my life easier as I don't plan to include patches or repairs in my model.

 

However, this means that a number of other 'skylights' I was going to include in the Design might not be patches as well! Here's an aerial view of the station showing 'most' of the skylights and/or patches with numbers:

 

Based on the above discussions, and other photos I have, my 'thoughts' have been revised as follows:

1. Skylight (over the frontage)
2. Patch
3. Patch
4. Patch
5. Skylight (over the Booking Hall)
6. Patch
7. Skylight (over the Gallery)
8. Patch (as determined above)
9. Patch

Can anyone confirm that my 'thoughts' are correct?

 

Ian

[ISW]

5 hours ago, 5BarVT said:

Agreed, confusing.  On the end elevation it looks like roof boards just left there.  Could it be more of them just the other way up?  The canopies have gone, is the photo taken during demolition and the bits on the roof are part of that?

No idea really!

Paul.

Paul,

 

This station is throwing up all kinds of 'issues' for me. I thought it'd be a straight forward build. Yes, it's one of the demolition photos (I had cropped it to zoom in on the roof) so it shows the roof not long before it went forever.

 

Ian

[Din]

Might it be worth trying to contact the Gresley and Wychnor Club? They built an 0 gauge model of Burton station for the Wychnor-On-Trent layout which so far as I know is fairly accurate albeit scaled down.

[ISW]

16 hours ago, Din said:

Might it be worth trying to contact the Gresley and Wychnor Club? They built an 0 gauge model of Burton station for the Wychnor-On-Trent layout which so far as I know is fairly accurate albeit scaled down.

I did actually message @Andrew Peters back in 2018 on that very subject. Unfortunately I didn't receive a reply.

 

Ian

[ISW]

Roof Patching

 

Having determined that the roof of the Platform Buildings had been patched, and were not skylights as I originally thought, I was interested to see the same 'feature' on a building while driving in Sheffield. Here's the view from Google Streetmap: 

 

Maybe such 'patching' was a common method to repair a leaking roof!

 

Ian

[ISW]

Platform Building - Some Assembly

 

The workdesk has been something of a mess recently, with all the many parts of the Platform Building lying around in various states of completeness.

 

The main reason preventing some assembly has been the painting of the window frames. As you may recall, I had painted (airbrushed) the first batch of these in black colour. It quickly became apparent that this was a mistake, and the search was on for a more 'suitable' colour. I needed something that represented 'dirty sandstone', which I could both print on the inkjet and paint with the airbrush. I eventually settled on a cream / brown / green / black mixture ... Don't ask.

 

Anyway, a lot of airbrushing later (it took many coats to cover the previous black) and I had a small collection of components ready for 'some assembly required'. With the window frames glued into position, I could start the 'real' assembly of the Platform Building sides, ends, floor, and interior walls. This is going quite well, until I realised that the cross-passage wasn't as 'realistic' as I wanted, or as shown in photos. That caused another hold-up while I made some extra pieces to narrow the cross-passage and provide some 'stonework' around the opening.

 

With that done I could complete the basic assembly of the, roofless, Platform Building:

Northbound platform:

 

Southbound platform:

 

Interior:

 

With all the sides / floor assembled, it is much sturdier than it was in 'bits'. I did go to the trouble of 'decorating' the interiors of the building, using LMS cream on the walls, a 'representation' of timber panelling around the lower edge of the walls, and a grey (ish) patterned flooring. The ceilings (not shown) have a mottled white finish.

 

In case you are wondering about the 'flappy' extra walls extending above parts of the building, those are to overlap with the 2nd floor extension (yet to be built).

 

Ian

[ISW]

Platform Building - Upper Level Commences

 

Whilst some parts of the build have gone backwards (the coping stones I'd made and painted are too wide to allow removal of the roof, oops, and will need remaking) I've made a start on the Upper Level of the Platform Building. This part is 3-panels long.

 

Here's the basic outline of the Upper Level, without the ends (made but not glued on yet), nicely showing the lovely floorboards and interior:

 

The two side windows are gabled, just to make the building a little more difficult. Because of their small size, I've been having real problems getting a flat shape that I can cut out from cardboard on the Cricut, but can be folded into a suitable shape to fit into the opening in the wall. Here's just one of my efforts (out of, I think, four), but is not the final design:

 

The final design of the above gabled window is currently being airbrushed.

 

While glue has been drying on the Upper Level, I've had time to make and fit a curved roof to the cross-passage, so at least progress is being made.

 

Ian

 

 

[ISW]

Platform Building - Upper Level Progress

 

The main building part of the Platform Building Upper Level has finally been assembled. Now assembled it is quite stiff and hold together nicely. However, it wasn't like that during assembly and some 'juggling' with clamps and clips was necessary to keep it sufficiently stable while the glue dried. I'm using clear PVA glue (from The Works in 1-litre bottles), which afford plenty of 'assembly time' but does take a while to 'grip'. I'd use superglue for speed critical locations, but it doesn't seem to work on my cereal packet cardboard.

 

The photo below shows the completed section. The grey 'bits' are simply permanent spacers / stiffeners to keep the walls the right distance apart. I don't 'plan' to glue the roof down to permit access later (lighting? furniture?) so the walls have to be free-standing:

 

The gabled windows have been plonked into position, but clearly need a little 'trimming' to get the sides vertical before I can glaze them with clear plastic (Peco turnout packaging ...) and finally install them.

 

The components for the roof have been cut out on the Cricut, with the small parts already airbrushed in Vallejo 'pale sand'. Assembly is pending - roofing.

 

I knew this was going to be a real pain, having watched others on Youtube. At least I managed to create my own roofing texture in Xara Designer Pro, from a free texture downloaded from Textures.com, that could be printed on my Inkjet and cut into strips:

 

And here is the main roof component receiving said strips:

 

This process is slow, tedious, and boring but totally necessary to produce a convincing roof (err, it better do!). I'll not really know until this roof is complete.

 

Ian

[ISW]

Platform Building - Structure Complete

 

With the completion of the Upper Floor of the Platform building it was possible to determine the location / extent of the coping stones on the top of the Lower Floor walls. These are simple 1mm carboard strips (cut from some A4 sheets I bought in Malaysia at Ringgit 0.75, about 15p each) that were scored to mark the individual 'stones' and then airbrushed.

 

Northbound side:

 

Southbound side:

 

Top view, showing the completed cross-passage:

 

Work is progressing on the roofs for both the Upper Floor and the Lower Floor (both ends), although this is a slow and tedious process. All the cardboard for the various roofs has been cut out on the Cricut, and 'tiling' is well under way.

 

Ian

[ISW]

Platform Buildings - Roof Glue Up

 

I've seen numerous Articles about 'scratch building' using cardboard and they include plenty of detail about research, design, cutting out the elements, and basic gluing of flat objects. They also include plenty of photos of completed buildings.

 

What they never seem to explain /  include (although I can't be 100% certain, of course) is the difficulty and 'gymnastics' you have to go through to get elements perfectly aligned while they are gluing. Here's a good example of me fitting 2 stiffeners to the underside of the roof for the Platform Building, Lower Level:

 

Once that glue has dried, it's 'easy' to add some more glue (for 'insurance') along the line of the joint. But that only works 'once' the separate elements are in final position.

 

Thank goodness the 'challenge' is all part of the fun of model making ... and it's great when it works!

 

Ian 

[Lady_Farkham]

Great progress. 

I grew up in the area and went to college in Burton. Its good to see it being modelled. 

 

I've been considering a Cricut for a while. Have you (or anyone else) successfully cut Plastikard? If, so is there a maximum thickness it is capable of cutting? 

[ISW]

8 hours ago, Lady_Farkham said:

've been considering a Cricut for a while. Have you (or anyone else) successfully cut Plastikard? If, so is there a maximum thickness it is capable of cutting?

I have the 'older' Cricut  'Explore Air', but have managed to cut 0.5mm thick styrene. The later Cricut 'maker' is a more capable machine with a higher downward cutting pressure, and so would be better suited to styrene. It is, of course, more expensive though.

 

Ian