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SouthernRegionSteam

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My usual apologies for the ridiculously sporadic nature of these blog entries; unfortunately updating this is not very high on my priority list as it takes a long time! That said, as it's the festive season and soon to be the start of a new year, I thought it would be good to start to tie up a few loose ends! I'm afraid the photos are a bit out of sequence, but I've hopefully layed it out in a more logical progression than I had actually done it at the time!

Back in February of 2016 (was it seriously that long ago?!), plans were afoot to tackle perhaps the most important structure on Sandy Shores; the lighthouse. I tasked my Dad with finding a suitable lump of wood, and within 10 minutes I walk into the garage to find this sat on the wood lathe:

 

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In the time it took me to make a cup of tea, this lump of wood was whittled down into something more cylindrical, in a flurry of wood shavings. In the photo below, you can see a parting chisel being used to mark the length:

 

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Whilst this C-shaped chisel was used to help form the taper from top to bottom:

 

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Which resulted in a rather nice final shape for the lighthouse. Note that the ends are yet to be parted off:

 

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After a long break focusing on other aspects of the layout (and also taking time to produce a video game soundtrack), it was about time I carried on with the next step; chiselling out the various openings. My carpentry skills leaves something to be desired, but a bit of careful work with a narrow wood chisel resulted in some appropriately sized apertures for the windows and door. Thankfully, whilst it's useful to keep the edges as neat as possible, the tidiness of the depth is not really important; as we'll be covering the whole lot in air drying clay shortly. Worthy of note is the importance of safety when doing work like this; the entire lighthouse was clamped (using an old t-shirt/cloth to prevent indentations/marks) in a vice, and I was incredibly cautious about handling the chisel in a way that meant my hands were always far behind the cutting point. As my old teacher told me, "You won't stab yourself if your hands aren't in the way of the pointy bit!"

 

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Work could now begin on covering the entire thing in air drying clay; with a thin layer applied on PVA, and done so fairly evenly. It was then smoothed with a wet finger; that said, I wasn't after a totally flat surface, as any small bumps would add a lot to make the finished stonework look more natural. This was then left to harden overnight, ready for the next stage. Thus the next day, work could recommence, and the first area to be tackled was the balcony section outside the lantern room. This required a stone supporting ring, which was quickly formed by rolling the clay to form a long cylindrical piece. To provide a bit more strength, the joint was lapped, although this needed to harden before any further work could be done.

 

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(Actually done far later (in March 2019), but included here for the sake of completeness!) To produce the horizontal mortar courses, I had originally intended to hold a craft knife horizontally in a small pin vice, raising it up for every mortar course. Unfortunately, the base of the lighthouse was not quite level, and the belt sander simply not powerful enough to sand it flat, so the whole lot was done by hand instead. This took many hours, split over two days, with plenty of long breaks in between to stave off insanity... and that's just the horizontal courses! If you look closely in the photo below, you should just be able to see some faint markings going up the entire tower to help keep everything level. I worked my way around the tower doing small sections at a time; using a short piece of card to help guide the craft knife. As the tower is tapered, any attempt to do larger lengths would result in a curved line; as it was there are a few wobbly lines, but nothing that looks out of place:

 

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The next challenge was to work out how to scribe the vertical mortar courses. Again, the tapering tower makes this more difficult than simply marking out every 10mm or so. but I was keen for something to be relatively straightforward; so a simple solution was needed. Fortunately, I came up with an idea (although in my haste, I forgot to take a photo!). On the top and bottom of the tower, a mark was made every 15 degrees (as it's a factor of 360 degrees, so there wouldn't be any odd sized gaps), these were then lightly joined with a mechanical pencil to give vertical divisions that I could base the stone lengths around. This results in slightly trapezoid shaped stones to account for the taper, and it was easy to offset alternating layers. The end result are perfectly matching stone courses all around the tower; I was pretty surprised myself to be honest! You can see in the photo below that all (over 700!) vertical courses have been scribed; and that now I am roughing up the courses and taking out small chunks to suggest wear and tear:

 

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In order to produce the stepped lower section on the lighthouse, what I should've done was produce this effect on the lathe when it was still a wooden base. Unfortunately, I realised far too late, and now had the unenviable task of forming the steps out of layers of clay strips and hundreds of tiny clay blocks. I suppose what also might've worked would be to cut off the lower section, and turn a new bit on the lathe, but oh well! The basic construction method is outlined below, and I think you'll agree; quite a tedious process! I start off by rolling clay out, and seperating them into strips, which are then scribed to form blocks. As you can see, it's important to cover all but the strip you are immediately using with clingfilm, to prevent the clay drying out prematurely:

 

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After hours of work, the various step levels are completed. It may not be the most elegant or efficient process, but it works; and that's the main thing! As you can see, I very quickly lost count of how many blocks I needed, but suffice to say, it is a lot!

 

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Much like the prototype at Spurn Point, the access door to this lighthouse is quite a ways up the tower because it sits in an area sometimes covered by high tides. That means it needed it's own access bridge. This was actually a very simple (if a little fiddly) build. It's actually made entirely of lollipop sticks; cut up finely with a hand-held chopper tool! There are a pair of longitudunal beams, onto which the slats are glued with PVA. Handrails are also fabricated from tiny pieces of lollipop sticks, and are glued to the outside edge of one of the longitudunal beams.

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This could all then be painted in a four step process; firstly a wash of black, then a brown wash, then a slightly thicker brown wash. Followed by a final weathering with a dry brush of "light sand". I always use Vallejo Model Color paints for this kind of work, as I find them incredibly easy to work with (and they seem to last forever despite being in tiny bottles)! Anyway, you'll see this technique explored in more detail in a later entry, but here's the finished result:

 

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May 2018, and with just a few days before Sandy Shores' first exhibition (at our family-run event), I wanted to progress the lighthouse further. I knew I wouldn't have time to paint it all, but I did make a start on a basic lantern room from plastruct sections and plasticard. This ended up being a temporary solution though, as we'll see shortly!

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After a long break, I came back to Sandy Shores in February 2019. One of the jobs I had in mind was to make more progress with the lighthouse. First on the list was to replace the original lantern room; which didn't quite look right to me. After a mock-up was made out of paper, I realised that the prototype at Spurn Point looked to have had a tapered lantern room (to match the taper of the tower I presume). Working off of a tiny photo (the only one I could find), I quickly mocked up another, and despite being such a minor change, it resulted in a significant improvement:

 

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Two octagonal plasticard rings were formed (using a template on a scrap bit of cardboard to keep things square), and the lower panels tapered and mitred. Uprights and two more rings would be needed to surround the glass panes, which can be seen in the photo below on the left side:

 

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The upright frames also had a mm cut out from the inside edge, and were assembled; using my drawings on the cardboard as a template:

 

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I had originally planned to form window surrounds with slithers of plasticard, but the desired effect could not be achieved easily. Thankfully, I stumbled across a post somewhere that had shown glazing bars immitated by simply scribing the outside of the "glass" with a craft knife. The effect is subtle, but works brilliantly for thinly framed panels:

 

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The lower panels however were not just simple flat metal sheets, they actually had some sort of pattern. Sadly the reference photo was too poor quality, so I opted to produce panels from really thin plasticard to sit on top of the existing ones. Seven out of the eight had a hole punched through the middle (using a hole punch), and the eighth panel had a tiny access hatch frame cut to fit, as well as the hatch itself which was formed by a multitude of tiny slithers of plasticard:

 

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Once the glue had dried on these panels, it attacked the ones with the hole in with a small spherical cutting implement on the end of my Dremel, to produce a sort of counter-sunk effect. These then had a pushpin pushed through them. In reality, these would be vents (presumably something to do with keeping the windows from fogging up, or simply ventilation?), but I did not fancy my chances of making tiny vent hoods!

 

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It wasn't just the lantern room that needed detailing. The tower had various window surrounds formed from stone, and these were actually produced not by scribing the clay, but by gouging out the clay and putting plasticard frames in place instead. This may sound counter-intuitive, but I wanted the edges to be relatively neat, and I think I would've struggled to get it looking this way with clay alone. Due to the curvature of the tower, these were held in place with rubber bands overnight; to give the PVA time to hold firmly.

 

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With an invite to what turned out to be a game-changing outing to the RMweb SWAG member's day in April 2019, I really wanted to get the lighthouse to a reasonable state of play. It was time to therefore carry out the next tedious task; painting! The photo (leftmost) shows a general undercoat of a mix of two Dulux tester pots - Perfectly Taupe, and Lemon Pie. These created a concrete-ish colour which I could use as a good starting point to build up the rest of the colours.

 
The middle photo shows the result of many many hours of painting variations of the same colour (mixed with a range of browns, whites, greys, and sand colours from Model Color). This is where the most experimentation took place, and where I found the greatest challenge in getting colours that were not so vastly different as to be out of place, but different enough to give some variation. In the end, some of the browns look a bit pink, and the dark greys look a bit blue (a common problem on this layout it seems!).


Finally, the last photo shows one of the various washes of colour I used afterwards to try and blend the colours together a bit better, and give some highlights and variation. The white here is the last one to go on (after a yellowish one, and has just been brushed on in the photo, awaiting immediate rubbing off with a kitchen roll to remove the worst of it. Judging by the prototype at Spurn, the close proximity to the sea creates a lot of salt deposits or something on the seaward side; hence this white streak. Painting has never been my strong point, but prototype reference photos do a lot to help.

 

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With a final wash of greens and a bit of black on the stepped section (where algae and seaweed builds up), the painting was pretty much as good as finished:

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And bringing you right up to date, just in time for Sandy Shores' visit to ExpoNG, in Swanley back in October, I decided it was about time that the railings were finished off. These are from a (I think Ratio) kit, and are plastic stanchions coupled with wire for the handrails. The plastic makes these incredibly wobbly and prone to damage, so it was somewhat of a labour of love to get them to look reasonably straight. The handrails were pre-bent by hand, and then threaded through the (glued) stanchions. These were then soldered together, and a bit of glue applied around the holes in the stanchions. It's reasonably sturdy, but it wouldn't take a lot to rip the handrails out of the clay, as the stanchions don't have a long "leg" with which to push them deep into the clay. Anyway, these were painted off-white, and left to dry overnight. Note the foghorns built from scrap plastic bits, and the roof formed from thin triangles of plasticard, with rain strips to cover the gaps! The windows were also finally installed; made from a rectangle of clear plastic packaging, and four frame pieces of plasticard. These were fitted in place (scraping excess clay off with a craft knife where necessary), and then any holes filled with, yup, more clay!

 

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And there we have it; the (almost) complete lighthouse. As you might be able to see, there is an LED in there, which is fitted to a cheap flashing unit, but it will be replaced at some point as it's not terribly realistic!
Hopefully I haven't missed off anything, but either way, I hope you've enjoyed this condensed (!) look at the building of Sandy Shores' lighthouse. I welcome any and all questions and comments down below.
Next time, I plan to show you the next building; the loco shed.


See you then!
Jam

 

 

 

 

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  • RMweb Gold

Hi Jam, well that to me captures all the best things about modelling in one single post. Ingenious, creative and combining different crafts and skills. The result is superb.

 

I hope you'll keep posting here, even if it does take a long time to write up entries like this one. It's a whole magazine article in itself (in fact I increasingly read the blogs like a magazine).

 

Happy christmas and best wishes for the new year!

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Jam

 

this looks good.  I like the colours, and the green is particularly effective.

 

I’m very surprised that you were able to stick plasticard to clay with PVA.  I hope they don’t “pop off” but if they do, I’d suggest precurving the plasticard (tape it to a used food or beer can of the right sort of diameter, fill can with boiling water, wait a few moments, drop in sink full of cold water) and then restick using something like MEK, poly cement or uhu.

 

I’m not aware of any easy solutions to your “unrealistic LED”, the real lights were permanently lit, and used a rotating lens & mirrors (with colour and black shades as required) to provide the “flash”, and the sectors of different colours.  I just had a look at the latest chart for Spurn, the lighthouses don’t appear to have coloured sectors, (though they might have previously) so that’s one less thing to worry about.

 

Maybe you can modify a flashing vehicle beacon, though it’s probably far too big!

 

hth

Season’s Greetings

Simon

 

 

 

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  • RMweb Gold
2 hours ago, Mikkel said:

Hi Jam, well that to me captures all the best things about modelling in one single post. Ingenious, creative and combining different crafts and skills. The result is superb.

 

I hope you'll keep posting here, even if it does take a long time to write up entries like this one. It's a whole magazine article in itself (in fact I increasingly read the blogs like a magazine).

 

Happy christmas and best wishes for the new year!

 

Many thanks, Mikkel!
I'm really glad you enjoyed it. Producing these blog entries is definitely time consuming, but it is rather nice to have a succint(ish!) entry comprising the entirety of one aspect of the layout, rather than a rambling topic which can make it hard to find posts you're looking for. It's also quite rewarding looking back from the early beginnings (i.e. a lump of wood) to the finished slender tower, and I'm hopeful that someone will find some inspiration and/or use for my ramblings!

I will do my best to be more proactive with this blog; it is the kind of thing I push back and then further back again, but often when I've done it I'll feel a sense of accomplishment!

Have a great Christmas and New Year!

 

1 hour ago, Simond said:

Jam

 

this looks good.  I like the colours, and the green is particularly effective.

 

I’m very surprised that you were able to stick plasticard to clay with PVA.  I hope they don’t “pop off” but if they do, I’d suggest precurving the plasticard (tape it to a used food or beer can of the right sort of diameter, fill can with boiling water, wait a few moments, drop in sink full of cold water) and then restick using something like MEK, poly cement or uhu.

 

I’m not aware of any easy solutions to your “unrealistic LED”, the real lights were permanently lit, and used a rotating lens & mirrors (with colour and black shades as required) to provide the “flash”, and the sectors of different colours.  I just had a look at the latest chart for Spurn, the lighthouses don’t appear to have coloured sectors, (though they might have previously) so that’s one less thing to worry about.

 

Maybe you can modify a flashing vehicle beacon, though it’s probably far too big!

 

Many thanks, Simon!
Having recently needed to bend a clear plastic roof for a shelter with a similar method, you are absolutely right about the plasticard window/door surrounds. Amazingly though, PVA seems to have stuck hard and fast. I do leave it for 24 hours to fully cure, which is likely why it's done so well. Come to think of it, I don't think I've used anything other than PVA or Revell Contacta (for plastic) in many, many years!

 

As the layout build was documented entirely on NGRM-online, there actually have been multiple suggestions for the lighthouse light; even including motorised examples! Needless to say, there is a hole drilled through the entire tower for the wiring to go through, but it's not at all straight; which would make a mechanical option a little tricky without a lot of surgery to the tower! That said, it is the only "proper" way to produce the effect; so I'm not going to rule it out for future modifications, and indeed I believe it was Ted Polet who actually drew up a design for such a mechanism for me! Oh, and there are definitely some scale flashing beacons for vehicles, but sadly they are usually too big or too fast.

Seasons greetings!

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