"Anything You Can do, I Can Do Better ! Robinson and Downes.

[allan downes]

The Colron Kid returns, YAY !

 

Baseboard ( uno flush door) down over support ( uno cheap table from the second hand furniture shop - big spenders don't come better than this especially as I've now got to pay for everything!) Track, points, controller, wire, soldering iron, ballast - all ordered, should be here tomorrow. - YAY !!

 

Watch this space I C R !!

 

Cheers.

Allan.

[allan downes]

And as we speak, 230 quids worth of Scalelink windows on their way - windows are the eyes of a building,  and as much as it hurts, never compromise as they will iether make a building, or  break it - try making a Georgian window out of microstrip, yeh  OK, a couple of hours later, one window - now try making another hundred like it and you'll know what I mean !!!

 

Cheers.

Allan.

[Iain C Robinson]

And as we speak, 230 quids worth of Scalelink windows on their way - windows are the eyes of a building,  and as much as it hurts, never compromise as they will iether make a building, or  break it - try making a Georgian window out of microstrip, yeh  OK, a couple of hours later, one window - now try making another hundred like it and you'll know what I mean !!!

 

Cheers.

Allan.

Couldn't agree more about the windows, old mate. I find Scalelink to be very good...I ordered some chimney pots from them this week and they arrived by return. Langley have an interesting range of window frets, but there's so much other stuff on the frets that you'll never use...I've still got some bits left from about three years ago. I could wish that Langley's web site was a bit tidier, too! Good stuff, though. There's a million other folk doing etched brass windows out there of course, but I have always found Scale Link to be good. And I don't own the company!

 

I'm worried about the industrial scale of the materials arriving at chez Downes. What's he planning? Google earth reveals nothing, dammit! Do steelworks have windows....no, but cathedrals do! Aaaarrrggghhh.... :help:  so do windmills...but £230 worth?? no...

 

cheers,

Iain

[allan downes]

 

 

I'm worried about the industrial scale of the materials arriving at chez Downes. What's he planning? Google earth reveals nothing, dammit! Do steelworks have windows....no, but cathedrals do! Aaaarrrggghhh.... :help:  so do windmills...but £230 worth?? no...

 

cheers,

Iain

 

Right on Mate.

 

 Consider an average house - ten windows say. Now consider 20 houses splattered all over the layout including station, goods shed, engine shed, signal box that's 200 windows at approx £i.50 each nowadays then 230 quid ain't half bad and I reckon Langley can't match Scalelink for range of products, quality  and price - apart from which, Bob Wyatt, owner of Scalelink is my mate, so neh ! AND, we ain't even touched on chimney pots yet which, let's face it, are a lot more complicated than a sliced up drinking straw !

 

When pricing up jobs, it was the price of raw materials that was the killer and very difficult to pass onto the customer and what I used to do was to tell him what materials I would need then leave it for him to supply.That explained it far better than any cooked up invoice !

 

Cheers.

Allan

[Iain C Robinson]

"When pricing up jobs, it was the price of raw materials that was the killer and very difficult to pass onto the customer and what I used to do was to tell him what materials I would need then leave it for him to supply.That explained it far better than any cooked up invoice !"

 

'Tis exactly what I do myself. Even for a small signal box, when you add up the styrene, windows and the castings for levers etc it comes to a fair sum. And yes, I like those chimney pots! Except that at the moment, I have lost them somewhere on the work bench...

cheers,

Iain

[allan downes]

Iain C Robinson, on 05 Sept 2013 - 17:15, said:

 And yes, I like those chimney pots! Except that at the moment, I have lost them somewhere on the work bench...

cheers,

Iain

 

Sounds to me like you desperately need a chimney pot department - 50 quid to you, £100 deposit, no sale or return, post and package collect, bung the Postman.

 

Cheers.

Colron K.

Edited September 5, 2013 by allan downes

[mullie]

Available Now* from all good book stores...

 

cathedrals.jpg

 

 

*Although, possibly not, but if you ever need a cover designing...

Seeing the man in a vest on the cover playing with a pointy thing; was this not volume 37 of a serial by Barbara Cartland? Edited September 5, 2013 by mullie

[alant]

Alant, I've just had a peek at your  Factory Lane Sidings - terrific, and I would just love to see it on here if you would be so kind.

 

Cheers.

Allan.

Allan,

 

Thanks for the feedback, I'll look to get a couple of pics uploaded when I can.

 

Alan.

[Mythocentric]

My money's on Allan's doing a cathedral that's so big it has it's own narrow guage system to get the vicar from residence to pulpit and back! Open to the public on Saturdays, rides £5 per head (kiddies under 5 free!)

 

Bill

[allan downes]

With reference to roof tiles.

 

If nothing else, I used to pride myself on a half decent and convincing roof, individual tiles and realistically textured and coloured but alas the tile punching machine is no longer with me - long story - and I haven't got a clue how to download them off those on offer on the internet, so, has anyone any ideas on how to go about this, will I need a scanner/printer ( which I have) and how do I do it?

 

Or easier still, would anyone be kind enough to download for me if I explained by PM what was needed, address etc where of course I will pay for any expenses incurred along with a free copy of Cathedrals in the Kitchen and a framed photo of Iain C Robinson in full Highland gear from the sporan down !!

 

Thanks guys.

 

Allan

[Iain C Robinson]

PM'd you, Allan

cheers,

Iain

With reference to roof tiles.

 

If nothing else, I used to pride myself on a half decent and convincing roof, individual tiles and realistically textured and coloured but alas the tile punching machine is no longer with me - long story - and I haven't got a clue how to download them off those on offer on the internet, so, has anyone any ideas on how to go about this, will I need a scanner/printer ( which I have) and how do I do it?

 

Or easier still, would anyone be kind enough to download for me if I explained by PM what was needed, address etc where of course I will pay for any expenses incurred along with a free copy of Cathedrals in the Kitchen and a framed photo of Iain C Robinson in full Highland gear from the sporan down !!

 

Thanks guys.

 

Allan

[Stubby47]

Allan,

I use the Scalescenes roofs, printed paper cut into strips then glued to the roof former.

 

http://www.scalescenes.com

 

Each sheet costs £1.99 to download, then you can print as many as you like (usually one less than you need when the ink runs out...)

 

John Wiffen's site is fairly easy to negotiate, you get an email with the zipped copy of the file/s which you un-zipp and save to a rememberable location on your computer.

 

Stu

[Mythocentric]

"a framed photo of Iain C Robinson in full Highland gear from the sporan down !!"

 

 

Bill (heading for the hills at a high rate of knots!)

 

[Dr Gerbil-Fritters]

Alan, I'll do you roof tiles to order - £8 a page

 

[allan downes]

allan downes, on 06 Sept 2013 - 11:22, said:

...... and a framed photo of Iain C Robinson in full Highland gear from the sporan down !!

 

Thanks guys.

 

Allan

 

Due to an unauthorised display of wedding tackle the Queen has asked for the above offer to be postponed until the owner seated proudly on her right has been subjected to a stewards enquiery.

 

[Theakerr]

Any thoughts on how to create dirty whitewashed (red) brick wall in my station shed where the dirt is primarily smoke. ?  I am using Wills (brown) window arches in several configurations and there is a 3d effect due to the plastic impression of the bricks and the mortar.  I have used Tamiya matt white as a base then tried to "dirty"it by the following, black weathering powders, black dry brushing, very dilute black airbrushing, black brush wash.  I have also tried a "cream" base with the same dirtying methods.  None look right.  The weathering powders and the black brush wash go mainly to the mortar lines and the weathering powder blotches in some areas, the dry brushing just goes onto the bricks, the airbrushing just looks like like black on a very white background.  Thoughts would be appreciated.

[petethemole]

Try doing it all in shades of grey. The whitewash would have got dirty all over, but unevenly and by varying degrees. I'd probably do it overall in light grey, followed by a thin wash of a dark greyish brown, wiping off any bits that look too dark. Then drybrush roughly with a lighter grey/off-white to bring out the texture. I'd probably finish by lightly drybrushing a darker dirt colour using only downward strokes to give the effect of dust and soot settling from above.

 

Pete

[Alister_G]

Any thoughts on how to create dirty whitewashed (red) brick wall in my station shed where the dirt is primarily smoke. ?  I am using Wills (brown) window arches in several configurations and there is a 3d effect due to the plastic impression of the bricks and the mortar.  I have used Tamiya matt white as a base then tried to "dirty"it by the following, black weathering powders, black dry brushing, very dilute black airbrushing, black brush wash.  I have also tried a "cream" base with the same dirtying methods.  None look right.  The weathering powders and the black brush wash go mainly to the mortar lines and the weathering powder blotches in some areas, the dry brushing just goes onto the bricks, the airbrushing just looks like like black on a very white background.  Thoughts would be appreciated.

 

It depends on how dirty you want it to be, but this is the interior wall of my goods shed:

 

 

Which looked like this before fitting:

 

 

In this instance, it's not brick, but stone, but the same ideas should apply.

 

The way I did this was to paint it first with a base stone colour, then go over it with Matt White. Then, I took a very dilute wash of Olive Drab, loaded the brush and applied a strip to the top of the wall, and then stood the wall up so the wash made its own way down. I then repeated with a dilute wash of Dirty Black.

 

I don't know if that's the effect you were after?

 

Al.

[Theakerr]

Thanks ACG-mr, that close to what I want and defiantly along the lines of what I want.  I did a bit of experimenting over the weekend using "life" logic that is similar to your route.  Basically I followed what I think would have been the life cycle of the whitewashed brick.  So first I painted the brickwork the colour I think the brickwork would have been as built using artists acrylics.  Then I "whitewashed" it all over with Tamiya matt white using a fairly heavy hand.  This heavy hand brought about areas where the original colour of the brickwork started to come through due to the white starting to attack the artist acrylic underneath.  This is what i remember from real life when the whitewash didn't seem to penetrate all bricks the same and also after time some bricks seemed to loose their whitewash faster than others.  The entire thing was then "sooted" using matt black starting at the top as you have done. putting on much distilled water and letting it run down sometimes helping it by dapping a wet brush onto the matt black.  This way the mortar has come up blacker than the brick body as it would have because the mortar is more absorbent and the soot would tend to go to the cracks/recesses associated with the mortar.   I will leave the completed test for a couple of days to see how i like it after a while, but it is better than anything I have done so far and it has the added advantage that the weathering/sooting can be done on the entire station facade at the same time so that the weathering will look more or less uniform

Petethemole (nearly put peterthemole - that was clever), thanks for the feedback, i did try your thoughts over the weekend as well using several shades of artists acrylic grey that i happened to have.  Basically it came through as grey, not sooted/weathered whitewash if you can understand the subtlety.  Thanks though.

Edited September 9, 2013 by Theakerr

[allan downes]

Just found these three pics that, would you believe it or not, haven't appeared on the forum before - YAY!

 

Anyway, I know they're all American narrow gauge but hey, as you know by know, anything goes on this Thread - even  kilts, Bert Weedon, and Tetford !!

 

Cheers.

Allan

 

[freebs]

beautiful stuff Allan. How's the new project going?

[allan downes]

freebs, on 10 Sept 2013 - 20:58, said:freebs, on 10 Sept 2013 - 20:58, said:

beautiful stuff Allan. How's the new project going?

 

Hi Freebs.

 

Making a start on this tomorrow.

 

 

Photograph courtesey of David Meaden

Edited September 10, 2013 by allan downes

[Stubby47]

Looks like the back end of a bus to me...

[Mythocentric]

 

But WHAT is wrong with that cow?

[Alister_G]

Landscape0008.jpg

 

But WHAT is wrong with that cow?

 

It's a triceratops?