Scenery module with roadways, workshops and underbridges (OO)

[Dr.Glum]

Hello All,

 

My mission is to blodley go where this man has never been before.

(and that's not a typo. If it all goes wrong, it will be blodley . . . )

 

I want to show you how I get on with building some scenery based on foamboard. As progress on this module (no.9) may be patchy, I've started this new thread, rather than add it to the other scenery ones I have on the go at:

Module 8: http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php/topic/7090-railway-arches-and-workshops-plus-girder-road-bridge/

Module 7 (finished): http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php/topic/4578-railway-arches-with-workshops-underneath-with-lighting-4mm-scale/

 

I am now building the flat ground that the arches of module 8 will 'stand' on. The plan is to have a roadway coming out of the bridge that is part of Module 8 to the left, and to disappear into a bridge on the right. The triangular area between will be hard standing used by the under-arch workshops.

I have my loft and the layout drawn in CAD, so it was with fingers crossed I took dimensions from CAD to cut the first sheet of A1 size foamboard. In the photo below, the sheet is laid over the area it will be under. I'm starting to test the fit, which isn't easy as its true position will be 4.5 inches below the baseboard top.

 

If I'd started this work a year ago, I'd have tried making the module out of large sheets of brown corrugated card. I had found with some earlier work that, although the card has an alarming tendency to warp, I'd had some success taming that tendency by careful use of strengthening webs. Luckily my thinking changed last October when I finally bought my first 5mm foamboard. I was acting as porter to my wife while she shopped in Staples (Office Supplies). Lumped in with everything else she'd bought, she didn't particularly notice that I spent 8.80GBP on a pack of 2 A2 sheets of 5mm black foamboard. It took a bit of practice to master the art of cutting it cleanly and with square edges and without dents, but it was obviously superior to corrugated card in terms of stability, strength, weight and finish. However, it isn't a good idea to let the sun shine on it: it bows alarmingly towards the heat. (A 250mm length on my work table was in the oblique winter sun (30.1.2010) and raised its ends from the table by 6mm. Am I imagining it, or is it reluctant to go back after such an event?)

 

I knew I'd need some bigger sheets for future projects such as this one, so I hunted for suppliers on the web. I found several, but at the time (October 2009) the most competative for what I wanted was Artesaver (artesaver.co.uk) which is the trading name of Seawhite of Brighton, West Sussex. What sealed the choice was that there was no delivery charge on orders over 35GBP (Jan 2010 figure). I ordered online on Thursday 29th October and it was delivered mid-morning on Monday 2nd November. Pretty nifty I thought. I ordered my first greyboard at the same time. Obviously it's not economic to order small amounts at a time. I obtained:

10 sheet box of A1 5mm black foamboard at 18.70GBP

25 sheet box of A2+ 2mm Greyboard at 48.60GBP

(Prices were slightly higher (Vat change?) when I looked 30.1.2010)

It was all packaged in 2 strong packs and arrived undamaged. I have arranged to sell on some of both packs to a modelling friend.

 

Back to the theme: having cut out the upper sheet of the module (see top photo) I quickly found I couldn't progress far until I had detirmined the position of certain features, which meant more time in CAD on the computer and more measuring in the loft. I worked out how the supports or hangars were going to be, that would hold the module in position. I then found that to finish that job, I had to do detail design of how I was taking the road under the right hand underbridge. The track baseboard that side had an understrut 44mm deep and that did not leave enough clearance to run a double deck bus under it. The same day I had reluctantly decided to abandon provision of Faller roadway in this module (cost of vehicle chassis, extra effort, limited run, extremely limited space for return turning circles), but it did set me thinking. The road would 'duck under' the bridge. I could visualise the pavement continuing on the level with a railing, while the road went down. (I wish I could remember where I'm getting the childhood memories in South London for this feature.)

 

I needed to know exactly where this slope would be, because I would have to cut the upper sheet of foamboard before bonding to the lower sheet. I had no idea what curves could be put in the foamboard and what would look good in the space available, so I had to make a model. I made a test slope 2 inches wide. In the photo below, the cuts into the foamboard are at half inch intervals (marked with a dob of tippex). I found I could get the bending that I wanted with almost no residual force, by cutting about halfway through the board. I learnt to do this as carefully as possible, because if one cut is deeper than the others, the bend will 'concentrate' at that cut. That happened to the cut just to the right of the 2mm card spacer in the photo. The length of the two curves together is 180mm.

 

The test piece is built with the real dimensions I will be using, hoping that the resulting structure will be stiff enough not to bend between the support strips. The overall vertical height of the module is approximately 1 inch, made up of are two layers of foamboard at 11mm plus 14mm vertical spacers. The fixing points are screws up into the baseboard under-struts, via wooden spacer blocks a couple of inches high, plus a couple of locating blocks that have to be the whole 3.85 inches tall.

 

3.85" is the distance between the top of this scenery module and the underside of the baseboards. I have concocted a plan whereby I make spacers out of foamboard, glue these to the underside of the baseboard, and then put a locating screw through the scenery module into a wooden block in the bottom of the spacers. Don't look at me like that: I can't think of a better way that doesn't involve drilling holes at least 3.85" deep and using very long screws. (Experience teaches that that sort of nonsense leads to tears and an early bedtime.)

 

If this was going to work, I was going to have to make something that had two parallel surfaces exactly 3.85 inches apart. I cannot saw anything that accurately. Never. It's pathetic. Ask me to make a small block of wood that is square, with parallel sides and, one half day later, there you are sir, crap isn't it?

So my best shot (which has turned out OK as it happens) was to clamp two square planed pieces of wood at right angles to my table top, with the faces exactly (!) 3.85 inches apart, and use this as a temporary construction jig. I can cut the foamboard fairly accurately, and hope that Evostik Timebond can take up any irregularities. This is a part-made support spacer in the jig.

 

(Thank you for following this far. I expect I've already lost those waiting for a fascinating discussion of how Class 53 diesels had their fartnooflangyparts painted blue in the early 1990s.)

 

In the picture, the fourth side hasn't been glued in yet. The wooden block will sit on the surface of the scenery module and has a hole in it. In the hole will be a one inch nail which I can mark the foamboard with (for the screw hole), once I've decided where the spacer will be used. And how am I going to push the nail with a finger once the fourth side is on? Oops! Surgery needed.

 

Progress has been relatively swift, with of course, the usual triumphs, disasters and tantrums. After some strenuous crawling about under the layout, marking holes and drilling vertical holes (huh!), I reached an enjoyable stage of fitting up two layers of foamboard and trying out the arches on top.

 

 

I'm really rather pleased at how its coming along. It's payback for all that tedious measuring and test fitting. The arches module 8 sits exactly as it should. Hooray!

 

Ah, but. So I pack up in the loft, put the light out and come down the ladder. Start concertinaring the three ladder sections up when . . . . Woaaah!

 

The CAD design says the ladder will clear the scenery. However the distance between intersections of the crucial lines in the design is 0.8037 inches. Dread! Surveying my irregular loft and detirmining where baseboards are was an absolute nightmare. I spent several months refining the datum points and lines in three dimensions. In my loft, nothing is square, nothing is level, nothing is straight. Into that I have tried to impose baseboards that line up and are level.

 

I reckon that any point on my CAD design is probably within half an inch of where it really is in the loft. But I do not like testing that belief. So cummulative errors could mean I'd have to trim the edge of the scenery. I found it cleared, so I packed up and opened a beer. To be continued.

Cheers, Tony

[96701]

I'd have opened a beer after that marathon, as well. Looking good. I'm currently making scenery up as I go along, so I doubt it'll not look anything like as good as yours.

[Dr.Glum]

The view above was a bit of a cheat because the upper and lower sheets of foamboard were merely losely held together by the mounting screws. I've made some progress since, adding the internal structure to the base layer.

 

I don't want to build any curvature into the structure. The only flat surface in the house is one of the kitchen worktops! (Much muttering by SWMBO about the smell of glue: "put the fan on".) The image below shows work in progress. I had to go slowly as I needed to apply a reasonably thick bead of glue on the slightly irregular edges of the foam strips, but couldn't let those congeal before putting the parts together, else I risked having lumps of glue that might prevent the strips settling properly. So the glue took a while to set while the pieces were pressed together, which isn't the best way to use Evostik Timebond.

Offcuts of 19mm pine flooring held the base sheet down and flat, and the various blocks helped keep the strips upright while they set. The aim was to have the upper edges of the strips at a uniform 14mm above the base. Fat chance! But it has turned out good enough that I should get good strength when I glue the top on, forming the box beam.

 

The photo below shows the finished base with the 12 volt lighting cabling being installed. The bare base on its own weighs just 260g (grams). The feed comes in at the right, supplies two streetlights and a phone box (which have planned positions), and exits at the left. There it will continue on to feed the lights in the arches that sit above this module. There's a conflict to deal with here. The streetlights will be fitted at a very late stage, but I don't want any wires or connections outside the bottom of the box where they could damaged as I crawl under that part of the layout (to get to where I control the layout).

My solution is an upsidedown choc block for each item with a pilot hole cut in the lower surface so that you can get at the securing screws from underneath. When the module is much more advanced, I can trial fit the lampposts, and depending on exactly where they are, expand the cutouts so I can get hold of the wires and connect them in. The cabling is 2-core lighting flex, 0.5 sq.mm copper. The bare strands of copper that run through the choc blocks were soldered up solid before the blocks were threaded on.

 

Next step, glue the top on. But first, time to open a beer.

Cheers, Tony

[Chubber]

Tony - "I found I could get the bending that I wanted with almost no residual force, by cutting about halfway through the board. I learnt to do this as carefully as possible, because if one cut is deeper than the others, the bend will 'concentrate' at that cut."

 

 

Here is a simple depth cutting gauge made for foam board work from a pin from a UK 3-pin plug. If you are left handed, cut acoss the opposite diagonal.

 

Doug

 

 

[Dr.Glum]

Thank you, Chubber. Neat idea for depth control when scoring foamboard. I shall make one. I know I have an old pin in a wall cabinet in the garage: part of the collection of "useless rubbish" so despised by the ignorant e.g. SWMBO.

 

Now, where was I?

PLANNED 'intended; in accordance with, or achieved by, a careful plan made beforehand', says Chambers 20th Century Dictionary.

I thought these works of mine were planned. Where's the reminder about being complete, or don't leave anything out, eh? It's that weasle word 'careful' I suppose.

 

About ten minutes before I was going to stick the top layer to the base, I realised that I had forgotten the concept of lights in vehicles in the roadway. Doh, as usual. As it is only the middle and left of the module that will be positioned over my crawling hands-and-knees route, it turned out that only one more power feed was needed at this stage.

 

The photo shows an additional spur, and the spacer blocks I've stuck to each choc block. These will restrict the movement of the choc blocks when I'm pushing with a screwdriver from below. I find that Serious Glue is really strong on mixed materials, like the ? nylon ? of the choc block. However, it's not cheap, which makes it really annoying that the caps don't seem to seal too well. The previous tube I had became too solid to use before I'd used half of it.

 

I was undecided whether to bother with camber on the main road surface, so I left the decision until after I'd created the sloping roadway down the underpass. The road surface was thin black card, to whick I stuck 3 pages of Scalescenes cobbles. I cut some strips of 2mm thick greyboard to raise the centreline of the road and found some thinner card for secondary strips roughly half way across the remaining gap at each side. I scored and (slightly) folded a gutter strip 0.15inch wide on each edge, as this would be stuck flat to the 'ground'. I stuck the centreline strip along the underside of the road. After testing to see if I thought I could get the cambered roadway to follow the reverse curve of the underpass, I decided I would use camber (and not have to scrape the strip off again). I stuck the secondary spacing strips on at this stage.

 

I used PVA as the piece of roadway was more than 2 feet long and I needed the long set time while it was wet. This gave me time to put the glue on all the strips and edges, and yet still have some positioning time. If I did another slope, I'd put in a lot more support under the foamboard. In my zeal to make sure all the road edges were well stuck down on the slope sections, I pressed hard enough to deform the underlying foamboard. Buggrit! Over several days I kept looking at it and wondering about pulling up the road and remaking the underlying slopes. In the end I decided to fudge it, putting drain gratings in the middle of the two biggest depressions (not done yet). By the time the edging stone course was added, it all looked rather 'organic', and I was wise to leave it alone.

 

The punters will never get this view: your head would be half in the wall.

 

I won't be able to stick all the pavements in place until module 8 (the bridge and arches) is fixed to the layout. In the meantime, as shown above, I detailed the underpass that will dip under the (yet to be made) girder bridge on the south side of the module. I stuck the low side walls in and made the coping stones from 1mm card covered with a printed layer from the Scalescene's arches images. I find it tedious trimming off the sides of thin card layers: if you rush you'll likely remove too much and reveal the bare card. You'll also get a wavy edge (which I still achieved; see image above).

 

Another tedious job: cleaning up the fencing (Ratio no.425 'Wood lineside fencing, black', 4 lengths, total length 860mm). I was disappointed to find two moulding circles on each fence post: these had to be scapelled off. I only needed a scale height of 4ft or less so I removed the bottom rung, leaving three. Luckily this gave me enough straight post to 'plant' strongly in the ground. Maybe the designer was constrained by the width of the mould, but there's no significant length of post extending from the unaltered 4 rail fence. Seems a weakness to me. (I'm not looking forward to making a robust installation elsewhere on the layout where I have yet to put in a 2m (6 foot) run of 4 rail fencing.) Confession time: I havn't painted the fencing at all! It'll do for what I remember from my childhood: heavy timber, probably treated with some sort of tarry preservative, like they used to use on telegraph poles. None of this lot has had weathering applied yet: that's going to be a whole new can of worms for me. I'll have to do some experiments, before I touch any Scalescene covered surfaces.

 

The last image gives a hint of how things will be when the various modules are brought together.

 

Cheers, Tony

[Dr.Glum]

Progress at last! Real-world jobs have been stealing my spare time for over two months now. The ground on our landshare finally unfroze in March so we could start digging. The house has been topsy-turvy while the Solar PV panels were fitted to the roof and the solar heating panels relocated. All the pipework and cabling runs go through the loft where the railway is! All the stuff stored in the loft is still piled up around the layout. Bah!

 

In the meantime I've got on with the bombed out/derelict buildings on the west side of the module. This brought a whole new set of 'challenges'. Buggrit, no they weren't! I'm not at work now, so don't have to toe the corporate line; they were a new set of problems.

 

Looking west, frontage of nos.1, 3 and 5 Triangle Place.

 

I find that when you're faced with a lot of stuff which you have no experience of, you go into a sort of faff-about mode, where progress becomes very tentative and slow, decisions are put off, and other displacement activities start to occur. I label this as going piddlywiddly, as you piddle about from session to session, doing a little bit, but then going over it again differently, to no great effect, and so on.

 

The first new experience that sent me all piddlywiddly was weathering. I wrote some of it up in http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php/topic/12144-experiments-in-weathering-brick-paper-and-other-building-features/ but unfortunately (at the time of writing) this drew no responses about techniques that others use.

 

Then there was a need to make satisfactory stonework pillars and stone wall cappings. I used balsa, but was making a right mess of trying to carve uniform shapes. Deep piddlywiddly ensued. Eventually I fixed a large wood plane upside down with only a small amount of blade sticking through. I found I could draw lengths of balsa over the blade and achieve smooth and uniform surfaces. Obviously, multiple passes were needed. Rather than use varnish like last time (it took too many coats to hide the surface features of balsa), I tried a 50% dilution of white glue (PVA) brushed on. That changed the nature of the surface (possibly an improvement, but I wouldn't know until I painted it), but unfortunately didn't fill the pits in the surface of the balsa.

 

So I spread polyfilla on the pits (or most of them) and rubbed down with emory paper when dry. Great improvement, but there were variations in surface texture. Should I have applied over 100% of the surface? That seemed a bit OTT, so I hadn't. Anyway, bash on. First coat was Humbrol 71, a pale brown. Then a thin wash of Phoenix 'Weathered Concrete' - grey.I wasn't fully happy, but I have to recognise that most visitors are only going to see this at a distance of at least a metre. After a lot of thinking (and a dollop of piddlywiddly), I represented the sawn off metal railings that had gone for 'Salvage' in the war with a black felt tip. I'd practiced the regular spacing on a bit of paper, but hadn't thought about the need to keep an absolute straight line, so I'm not presenting an end-on photo! Finally, some soot weathering powder along the top, to kill the contrast.

 

Unfortunately I had stuck the coping stones on before I practiced further and found I could produce much smaller dots with the black felt tip. Bah! Then double bah and buggrit, because it dawned on me that I could have avoided all the nonsense with polyfilla and so on, if I had drawn an overlay (grey background and little black squares in an absolutley regular array) in CAD, printed it on paper and then pasted it on. At that point in the evening I opened a beer and sat down to watch a railway video.

 

So here are a couple more pictures of the more-or-less finished buildings.

General view of the backs of the houses

 

And again . . .

 

And finally, front gardens, or what's left off them . . .

 

Cheers, Tony

[Dave777]

See, this is a problem with RMWeb because tucked away on some of the forums I visit less regularly are gems like this.

 

Nice bit of work that, I like the room/basement that's been plastered as a contrast to the others, and the damp marks going up the walls too. The only thing I would add is some grass on the former gardens - the sand/dirt looks great, but wouldn't there be some growth in there, especially as you've got the odd tuft peeking out of the old building floors...?

 

Apart from that minor point - very nice indeed.

 

 

[Oldddudders]

See, this is a problem with RMWeb because tucked away on some of the forums I visit less regularly are gems like this.

 

And I had also missed that post, despite using Active Content exclusively - and having more time to spend on RMWeb than many! Dr Glum's modelling is really inspirational for those of us who try to see a model as rather more than just nice trains. Much learnt here!

[Southernboy]

Very nice, detailed work Mr Glum, I don't know how I've missed your threads before. This looks like one of those models which is going to have real character.

 

Do you have a track plan or over-view of your railway somewhere? (sorry if I've missed it)

 

I identify with your comments on 'faff-about mode' and it made smile - although hopefully such periods are usually balanced by bursts of intense and focused productivity

[Guest jim s-w]

Hi Tony

 

Progress looks good so far.

 

I too thought long and hard about camber. In the end I decided against for 2 reasons

 

1. the camber is actually about 1 in 40 or what equates to 1mm in 4mm scale on a typical road.

 

2. Small vehicles are not big enough to show this while large vehicles sit level and dont cant over. Its common to see camber on models set far too steeply and model buses sitting cranked over, neither of these things bear any relation to the real worlds I am afraid.

 

Rule 1 - model what you actually see not what you know!

 

Cheers

 

Jim

[Dr.Glum]

Hello gents,

 

Thank you for the kind replies.

To southernboy: I've now created a layout post in Layouts Forum.

My link

 

To jim s-w: Mmm, camber.

I've thought for a couple of days about your points. First off, yes, I had to guess a central height and settled on 6 scale inches as my main thought was "if I'm going to all that trouble, I certainly want it to show up in photos". It was also handy to use 2mm strips of card for the central riser. On the second point about whether you can notice vehicles leaning over, I'm not so sure that I agree with you for the period I'm modelling (late 50's, early 60's). I'm going to have to trawl through the books again having a look.

 

As a schoolboy bus rider in South London, I think I can remember the bus leaning leftwards, particularly approaching bus stops. But maybe that was an effect of badly maintained gutters. On reflection I also now realise that, in respect of my side road on the model, I was happy to give that the same central rise as the wider main road, because I was influenced (unconsciously) by memories of high cambers on cobbled side roads in central Liverpool in the 60s. For some reason I have vivid visual memories of some around Central Station. I wonder if there were variations both regionally and in time period? Interesting.

 

To Dave777: Grass? Are you mad? I've not done grass before. I'm coming over all piddlywiddly at the mere thought of it.

Maybe it's something I'll come back to, but there's been enough experimentation on this module, and I feel I've been lucky to get away with it all so far. On a more serious note, bombsites were not always weedy and overgrown. Admittedly, it would be a seasonal thing, but I can remember playing as a kid on ground that, although exposed earth, was as dry and hard as concrete and just as bare. Weeds might grow in corners of course. Mind you, if the area was suitable for play, then the actions of kids feet and balls and bikes and scooters and skates helped to preseve the bareness. I can remember groups of us walking a plot like a line of crime scene officers looking for evidence, but in our case picking up stones that might interfere with our wheels.

 

Among the faults with my model that we are discussing, is the fact that I've put two terracotta path edging pieces broken away from one of the paths. This was sheer showing off: in reality in the austerity days after the war, almost everything was of value to someone, and it was rare to see anything laying around. That's why my basements are so bare. The remnants of the floor joists and all other wood would be long gone for salvage or firewood, for example.

 

Anyway, enough wittering,

Cheers, Tony

[jeff alvey]

For what it's worth as a schoolboy (40's & 50's) I too remember extreme cambers when on buses at bus stops (west London) even to the point that I got very interest in the "tip over test" that was put on TV at the driver training school.

As I remember it buses had to go over 45 degrees before they "lost it" but were so low center of gravity that it didn't happen.

 

Regrading bomb sites - the ground was as hard as iron (I too have scabby knees syndrome)but "our ones" did have grass (weeds) around the edges.

[Dr.Glum]

Hello Jeff Alvey,

 

Ah! Someone else with the same boyhood worries! I wish I had known about the tipping test when I worried about the bus falling over when full of passengers in the morning rush. I'm staring at a photo of a pre-war LT1137 London bus on the Chiswick tilt table. The table is at 30 degrees and the bus indicator reads just under 40 degrees.

 

I expect I should put this in Wheeltappers, but I'm the OP, so yah boo sucks. There was a particular right hand turn at the traffic lights outside Forest Hill station, on the South Circular. I became particularly neurotic about it, at the age of 11 or 12, because of the way the bus would heel over. My worst-case scenario was if the traffic was flowing and the lights were green and the driver took it into his head to take a run at them in case they changed. It became an anxiety theme in dreams for some years while I was growing up.

Cheers, Tony

 

PS I've had a look through some bus books since the last post I made and have found quite a lot of instances where the bus is leaning leftwards even though the camber does not show up well in the photo. Some are quite marked. The browsing also reminded me that in the days of light traffic and the presence of a lot of unpredictable traffic (horse-drawn, hand pushed carts, three-wheeler vans powered by 50cc 2-strokes {I exaggerate}), large vehicles tended to keep away from the kerbs more than they can nowadays, and the tipping effect near the crown of the road is much less. So I'd be interested to know what era jim s-w was writing about.

[Chubber]

Hello gents,

 

Among the faults with my model that we are discussing, is the fact that I've put two terracotta path edging pieces broken away from one of the paths. This was sheer showing off: in reality in the austerity days after the war, almost everything was of value to someone, and it was rare to see anything laying around. That's why my basements are so bare. The remnants of the floor joists and all other wood would be long gone for salvage or firewood, for example.

 

Anyway, enough wittering,

Cheers, Tony

 

Herewith a bit of bombed out terrace building modelling, with the tarred paper covering that was put up on ex-interior walls, is that something you'd go for?

 

 

 

 

Doug

[Pugsley]

Lovely colour and texture there Doug - if it wasn't for the breeze block in the bottom picture, it'd be very hard to tell it was a model B) B)

[Chubber]

Lovely colour and texture there Doug - if it wasn't for the breeze block in the bottom picture, it'd be very hard to tell it was a model B) B)

 

Thanks, Martin, not an attempt at hi-jacking, I remember [just] shored-up buildings still like this in Portsmouth in the early 50's, with the coating torn and flapping.

 

D

[Dr.Glum]

Hi Doug,

 

Oh yes, I'd go for that. Very enjoyable to look at a picture like that. What is the vegetation made from please - I'd like to have a go at that.

(By the way, I cannot see you first picture - it's an empty frame. The picture id is NO WAIT! it has appeared. Please ignore) Now I can enjoy both pictures.

 

Cheers, Tony (OP)

[Chubber]

Hi Doug,

 

Oh yes, I'd go for that. Very enjoyable to look at a picture like that. What is the vegetation made from please - I'd like to have a go at that.

(By the way, I cannot see you first picture - it's an empty frame. The picture id is NO WAIT! it has appeared. Please ignore) Now I can enjoy both pictures.

 

Cheers, Tony (OP)

 

Thank you Tony, the vegetation is little bits of Woodland Scenics Foliage in Light [51] green and Dark [53] green and some bristles from the carpet brush. The brick rubble is DAS clay rolled out on baking silicon and then cut through with a table knife into narrow strips.

 

Doug