Focalplane's Workbench (mostly 7mm)

[Focalplane]

The shed's windows require a special treatment because they can be viewed from inside as well as outside, so I have designed a sandwich using two York Model Making frames and a "glass" insert.  The latter is actually from a pack of overhead slide film salvaged from my working days and saved for a rainy day, though as the photo shows, there are no clouds today!

 

Here is a sandwich ready to be carefully glued with polystyrene cement along the edges:

 

 

I have nine to make.

 

Meanwhile the shed has received a coat of Halford's grey primer which will be the basis of the "dirty concrete" exterior.  The interior will be whitewashed with basic emulsion paint and then dirtied.

 

The bothy components can't be found so they will have to be added later.  The smoke ducting is being readied using plastikard.  I started it with white card which was a stupid error as this must the the blackest part of the model!

 

The insert brickwork around the windows will be done with printed brick paper.  This may be quite tricky but at least I can print more brick paper should I need to.

 

The roof design is still in my head but will follow the standard North Light design.

 

A good afternoon's work except that Gael Monfils managed to lose his match at the French Open.

[Focalplane]

A disappointing day as I was hoping to do some spray painting.  But with La Tramontane blowing with gusts up to 60 kph most of the paint would never have reached its target, even within the spray booth set up on the second floor loggia.  Tomorrow may be calmer.  I have glued the nine windows together and printed some trial brick paper, but none of these can be installed until more painting is done.

 

I also spent time looking for the plywood pieces of the bothy walls and roof, but only found the offcuts from cutting them out.  At least I know they exist, but where?

Edited June 6, 2017 by Focalplane

[Simond]

I'm betting it was calmer there than Borth-y-gest!!!

 

It's still blowing hard down in Kent, however, the channel is now blue-grey with white bits, rather than all-white...

[Focalplane]

I'm betting it was calmer there than Borth-y-gest!!!

 

It's still blowing hard down in Kent, however, the channel is now blue-grey with white bits, rather than all-white...

 

I just looked at the France Météo website and Calais is windier than here in the south.  My problem is that my second/top floor apartment faces the north west wind full on.  We did have a great sunset though!

 

I did risk a bit of spray painting this evening but more paint blew over me than the model!

[coachmann]

I just looked at the France Météo website and Calais is windier than here in the south......  I did risk a bit of spray painting this evening but more paint blew over me than the model!

Good job your not modelling the diesel era....You'd have been spraying 'till you were blue in the face...  

Edited June 6, 2017 by coachmann

[Focalplane]

Just breezy today so progress has been made with the first brick inset, window and door:

 

 

It all looks rather clean at the moment, but I think the effect will be enhanced with some dirty weathering.  The first insert took some time to complete but the remaining 8 should be easier.

 

 

The window effect (dark grey frame on clear film on white frame) has the desired "look" while the door needs a brass knob, otherwise how does it open?

 

I have a sign copied from Monument Lane Shed to add later.  It was still hanging on the wall after WWII.

 

--------

 

Construction details:

 

Shell - plywood with boxwood details

Brick paper - PaperBrick "Old Red"

Window and door - York Model Rail, painted with "bumper grey paint"

[Focalplane]

A beautiful day, perfect for painting but also the beach, so not as much progress as I would have liked on the engine shed.  However, the photos do show some advance on the previous post.

 

 

 

A couple more windows have been added, then part of the interior has received a white distemper effect, using a typically rough French paint brush to stipple the typical poor quality French/German white emulsion on the inside walls.  The white exterior wall will be the interior wall of the bothy,in case you were wondering.  And I have yet to find the bothy walls and roof, despite a long search.

 

Next I started to apply the Slater's paving slabs to the interior of the shed floor.  These will also act as a register for the shed when placed on the layout.  This is one building that really needs to be easily removed, particularly on a scenic test track for kit built locos.

 

This is very much a work in progress with the rear wall having windows but no whitewash, the other wall that is visible having whitewash but no windows.  Maybe it will all come together tomorrow.

[Focalplane]

More work on the Legge Lane engine shed today. The shed floor is finished, painted with an appropriate "oily black", while all the windows are in and the interior walls crudely white washed.  I found the three "cast iron" pillars I made over a year ago, but not the bothy walls and roof.  The entire building needs some heavy weathering but this will now have to wait until I find the missing parts.  The roof, also, needs to be completed, together with the smoke ducts.  But it looks like I may now switch to Penmaenpool Module 1 baseboard.  More ground cover can be added when I feel like doing it.

 

 

 

 

The first photo shows the mess that is Legge Lane at the moment, the second the interior, and the third an "atmospheri shot through one of the rear windows.

[Focalplane]

A different engine shed construction for Penmaenpool.  Although no longer existing, several photographs taken during the 1950s and early 1960s give a good indication of its size and design.  Built of corrugated steel sheeting and timber with a slate roof, the simple two road shed was in good condition up until the line closed.

 

While scaling the front of the shed from a particularly good, almost head on photo, I started to think about how to construct the model and have decided on a hybrid structure using brass strip and angle (available from the local bricolage) for the skeleton and boxwood and plastikard for the skin.

 

Soldering the brass skeleton took a lot of heat but a solid front was put together, leaving me sweating in an early summer heatwave.  This was to be as far as I would go for the time being, but as I had the other materials to hand, I have now completed it ready for painting.  The sides and rear, as well as the ridge roof, will have to wait while I start on the engine shed module baseboard.  I should explain that working out the size of the shed was critical to placing it on the board.  I have decided to add the foreman's cottage (now Victoria Villa and in private hands).

 

[Focalplane]

The back of the front of the engine shed is as important to show as the front!

 

[Focalplane]

I went out early this morning to cool off from the current heatwave hitting southern France and had a hard think about modelling priorities for the next few months.  Lots of people are promising to show up and even one extra baseboard module is going to be an inconvenience within what is a not very large apartment, so I have decided to delay baseboard construction until October and focus on smaller projects such as coaches, locos and buildings for Penmaenpool.  Legge Lane can also be included in the list of "to dos".

 

To this end, and because I have just finished one wall of the engine shed for Penmaenpool, I think it would be good to complete it and have something tangible.  Other module 1 buildings can follow in due course.

 

Also posted on the Penmaenpool and Legge Lane topics.

[Focalplane]

A day and a half later, the rear wall of Penmaenpool's engine shed is ready for priming and painting:

 

First the outsides of front and rear.  The corrugated iron panels have been cut to be a nominal 4 foot wide with a length-ways join two thirds up from the ground, as shown in prototype photos.  They are purposefully irregular, again following the prototype.  When painted and weathered the panels would look better, I assure you!  I am also considering adding US HO rivet heads for the numerous bolts that hold the panels in place.  Another "maybe I should buy a sheet for who knows when" purchase while working in Calgary.  More on this when OI actually do it!

 

 

And now the interior walls.  There is no prototype information and as someone said about the engine shed, you enter a Stygian Gloom, so no details are really necessary.  The copper clad 4mm sleeper strips just happened to be available!

 

 

Next the walls, which will have three windows on the track side and only two on the other side, as far as I can tell from archived photos.

 

The roof tiles will have to wait as Slaters say they are out of stock at the moment.  A call to Derbyshire is necessary!

[Focalplane]

Three more views of the two end walls placed on the engine shed footprint:

 

 

 

 

The 57XX is sitting low but has a low chimney profile anyway.  Hence the gap to the top of the doors.

 

This evening I started cutting the brass strips for the sides, then realized that hacksaws after ten PM are not neighbour friendly!  And everyone has their windows wide open as it continues to be hot.  So hot my Roket CA glue was not behaving itself between applications.

 

The brass strips, by the way, have a 7mm x 2.5mm profile.  The downside is that they have been dipped in lacquer which has to be removed before soldering and glueing.  I remember many years ago (~1959) dipping brass strips in lacquer for Remington typewriters that fitted around the space where you could see the type keys moving to and fro from the paper.  What ever happened to typewriters!  We did thousands of those strips, using a jig set up with matchsticks to hold the strips while being dipped.  99.99% will have been scrapped.

[Focalplane]

Next, the engine shed side nearest the main line.  There is no side-on view but oblique photos show three windows in a row.  But at what height and what spacing along the side?

 

A vague memory of trigonometry and vanishing points came to mind and this was the result:

 

 

All three windows are the same height and the same size.  A photo of one of them shows that they were square framed with four vertical panes.  Using an approximate vanishing point it is possible to estimate the relative height of the windows between ground level and the roof's guttering.  Unfortunately the ground level is partially hidden by a grassy bank, but the window frames and guttering provided enough information to find the photo's vanishing point of the shed wall.

 

The horizontal spacing of the windows was not so easy and had to be estimated.  The two drain pipes are not spaced at equal thirds along the shed side, as the central section is larger than the two end ones.  Likewise the windows are not centrally located within the spaces.  Using some guesswork the actual position of the windows was ascertained with a reasonable degree of accuracy.

 

The side is being constructed using brass strips, one vertical at each end, four horizontal strips between them.  The windows will fit between the two inner strips.  More tomorrow!

 

Edit to add:  the values on the photo are not to 7mm scale but measured off a print of the enlargement.

Edited June 16, 2017 by Focalplane

[coachmann]

Window height can be obtained by dividing them into the height of the side. Unless you are building your own frames, you would have to make the window apertures to match available etched window frames.  This is what I had to do at Carrog.

[raymw]

 

Window height can be obtained by dividing them into the height of the side....

Not true for the photo above.

[Focalplane]

Larry

 

I am building my own frames.  They are not exactly window frames as they are mostly hidden by the corrugated cladding.  A photo will show what I mean later today.

 

Raymw

 

Surely it is true if you use the vanishing point lines as shown in the photo?  If not, what do you suggest?

[raymw]

The comment was directed towards window height. as the camera is not positioned square on to the wall, then perspective has effect. It is easy to correct in gimp/whatever, for parallel lines, usually on verticals, but it does not properly correct for other aspects. I've seen plenty of instances where folk think they have it sorted, whereas they haven't, including articles in magazines showing how to calculate height of signals, etc. A simple test :- take some photos of a building near you, one you can measure (brick built, say), from a few different locations and then correct it using your preferred method, see what and where your errors lie. But, working from a single photo, as above, with an unknown camera lens, not knowing if image has been post processed/ rising front camera/whatever, the best you can do is an educated guess. Tending a bit more towards the educated, instead of the guess, may give a more accurate result, but that still may look wrong, and for most model purposes, it has to look right, even if it is actually wrong.
 
If you are talking about 'vanishing point' in your photo, then your lines need to be in the same plane - i.e, the top one is on the edge of the roof, not the top of the wall, but the error that will cause is far less than others, most likely.
 
fwiw, I started to write software to automate recovery of measurements from a photo, but it would still require manual intervention, so I didn't bother too much. Early beginnings here http://yertiz.com/cnc/photocalcinstructions.pdf if any use. 

 

Best wishes,

 

Ray

[Focalplane]

Three walls now fabricated:

 

 

 

 

The white plastikard will be dirty black and opaque.  I am in two minds about the interior - leave it as is and spray it matt black to represent the Stygian Gloom or do some interior wall detailing with more corrugated sheeting. The latter may be necessary if I install some lighting I happen to have in my H0 box.  No need to decide just yet as the rear side wall has to be fabricated.

Edited June 17, 2017 by Focalplane

[Simond]

Paul

 

If it's not too late, have a look at this

 

http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/blog/15/entry-473-using-the-gimp-to-extract-trackwork-plans-from-photographs/

 

Best

Simon

[Focalplane]

Well, Simon, it all looks very interesting and useful and a couple of years ago I would have dug deep and long.  Now retired I really need to get on with the project, which is why I am using Peco track instead of making my own from C&L kits (I even made their three way point while on holiday two years ago).  I also learned Templot using my Mac and Crossover and used this for planning Shipston-on-Stour with soldered PCB* track.  Again, Peco to the rescue for Penmaenpool.

 

So, I am happy with what I have built so far.  Call me "old school" and I won't be offended!

 

* PCB - printed circuit board, apparently there is another meaning these days for that acronym.

 

Paul

[Simond]

Hi Paul

 

Wasn't thinking of track - hoped the perspective manipulation would work for your shed design!

 

I'm still doing C&L, I enjoy track building for points & crossings, and I love the way you can make it flow. That said, if you're talking yards and yards of plain track, Peco is always going to score well on the three-foot rule. Can anyone really see how many bolts in the chairs from a scale 150 feet away? (That said, I'd buy 2-bolt track if they made it!)

 

Best

Simon

[Focalplane]

All my working life I worked with incomplete and imprecise data sets, making decisions based on sparse information. Such is the science of geology!

 

I want to present an accurate sense of what Penmaenpool was like in the late 1950s, even though I never visited the place until this year. I have never been one to count rivets but I do inderstand that some like it that way and their models, assuming all of them actually make models, should reflect their passion.

 

It would be very easy to plonk an RTR engine shed and pretend that it is a fair representation, but that won't do it for me. My middle of the road approach is governed, dare I say it again, on the perception that I may not have the luxury of time on my side to complete the project and run trains.

 

I should add that necessity has often been the mother of invention for me. One of my most needy moments was to fit a teak beam in place of a broken leaf spring on an old Willys Jeep while miles from anywhere in Sulawesi. We got back to base eventually. Living in southern France makes for a much easier life but I often have to source materials from unlikely places instead of waiting a week or more for a parcel to arrive from a UK model shop. Hence the brass strips in the Penmaenpool engine shed! That approach will probably be used in other models I build.

 

Well, that's a bit of rambling on a Sunday morning, best get on with the rear wall!

 

Paul

[Focalplane]

Late Sunday evening I completed the rear side wall and then fitted the four walls together:
 

 

Everything fits and the angle iron strips soldered to the end corners hold the sides square.  Very satisfying, but I have decided that the interior walls need to be clad in corrugated (plastic) iron.  Luckily I bought ten sheets of the stuff so there will be plenty.

 

The next part will be the roof, for which I have no Plastikard as Slaters were out of stock of the slate sheets.  I will need more brass strips to support the internal ducting and roof, though the latter will be a separate item, easily lifted off to access the interior.  The smoke ducting, for which I can only use examples from other sheds as a guide, will be attached to the walls.  So I will have to paint the walls next, then glue them together (with Roket).  The smoke ventilators on the roof will be attached to the roof, not the ducting.

 

The windows will be simple glazing with white bars painted on, the only white items on an otherwise smoky black building, though even the white is more of a dirty grey.  They will have to be fitted before adding the interior sheeting, then masked off for spray painting.  In my model the shed staff will have just cleaned the windows and frames!

 

So, there's still a lot to do.

[coachmann]

Ooh look, wooden clothes pegs.  Haven't seen these for years. As for the early push-on pegs that were probably made from beech in earlier times, they are probably made of balsa today haha! Everything has gone to pot and I have just paid Amazon a handsome sum for some pegs that I hope will last longer than a week!

 

Oh, and the shed....Yes, its coming along nicely. The roof details should be lots of fun...