Peterborough North

[great northern]

This thread has made me LOL TWICE this afternoon:

Let's get the sky/sun direction/type of clouds right?

There are no hills round Peterborough?

 

OK guys, now we ARE being pedantic.

 

But I suppose that when the realism of the modelling led to a page's discussion of the CLEANLINESS of loco lamps, or otherwise, last week, then why not?

 

Why not indeed.

 

Classic thread.

 

I'm surprised you missed out the most important debate of all Jeff - those fruit pies. I've already scratch built the refreshment room counter, and the glass case in which they will be displayed, but how can I model the pies until I know how to brand them? Hales or Lyons, that's the question? Of course these model pies will be very small, less than 2mm square in fact, so you won't be able to read the writing on them anyway. Actually, come to think of it, you won't see them at all,as you can't get a view inside the building, unless the sun is at exactly the right angle.

 

It's all great fun, isn't it? Begs the question though, how far should we try to take realism? I think I've now reached a point beyond which I shall venture no further, but I draw the line at them thar hills.

[great northern]

Next, many thanks to all who have made suggestions as to how I might disguise those bookcases, all of which I shall consider. I must say I particularly like the suggestion of putting sky blue doors on them. My reservation still though is having to work above the layout at full stretch, which would have to be done whichever idea was adopted. I hadn't realised how time consuming it is to edit photos - I took ages this afternoon just erasing the easy bits of one photo, and then found out how slow and painstaking one has to be to draw round complex shapes. If I did that on every photo I wanted to put on here my output would fall very considerably.

 

As usual there is no easy answer, so for now I'll just be giving the whole thing more thought. Just erasing the bookcases and filling the void with a blue as near as possible to that on the photo might I think be the best way forward, with just the occasional shot where I go to town and put in a proper sky and horizon, assuming that the tuition that Andy Y has very kindly offered me actually penetrates my skull, and that my hands will do what I tell them to do.

[Mallard60022]

Gilbert, there is a simple solution to the 'shelf/door problem'; move the layout to my house

Suggest you just keep posting those pics and let the shoppers do the work for you.

Oh yes, if you have any Buffet Coaches I expect to see tarts pies on the counter too; blackcurrant for me please.

ATB P @ 36E

P.S. Gresley TO arrived 36E C & W Dept.

Edited February 28, 2012 by Mallard60022

[Andy Y]

There is another less radical solution and that's to get a couple of neutral or sky blue sheets of the largest card (I use Daler Rowney 'Horizon Blue') you can get and prop/clamp them up in the sight-line behind the signals (they're the worst to photoshop). It cuts down the work dramatically.

[great northern]

There is another less radical solution and that's to get a couple of neutral or sky blue sheets of the largest card (I use Daler Rowney 'Horizon Blue') you can get and prop/clamp them up in the sight-line behind the signals (they're the worst to photoshop). It cuts down the work dramatically.

 

Many thanks Andy, why didn't I think of that? It shall be done.

[45609]

 

 

A slightly different view. I will get that bagging right.

 

 

I wonder if trying something along the lines explained here might be a route to making more convincing water crane bags. Reading part 2 of Gordon Gravett's article in MRJ213 reminded me about the technique. He used it to make the sails on his North Devon barges with rather stunning results.

[JeffP]

No, I didn't miss that discussion, I was part of it, and I STILL think they were Lyons and that apple and blackBERRY existed.

 

But yes, I take your point about how far to go.

 

Reminds me of the guy that laboured for hours to make a coffee table diorama, then started all over again so he could get MORE detail in in a larger scale.

he apprently didn't want just a BUTTERFLY, he wanted a particular TYPE of butterfly...

[coachmann]

1. Another solution to the backdrop problem is to rename your layout 'Chester General' and have a wallsize Welsh mountain muriel in place of the bookshelves.
   

[JeffP]

I wonder if trying something along the lines explained here might be a route to making more convincing water crane bags. Reading part 2 of Gordon Gravett's article in MRJ213 reminded me about the technique. He used it to make the sails on his North Devon barges with rather stunning results.

 

I think that the ablove looks VERY good, except that I would question his usage of the word "silicon(sic).

 

Apart from the fact that he MEANS "silicone", I have NEVER managed to get paint to stick to silicone in ANY form.

 

Perhaps his water-based silicone is actually acrylic sealer/frame sealant? That stuff IS water based and is very cheap from the likes of Screwfix.

[JZ]

A backdrop was needed because of the high viewpoint and I couldn't think of anything better than a few Welsh mountains....

It would be a pretty high viewpoint to see Welsh hills from Peterborough

[BR(W)]

... anal about which way the sun's shining.

 

Now I'm sure we all think that Andy Y is some sort of demigod, so I could get quite unnecessarily coarse here, but I shan't.

[45568]

1. Another solution to the backdrop problem is to rename your layout 'Chester General' and have a wallsize Welsh mountain muriel in place of the bookshelves.
   

 

That's a mighty big Welsh woman you're talking about!! Now if she falls on the layout...................??

 

cheers, Peter C.

[Jamie]

Suggest decorator's masking tape rolled into a tube for the water crane bag - holds its shape well, and when painted grey-black has a canvassy texture. It's also flexible enough to be forgiving of being swiped when cleaning rails etc (from experience).

[artizen]

Love threads that have a life of their own!

 

Tarts and clouds - who would have thought eh?

 

Only goes to show how much we appreciate the quality of this layout and how much we all want it to be presented in its best light!!!!!

[great central]

That's very nice Larry, and suitably dramatic, but unfortunately there are no hills in or around Peterborough. Come to think of it, there aren't even any hillocks! I know that where you live you are surrounded by them, so I can see why you would naturally include them, but it would upset the purists.

 

When I'm working to Norwich, the first station towards Norwich after leaving Ely is Shippea Hill, Thing is I can't any flippin' hill

Edited February 28, 2012 by great central

[JeffP]

Here we are: http://www.kzwp.com/lyons/group1.htm

 

Introduced in 1939, scroll down about half the page for flavours.

 

BlackBERRY and apple is there, as is raspberry, which I also remember.

 

2d each though? I'm sure they were 6d by the 60's.

[great northern]

When I'm working to Norwich, the first station towards Norwich after leaving Ely is Shippea Hill, Thing is I can't any flippin' hill

 

All things are relative though. In the Fens, if it's above sea level it probably counts as a hill.

[Mallard60022]

Here we are: http://www.kzwp.com/lyons/group1.htm

Introduced in 1939, scroll down about half the page for flavours.

BlackBERRY and apple is there, as is raspberry, which I also remember.

2d each though? I'm sure they were 6d by the 60's.

 

Now then Jeff ----- yes I think 6d was about right. Ummmmm, yummmy I agree. Think the last one I had was apple and it was on Exeter Central in 1962 or it might have been Bristol TM in 1963.

Courtesy of Google: Hales existed and were absorbed by Lyons in '74.

"The Hale Trent cake group, once the fifth largest in the UK packaged cake market, were acquired in April 1974 when Lyons bought the entire share capital of Hale-Trent (Holdings) Limited from Fitch Lovell. Hale-Trent consisted of two cake companies, Hale-Trent Cakes Ltd with a head office and factory in Clevedon, Somerset, and the Far Famed Cake Company Ltd based at Poplar, east London. The Far Famed Cake Company had been started in 1881 and became part of Fitch Lovell in 1950. About 320 people worked in the London factory producing almost 25 per cent of Hale's total sales. The output went straight into the Hale's distribution system apart from the own-label products for F. W. Woolworth.

The Clevedon factory with a workforce of approximately 900 manufactured a range of cakes similar in some respects to those of Lyons Bakery. They included Swiss rolls, crunch cakes, eclairs, Battenberg, fruit pies, jam tarts and their biggest seller line, Grannie's cake, a fruit cake with a home-made appearance. Distribution was by feeder vehicles direct to the sales vans, the product being off-loaded from one to the other at pre-arranged times and transfer points. The cakes were sold over a wide area of England and Wales but not in Scotland. The sales force numbered about 280 which satisfied 200 journeys.

The Hales business, acquired by Fitch Lovell in the middle of the Second World War, was started in Clevedon in 1926 by Frank Hale who, it is said, baked his first cakes (Hales Farmhouse Cake) in the kitchen of his home. He began production under the name Farmhouse in Old, Clevedon, Somerset. By 1932 the business had grown enough to be formed into a limited company and Hale's Home Bakery (Cleveland) Ltd was formed. By the mid-1930s the business was employing 200 and sales depots had been opened in Swindon and Southampton. In 1938 the business was sufficiently profitable to justify the purchase of a Swiss roll production line, only the second in the country, the first had been producing prodigious quantities of Swiss roll at Lyons' Cadby Hall factory many years earlier. In the 1940s shortly before he died, Frank Hale sold a majority interest in his business to the food wholesaling group Fitch & Son. Fitch already had the John Trent cake business in East London and in 1962 the two companies merged to form Hale-Trent Cakes. At that time Hale-Trent had a work-force of 1,330 producing 600 tons of cake a week which was sold all over England and in most parts of Wales. Product included Swiss rolls, crunch cakes, eclairs, Battenberg, fruit pies, jam tarts, Maderia cake, cup cakes, Neopolitan slice and the biggest seller, Grannies Cake, a fruit cake with a home-made look which was not too different from the cake on which Frank Hale had founded his business. They introduced a method of distribution by dispensing with depots completely and used public car parks and lorry drive-ins where large lorries would unload product from the factory to smaller local delivery vehicles. Lyons acquired the business in 1974, along with the Far Famed Cake Company, which had been owned by Fitch since 1950. In 1985 Hale-Trent's sales, marketing and distribution functions were merged with those of Lyons Bakery Ltd and the whole business integrated with Lyons Bakery the following year. Two years later the Hale-Trent factory at Clevedon was closed and production moved to Carlton and Wakefield".

 

 

© Peter Bird 2002

With thanks to Peter Bird to whom I am eternally grateful.

There are articles discussing the preparation of 4mm scale pies (note they used the noun pies rather than tarts due to editing by the Management) for station buffets and Buffet Cars in Railway Modeller April 1958.

One section in the article mentioned the possibility of a planned layout, set in the late 50s' based on Peterborough ECML, using said pies in the Station Buffet. There is a reply in the May RM letters section suggesting that they (Hales Fruit Pies) could also be used in Buffet Cars. There is also a section describing the scratch building of the cake racks and pie shelf units; very clever work for the period before plasticard had appeared. There were no foolish suggestions about old bags back then as far as I can see.

JeffP's emigilbert's and Jamie ideas for old bags are very clever. I just love the tarps idea from Military modelling (JeffP's); that looks very convincing.

Anyway, I've got my Combined Volume ready; what's due through today?

P (just down the line) @ 36E

Edited February 29, 2012 by Mallard60022

[gresley]

 

That's a mighty big Welsh woman you're talking about!! Now if she falls on the layout...................??

 

cheers, Peter C.

 

Can't wait to see Muriel overlooking Peterborough, and Gilbert's worried about falling off the ladder !!!!!

 

gresley

[jonny777]

Here we are: http://www.kzwp.com/lyons/group1.htm

 

Introduced in 1939, scroll down about half the page for flavours.

 

BlackBERRY and apple is there, as is raspberry, which I also remember.

 

2d each though? I'm sure they were 6d by the 60's.

 

The fruit pie debate needs to be warmed up a little. Lyons were not my favourite, as the pastry was rather hard and a dark-ish brown colour IIRC. However, I am not sure of the Hales pies to which people refer. Were they branded as Harvest pies? I am sure that is what I remember on the boxes.

 

They had soft pale pastry and were far more gooey than Lyons.

[Grafarman]

The fruit pie debate needs to be warmed up a little.

 

You can't warm up fruit pies; that's sacrilege!! Cold pies fresh out of the fridge are best...besides which, you'd need custard to go with warm pies and I'm not sure they dispensed hot dessert sauces on most stations...

[jonny777]

Ha ha, that reminds me of my first cold steak and kidney pie from a station. Can't remember where, but might have been Nottingham Midland. The buffet only heated pies at lunchtime (or so the woman told me) and my hunger had got the better of me around mid-afternoon. She would sell me one that had not sold earlier, "but it would be cold" she warned.

 

It was with some trepidation that went back to the platform end I started to eat the pie, but I thought that it tasted even better than warm. However, I spent the rest of the day waiting to be overcome by some stomach ailment that was bound to occur.

[coachmann]

From pies to skies and mountains to murals, such is the diversity of railway modelling.

[mikemeg]

From pies to skies and mountains to murals, such is the diversity of railway modelling.

 

Amen to that; isn't this sort of thread what makes this site so worthwhile?

 

Cheers

 

Mike

[Mallard60022]

OK, who wants to start a conversation about drag; that is sand drags of course? There is one I've seen on Peterborough North and I think I've found 'the real thing' in a pic in my latest book ECML Part 2. There may have been more around that station; I have no idea. I am hoping Gilbert has researched this particular feature as thoroughly as he has the pies and topography.

Now let's start with the grade of sand and the depth/volume required at this location!

Over to you guys/gals.

(Is Gilbert playing golf this morning? I've been waiting ages and still not used my Biro & Ian Allen Loco Log Book (remember those?)

P @ 36E (where I saw a sand drag this very a.m. on the ECML/Sheffield loop/link just west of the ECML near Whisker Hill J'n) whilst surveying pic spots for Olly Cromwell's visit on Saturday).

Edited February 29, 2012 by Mallard60022