Pragmatic Pre-Grouping - Mikkel's Workbench

[Simond]

Mikkel,

 

can’t claim any expertise here, but...  (And in 7mm)
 

I usually blitz the brickwork in rattle can red primer, then maybe touch a few bricks with lighter or darker colours.  When all is dry, I smear slightly watered-down ready-mixed filler over it and wipe off with a barely damp sponge.  It seems to work, especially with some track dirt at low levels, and a misting of smoke overall.
 

let’s call it “impressionist”...

 

hth

Simon

[Mikkel]

Many thanks Simon. That one was not on my radar, think I will experiment with that before doing my next brick building.

 

So that makes five methods for mortar lines that I have come across so far:

1. paint all over in brick colour, then add pale wash (some people wipe off excess afterwards)
2. paint all over in brick colour, then add filler (as per Simon's method above, and Phil's blog)
3. paint all over in brick colour, then rub in powder/talc (discussed here)
4. paint all over in mortar colour, then use pastels/soft colour pencils on bricks (e.g. here)
5. paint all over in mortar colour, then dry brush bricks

 

I remember using colour pencils (method 4) on Slaters' sheet when I did the platform brickwork for the Bay:

 

 

 

 

But I later found it didn't work on all types of sheet, so started using the wash method - this is a before and after of the goods depot walls:

 

 

 

It looks OK from normal viewing distance, but as mentioned I do find the wash process unpredictable and hard to control. Here for example is a close-up of when I did the weighbridge, mortar lines are too thick:

 

 

Of course the nature of the sheets will also affect the final appearance. I favour the South Eastern Finecast sheets, but I've noticed that the paint seems to behave differently on newer supplies of these. Or maybe my mix has changed, or I'm just getting older!

 

Edited August 22, 2020 by Mikkel

[Simond]

Mikkel,

 

it seems to me that the mortar lines are way too wide, compared to the brick sizes, in the sheets in your last post.  
 

They’re almost the same height, whereas you’d really want 3”  of brick and half an inch of mortar.  I think it will be very difficult to get a consistent close-up mortar appearance with that.  
 

atb

Simon

[Mikkel]

Yes, it is dawning upon me that this may be an issue. Although it is probably not helping if I am adding too much wash.

 

Jim SW used the SEF sheets for this structure on New Street, and I have always admired it. However, looking closely he seems to have done little in the way of mortar lines, which of course is another option: http://www.p4newstreet.com/lnwrbuilding

 

Edited August 22, 2020 by Mikkel

[Stubby47]

That building of Jim's, plus his mantra of "build what you see", is what got me started on modelling buildings.

[Donw]

Another option you missed is to paint all over with mortar colour then go over with fine sandpaper to remove the paint off the bricks leaving some in the mortar lines . It also tends to flatten the surface. Embossed brick sheet often the bricks are more like rounded  bumps. You then need to attend to the bricks perhaps a thin wash and highlighting some bricks.

There is also the question of mortar colour in industrial sites it often looked blackish to me this is prior to the clean air acts etc.

 

That building of Jim's is magnificent. That paddlock reminded me one of the things that first blew me away when first looking on RMweb was Julia Adams doing one on the goods shed of her 2mm Highclere layout.

 

Don

[Simond]

I like Don’s suggestion - it will flatten the whole sheet (probably with some variation whether deliberate or not!) and make the mortar much less obvious.  
 

unfortunately I doubt it will resolve the mortar line width entirely, but perhaps in conjunction with a darker mortar colour?

 

atb

Simon

Edited August 22, 2020 by Simond

[Mikkel]

23 hours ago, Donw said:

Another option you missed is to paint all over with mortar colour then go over with fine sandpaper to remove the paint off the bricks leaving some in the mortar lines . It also tends to flatten the surface. Embossed brick sheet often the bricks are more like rounded  bumps. You then need to attend to the bricks perhaps a thin wash and highlighting some bricks.

 

Thanks Don, another approach to try out. The bricks would then be bare of paint, but could perhaps be dry-brushed.

 

Ironically, one reason I like the SEF sheets is that rounded look of the bricks, which gives the structures a less crisp and slightly worn look. IIRC Jim remarked the same once. Think I will also experiment with what he seems to have done, namely not do any mortar lines as such, but just a thin wash or two to tone the brickwork down. 

 

Will leave the weighbridge largely as is so that it matches the look of the stable block next to it, but these ideas will be very useful for a second module I'm considering, including this warehouse. 

[Stubby47]

Just to add to the confusion,  this one building has a wide variety of mortar colours and depths.

 

For example, the first floor part of the side wall has mortar flush with and much lighter than the bricks, the central block of bricks has virtually no mortar showing and the upper brickwork has very definite black mortar.

 

 

Essentially,  whatever you do can be considered correct, even if you mix styles/finishes on the same building. 

[mullie]

A wash of thinned Indian ink can be useful to tone things down and make mortar lines less apparent.

 

Martyn

 

 

[MikeOxon]

One method I've used for fine lining on coaches, although not so far on buildings, is to paint the main colour with enamel and then make a very dilute water paint of the lining colour. 

 

Surface tension holds the water paint in the cracks and, when dry, leaves a little pigment in place.  It works well with gold lining and might be worth a try with white mortar.

[Worsdell forever]

4 hours ago, Stubby47 said:

Just to add to the confusion,  this one building has a wide variety of mortar colours and depths.

 

For example, the first floor part of the side wall has mortar flush with and much lighter than the bricks, the central block of bricks has virtually no mortar showing and the upper brickwork has very definite black mortar.

 

 

Essentially,  whatever you do can be considered correct, even if you mix styles/finishes on the same building. 

Admit it, you took that photo because the sign in the window could say toilet...

[DGO]

5 hours ago, Stubby47 said:

Just to add to the confusion,  this one building has a wide variety of mortar colours and depths.

 

For example, the first floor part of the side wall has mortar flush with and much lighter than the bricks, the central block of bricks has virtually no mortar showing and the upper brickwork has very definite black mortar.

 

 

Essentially,  whatever you do can be considered correct, even if you mix styles/finishes on the same building. 

I don't think the top floor has black mortar I think the first floor has been pressure washed or sand blasted and they didn't bother to remove the pollution from the upper floor or the side of the building, often mortar will take in different amounts of atmospheric pollution than the surrounding brick, block or stonework.

[Stubby47]

Well, yes, I meant the mortar was black now, but wasn't necessarily black when new.

 

 

[Stubby47]

2 hours ago, Worsdell forever said:

Admit it, you took that photo because the sign in the window could say toilet...

 

(Breathe, just let it go, let it go) .

[Mikkel]

11 hours ago, Stubby47 said:

Just to add to the confusion,  this one building has a wide variety of mortar colours and depths.

 

Thought I recognized that picture! We'll be expecting you to model all three colours of mortar 

 

Incidentally, that's just the kind of joint build I was talking about earlier. 

[Collett]

Standard mortar between bricks is 10mm +/-3mm, 3/8" in old money which is 0.125mm at 4mm/ft or 0.005".  Black mortar would have been lime or Portland Cement mixed with ash, which was free and plentiful to the railways.  Sand cost money to dig and transport

 

I have finished my English Bond brick paper for the main wall sections of the Winchcombe weighbridge.  The problem is the Queen bricks that provide the correct spacing of the Headers once the row has turned the corner and goes from Stretcher face to Header.  While Inkscape is great for sticking node to node as a vector diagram, it does mean that each brick (or rather the mortar on two sides of each brick) consists of 6 data points and the lines between them, so each time a 'brick' is duplicated or copied those 6 data points have to be recalculated - quite a lot of computing which makes it a slow job.  I believe GIMP may be better suited, but that's another piece of software to learn.

 

 

Etching has been problematic.  Trying to use UV sensitive photo etch resist which involves a number of factors any one of which can impact on the result. So, I have just taken delivery of some etch resistant ink - StazOn, a fast drying solvent based ink, and I can theoretically paint/draw the etch resist straight onto the brass with a lining pen and brush.   The alternative is to get a hi-res mono laser printer - tempting but a bottle of StazOn is 1/20th the price.

 

 

[simonmcp]

1 hour ago, Collett said:

Standard mortar between bricks is 10mm +/-3mm, 3/8" in old money which is 0.125mm at 4mm/ft or 0.005".  Black mortar would have been lime or Portland Cement mixed with ash, which was free and plentiful to the railways.  Sand cost money to dig and transport

 

I have finished my English Bond brick paper for the main wall sections of the Winchcombe weighbridge.  The problem is the Queen bricks that provide the correct spacing of the Headers once the row has turned the corner and goes from Stretcher face to Header.  While Inkscape is great for sticking node to node as a vector diagram, it does mean that each brick (or rather the mortar on two sides of each brick) consists of 6 data points and the lines between them, so each time a 'brick' is duplicated or copied those 6 data points have to be recalculated - quite a lot of computing which makes it a slow job.  I believe GIMP may be better suited, but that's another piece of software to learn.

 

 

Etching has been problematic.  Trying to use UV sensitive photo etch resist which involves a number of factors any one of which can impact on the result. So, I have just taken delivery of some etch resistant ink - StazOn, a fast drying solvent based ink, and I can theoretically paint/draw the etch resist straight onto the brass with a lining pen and brush.   The alternative is to get a hi-res mono laser printer - tempting but a bottle of StazOn is 1/20th the price.

 

 

I am not sure but wouldn't it be possible to do the 'mortar' as a background and the bricks as the overlay so all it has to calculate is the bricks. In Illustrator you can 'combine' the bricks to cut down the file size. Simon

[Mikkel]

1 hour ago, Collett said:

Standard mortar between bricks is 10mm +/-3mm, 3/8" in old money which is 0.125mm at 4mm/ft or 0.005".  Black mortar would have been lime or Portland Cement mixed with ash, which was free and plentiful to the railways.  Sand cost money to dig and transport

 

Thanks for that, very informative. It's interesting to see the differences in photos. Below are two GWR weighbridges (South Lambeth and Winchcombe). Big difference in appearance of mortar lines:

 

 

RD11005.  The Weigh Bridge and Weigh House at Winchcombe on the Gloucestershire & Warwickshire Ralway. by Ron Fisher, on Flickr

 

Edited August 24, 2020 by Mikkel

[Collett]

3 hours ago, Mikkel said:

 

Thanks for that, very informative. It's interesting to see the differences in photos. Below are two GWR weighbridges (South Lambeth and Winchcombe). Big difference in appearance of mortar lines:

 

 

RD11005.  The Weigh Bridge and Weigh House at Winchcombe on the Gloucestershire & Warwickshire Ralway. by Ron Fisher, on Flickr

 

 

Blimey, looks like stone mullions on those South Lambeth windows, very posh.  I take it this is the two weighing machines office, (one either side of the building) at the South Lambeth Goods Depot site, so a different thing altogether to its poor country cousin at Winchcombe.  I'd be interested to know the date of the South Lambeth site, rails in that area were London Chatham & Dover Rly on the 1892-1914 maps, the site with its corner facing Ceylon Street being filtration beds and a reservoir https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/#zoom=18&lat=51.48063&lon=-0.14298&layers=168&b=1 later https://maps.nls.uk/view/102903175#zoom=5&lat=5535&lon=3643&layers=BT 

Also I see it's Flemish bond on the South Lambeth Goods Depot brickwork.

Edited August 24, 2020 by Collett
Garbled English

[MikeOxon]

There have been musings before on the various skills learned during railway modelling - bricklaying needs to be on the list!

[Mikkel]

16 minutes ago, Collett said:

I'd be interested to know the date of the South Lambeth site, rails in that area were London Chatham & Dover Rly on the 1892-1914 maps, the site with its corner facing Ceylon Street being filtration beds and a reservoir https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/#zoom=18&lat=51.48063&lon=-0.14298&layers=168&b=1 later https://maps.nls.uk/view/102903175#zoom=5&lat=5535&lon=3643&layers=BT 

Also I see it's Flemish bond on the South Lambeth Goods Depot brickwork.

 

The weighbridge structure in question would be from the 1913 development of GWR South Lambeth Goods. Will PM you some photos.

 

For various photos and discussion on GWR South Lambeth Goods and LBSCR Battersea wharf, see this thread:  

 

[Collett]

2 hours ago, MikeOxon said:

There have been musings before on the various skills learned during railway modelling - bricklaying needs to be on the list!

 

You can say that again.  Since so many railway buildings (and the surrounding architecture) were built of brick then some understanding of the mechanics of brickwork has to be useful.  The human eye is attuned to looking for and seeing patterns, and brickwork certainly comes into that category.   

[Mikkel]

My wife and I had a deep and meaningful conversation yesterday. Meanwhile I pondered whether GWR weighbridge doors open inwards or outwards.

 

The former, it seems: http://www.fairfordbranch.co.uk/Witney_weighbridge.jpg

 

[Compound2632]

Exterior doors generally open inwards to deprive the would-be burglar of access to the hinges.