Stockrington - Mojo ignited. Thanks, Heljan!

[freebs]

That is one impressive bit of engineering. Love it!

[jukebox]

Well the straight and level (or if I cut and paste them right they will be) stone sheets are now all stuck on one approach.

 

 

I'm happy with how this is looking - I managed to line up almost all of the course of blockwork; and I also have captured the slightly complex way the piers on the water's edge have strengthening.

 

 

The light from the anglepoise also picks out the texture of the stone nicely.  It's a bit overstated compared to Monkwearmouth, but shy of modelling the lot in DAS, this is the best representation in common use.

 

 

As you can see, not a lot of play room on the bench!

 

I'll add in the brick arches under the spans next, then carve up some sheets to infill the stonework above.  The finished stone arches come last.

 

I think I will get all the dressed stone work on both approaches done before I tackle the upper portions.  I need to have a steady hand and lots of patience there, as I'm going to "skin" the wood with plasticard that I have carved representations of stone courses into. Lots of parallel lines.  I suspect I will be short of dressed stone sheets... there has not been a lot of waste, but the Slaters sheets all have a poorly moulded edge where the block detail is soft for about 25mm from the sheet edge on one short side (which I tried to cut up and use on the 6mm edge infills), as well as soft or not-square rows on each of the long sides, so added up, it represents a fair bit of non usable area over 10 sheets.

 

Scott

 

[jukebox]

The thing about a rooms sized layout, is that you can forget the scale of the job ahead of you at times. Even a relatively smaller (in the scheme of things) task like building a bridge...

 

I spent a week or so cladding the second abutment, and have now moved on to the arches - which required a bit of thought, and motivation.  When I started, I realised that each task I was doing had to be repeated twice on each side of each approach, or eight times in total. It did start to feel daunting.

 

I had been struggling with how to form the ring of smooth stone blocks that form the edge of each arch.  I wanted it to be prototypically correct, in that the rows of dressed stone each needed a block that formed the arch.  See the detail in this photo:

 

 

But how to do that, off the actual model?  In the end i.e. finally, this week, I realised I should start with the cut out curve and work backwards.  So this is what I did:

 

I cut rectangles of 1.2mm plasticard the size of the smooth stone arches:

 

 

On each of these, I used a compass to scribe a circle of the correct final diameter.  This was good, as it gave me a chance to make a proper semi-circle - something I didn't achieve, cutting the wood with my jigsaw.

 

I ran a blue ballpoint pen in the grove and buffed it, to get an accurate marking line.

 

 

Here, I came to the first "oh, cr@p, I am going to have to do this *eight* times" moment. Scribing the semi circle thru the 1.2mm plasticard took about 20 passes.  There had to be a quicker way...

 

And to rub salt into this wound, the first arch I did was about 1.5mm undersized - a very thin amount to try and re-scribe away.

 

Then I remembered my Dremel.

 

I took the piece upstairs, attached a sanding band attachment, and was able to use the circular head to easily grind away the excess.

 

I then took the piece back down to my bench, and using an offcut of Slaters sheet, marked the rows in pencil.

 

Then,  I lined it up with a drawing of the arch from the Black Country Blues thread, which I used to give me a radial point to take each of the stone rows back to:

 

 

I hand scribed the lines in that represent the block joins - I will need to work these a bit deeper (all 128), so they are a little more defined.

 

Not wanting to contemplate cutting 28 faces for each arch (+224 cuts x 20 strokes... ), I headed back up to the layout, to see if I could use a cut off disc in the Dremel to neatly trim the rows.

 

 

The answer was yes - it did generate a snow storm of brittle, melted card along the way - but with a little touching up using a flat file, it was very quick.  It did strike me that I was working close to my fingers, and a slip would be painful, if not downright dangerous, so I slowed up, and took my time, being careful to keep my digits out of the way.

 

 

Once I had completed and test fitted one arch, it was time to mass produce the other seven!

 

So, on and off for eight hours, by this evening I now have a full set of arches.

 

 

I did start to dry fit these, but fatigue set in - a side effect of doing a repetitive task eight times, I am afraid - so will call it a night.

 

But the good news is with these all cut, it most of the hard work is done, and I can crack on with the last of the dressed stone card.

 

Perversely, I have *another* four smaller arches to do, perpendicular to these ones, on the transverse face where the span is supported.

 

As I said at the start, the scale of some of these "simple" tasks can be trying... 

 

Cheers

 

Scott

 

[runs as required]

Streuth! As I believe yous Ozzis say - yerv a right prob there.

Hugely impressed with how you seem to have got so far with so little info. I've tried googling masonry pics of those approach arches to see if I could get any more detail but there don't seem to be any close-ups. What I reckon you need is detail about the springing of those arch voussoirs just above the pier cornice.

They appear to course in to the rusticated masonry in 3 pairs down from the central top three before stepping back at each course.

 

best wishes with the series production.

dh

[jukebox]

sheesh, dh - you skipped ahead to the next chapter, didn't you?  :-)

 

Yes, what I didn't mention in my update was that these voussoirs (oh, er, I do like it when you talk posh!) as cut are too big as is.

 

The detail you mention is this:

 

 

which I've approximated by doing some nip and tuck surgery on the common stones.  (You can also see on the prototype, the arch actually nips in behind the end buttress - this is the case on both the land end, and the span support end).

 

 

It's not 100% accurate, but an acceptable compromise for me.

 

I've only got three more of those to do (!) - but that was where I stopped last night.

 

A spot of breakfast, and I'm going to try and finish these up today.

 

Thanks as always for the input - alway welcomed.

 

Cheers

 

Scott

 

[runs as required]

Aha! Excellent, you've got all the answers on those photos you've just posted Scott.

I couldn't turn up anything as detailed by image trawling the web. Interesting too that there is no cornice between the top of the pier and the arch springing, noticable on the upstream side of the lefthand (north) bank.

 

Presumably you had to adapt to fit the plasticard masonry coursing.

 

Sunderland being my Alma Mater, if you PM me, I can easily "Run" across and photograph more details of masonry and truss ironwork "as Required".

HTH

dh

[jukebox]

Thanks dh.  I have a folder of reference photos on my PC, that has *many* subfolders, one of which is "Monkwearmouth Bridge". You'd be surprised what people photograph! I run a Google search, or a Flickr search, every now and again, and just copy stuff across so that, 12,000 miles away, I have something of a reference library - as well as plenty of hard copy books.  The beauty of having on the computer, is that my workspace is my computer desk, so I can have a photo up on screen whilst I am carving away at the plastic.

 

Thank you for your offer to be my site eyes.  If I get stuck, or need something specific, I shall light the bat signal!

 

Regards

 

Scott

Edited June 12, 2016 by jukebox

[jukebox]

I spent an evening this week sticking the voussoirs and their corresponding "inverted keystones" on - to do so, I actually assigned each a letter, and custom cut it to fit.

 

Murphy paid me a visit, as the night after I was done I noticed I'd not quite nibbled enough arch skelton away in one spot:

 

 

But, I wasn't too phased, as the Dremel had proved so useful in removing the extra material away before I stuck the plasticard down, I was hopeful I'd be able to grind that lip off without melting the plastic card now laminated to it.

 

So up to the workbench..., er, layout, where I have the Dremel set up on what will one day be a gentle valley above the storage tracks. For now it's a plasticard-fug-covered-mess.:

 

 

The Dremel I use has a 90 degree attachment, which makes it much more agile and able to be controlled with a lot more finesse in tight spots.  For grinding down the plywood skeleton, I fitted a coarse sanding band that I actually can't see listed anymore - possibly a #408?  - it seems to be metal impregnated. Anyway, all I know is, with a careful hand, it easily works away the ply:

 

 

The end result was Jukebox 1. Wood 0.  The excess is now out of the way, and I can go ahead, and fit stone to the remainder of the sides, and bricks to the underside of the arches.

 

[jcredfer]

Perhaps, if you had used goggles instead of voussoirs, you might have been able to have cut the ply tunnel mouth accurately, more easily.

 

J

 

Oh dear - another hat, coat, door job   .........  

[jukebox]

Spent my morning being a mock passenger in a mock evacuation for our new bus station here in Perth, so only a little progress today.

 

One face of dressed stone now completed.  

 

I wasn't sure of the the best way to tackle it, and settled on cutting individual rows of blocks, and then transferring the required length from the skeleton using calipers, then gluing each row down individually.

 

A little time consuming, but happy with the result.

 

 

A strip of plastic rod to represent the decking, just needs some faux block lines curved in it.

 

 

 

[The Blue Streak]

We have a new bus station ????

Well there you go

[jukebox]

We have a new bus station ????

Well there you go

 

Soon.  Opens mid next month - it's underneath where the Wellington Street Bus Station used to be:

 

 

The mock bus fire that filled the escalator well with smoke looked like this

 

Edited June 20, 2016 by jukebox

[jukebox]

Eight large voussoirs down... four small ones to go.

 

Time for some bricks.

 

I knew my timberwork was not perfect, so was dreading the fitting of the brick arch liners, as I suspected they may need to be all sorts of contorted shape to work.  But curiously, they were a rather tidy fit:

 

 

and when you look at them from river level...

 

 

I need to glue a row of faux voussoir stones on the inside edges, and that will cover the minor sins of misalignment.

 

I *did* manage to slice the tip off my middle finger cutting the brick card.  "Use a sharp knife" they said. "Use a fresh blade" they said. Problem is, after 4 weeks of cutting dressed stone, I was used to applying a fair bit of force to keep my lines straight. So when the blade slid along the 4mm bricks, I didn't get my digit out the way fast enough, and I sliced a neat round of skin right off the end, just like one of those machines cutting salami in the smallgoods section....

 

 

I'll spare you a photo, but it bled like a pig, and of course as it's on the tip, it is in a spot I keep knocking...

 

Should have listened to my mums advice about keeping sharp tool away from children, eh?

[jukebox]

A little distraction today.

 

I work rather close to the longest railway platform in Australia, at East Perth Terminal, and at 770m, it's a nice 1.5km walk to get some fresh air.

 

Here's what that looks like:

 

Northern End

 

You can just see Bakewell, our stuffed and mounted mascot in that view

 

That's the intrastate bus terminal on the right...

 

..which is connected to the main booking office and Public Transport Centre

 

That is the East Perth Suburban station, on the narrow gauge network

 

It's close to the city, so whilst we don't see emus, there are plenty of EMU's.

 

Almost at the end

 

Thats the platform end

 

Beyond is the headshunt, and the CBD

[jukebox]

A closer look at Bakewell

 

 

and the Gateway to WA for passengers arriving on the transcontinental Indian Pacific every Saturday:

 

 

[jcredfer]

How very appropriate to  .........   

 

A closer look at Bakewell

 

EPT23.jpg

 

and the Gateway to WA for passengers arriving on the transcontinental Indian Pacific every Saturday:

 

EPT25.jpg

 

.......................................................................  This really is one of my better worst ones  ................

 

............................................................................................................................................................................   "Tart" the loco up so beautifully like that  ......   :sungum:

 

J

 

Hat and coat donned - heading for the village Stocks  ...  :tomato:

[jcredfer]

You share the tpo spot of sausage cutting with ...

 

Eight large voussoirs down... four small ones to go.

 

Time for some bricks.

 

I knew my timberwork was not perfect, so was dreading the fitting of the brick arch liners, as I suspected they may need to be all sorts of contorted shape to work.  But curiously, they were a rather tidy fit:

 

2706a.jpg

 

and when you look at them from river level...

 

2706b.jpg

 

I need to glue a row of faux voussoir stones on the inside edges, and that will cover the minor sins of misalignment.

 

I *did* manage to slice the tip off my middle finger cutting the brick card.  "Use a sharp knife" they said. "Use a fresh blade" they said. Problem is, after 4 weeks of cutting dressed stone, I was used to applying a fair bit of force to keep my lines straight. So when the blade slid along the 4mm bricks, I didn't get my digit out the way fast enough, and I sliced a neat round of skin right off the end, just like one of those machines cutting salami in the smallgoods section....

 

devon.jpg

 

I'll spare you a photo, but it bled like a pig, and of course as it's on the tip, it is in a spot I keep knocking...

 

Should have listened to my mums advice about keeping sharp tool away from children, eh?

 

...  the local Butcher, who sat on the Bacon Slicer  .......   and got a little behind in his Orders.   :jester:

 

J

 

That one is just sooo old - but it still makes me smile.  How sad is that??

[runs as required]

After days of sitting on the Indian Pacific (do they still have a piano on it to sing around late into the night?), I'd much sooner look closely at "Bakewell" than enter that anti-climax 'Public Transport Centre'.

In its penny pinching meaness it's more or less identical to the grotty little 'Welcome to Sunderland' station after crossing your excellent bridge in real life.

And has it really got an underground bus station? Ugh, unless they are hybrids: on electric only with engine/generators switched off underground 

2

Think you thoroughly deserve a 1.5 kilometre walk in the sun after all those self harm nights with the plasticard on the cutting mat.

3

Except for the bloodstains, the Bridge is looking great.

 

dh

[jukebox]

Having sorted out how best to construct the large voussoirs, the small ones came into being relatively simply.

 

 

I then tackled the issue of the faux stonework inside the arches.  Rather than try to cut a sawtooth representation - which would have been tedious - I took the just as tedious route of individual stones.

 

 

Starting with the keystone, these were glued on the brick embossed plasticard undersides.

 

 

Despite my best efforts, I didn't get all the stone work 100% correct - but figure anyone OCD enough to be look up under my arches at non-prototypical stonework has enough issues.

 

 

As I suspected would be the case, there will be one approach slightly better built than another - just the nature of getting better a doing something, or slightly more accurate cutting.  

 

 

The undersides of this approach are the better of the two. Lots of gaps to be filled before painting.

 

 

I do like the impression of heft that the textures give.

 

Just a little more dressed stone infill, and I will be up to rail deck height, and will switch to recreating ashlar blocks.

 

I've followed Ron Heggs work, and he makes it look very easy.  I have a new found level of respect for him and his patience and precision.  I have myself in a mindset now of doing a good job, but not being obsessive about it - because each day I am building the bridge is another day I am waiting to run trains.  My ethos is that all of this is a canvas for the trains - and whilst I don't want to undercook the supporting modelling, I also don't want to be another three years before I have a circuit of mainline up and operational.

 

Never mind that Richard from DCCconcepts is about to released stainless steel bullhead code 70 in OO... which I am giving serious thought to using on the mainline. That would be a sure fire solution to any concerns I may have about track corrosion. The four unopened boxes of C+L might be an issue, though.

 

Cheers

 

Scott

Edited July 4, 2016 by jukebox

[runs as required]

Very impressed at the tenacity demonstrated in the above post

...and at your honesty!

It reminds me we used to have a very witty and very Welsh (nationalist*) tutor when I was a student at Liverpool in the 1950s.

 

Dewy would come around and push you off your drawing board seat, scrutinize your work, scowling all the time - then turn and look at you owlishly through his thick glasses....

...pause...

..."Well?"

"Well what? Mr Thomas".

"Well, why have you not continued your voussoirs around the corner?"

"Bbbecause no one will see them Mmmr Thomas. Concrete will be a lot cheaper, or, um, mmmaybe reinforced brickwork ?"

 

"Ah! But God will see them.

God sees everything you know!" and with that he'd walk away, folding his black heavy rimmed specs into his top pocket.

dh

 

*in our first year he had us constructing placards in the cellar of our Department, painting slogans copied carefully from his Welsh language drafts.

 It transpired they were 'Hands off our Welsh water you Scouse scum!" "Death to the English" - I suppose mild compared to present day football chants

[jukebox]

Progress update

 

I confess the last few weeks have been heavy going - just because the work has been pretty tedious.

 

I spent the time cutting out laminates of 0.3mm and 0.5mm plasticard, scribing blockwork onto it, and sticking it on the approaches.

 

It was getting pretty mind numbing, and it was only when I formed up the coping on the sides that it started to look the part.  You can't see it , but most of those flat surfaces have 8mm lines scribed to represent ashlar blockwork...

 

 

 

 

 

It felt good to be working in plastic again - shades of my misspent Airfix youth.

 

I have a little more to go, but that should be done this week.

 

I chose to laminate all the visible surfaces, as I wanted a consistent finish to the stonework.  I can't be sure how my painting treatment will look on bare wood, so am limiting that to the insides of the side walls.

 

The next task is to trim off all the corners, and use filler to remake the part blocks.

 

I'll also use filler to form up some of the architectural features such as the chiselled caps on the... what do you call them? Turrents? Finials? The block-y things at each end.

 

:-)

 

Cheers

 

Scott

[manna]

G'day Gents

 

Great build, I think there called cap stones !!

 

manna

[jukebox]

Mystery solved (thanks in part to Manna, whose cap stones was a good place to start a Google search)

 

There's a nice Network Rail glossary if you ferret around:

 

 

Apparently, pyramid cap stones was the item I was trying to describe, sitting atop a pilaster. Or is it a pylon?  The innermost towers, like those on the Sydney Harbour Bridge, appear to be purely cosmetic. And the ones in Sydney are definitely called pylons...  I suspect the Sunderland ones are there for aesthetic reasons, just like Sydney - to provide a balance for the visual bulk of the steelwork.

 

 

I could pfaff around with wedges of plasticard to make each of these. Expedience tells me to use model filler and file/carve it back.

 

Watch this space.

 

Cheers

 

Scott

Edited July 25, 2016 by jukebox

[jukebox]

The power of observation.

 

I was looking at the pylon I'd modelled.

 

 

And then I went back to the reference photos....

 

 

Hmmmm. That's not even close, is it?

 

I *could* leave it.  But I know it would bug me.

 

 

I only took 10 mins to lever them off.  It wont take too long to knock up the new ones.

 

I can't make it an exact copy - the ratios aren't quite the same  - but I can make it look a lot more like the original.

 

And I'll be happier when it is.

 

:-)

 

Cheers

 

Scott

[jukebox]

Well that was relatively painless...

 

 

I muddied the contrast on that photo so you can see the detail a bit better.

 

Four new base cards, scribed up with block lines.

 

I was able to salvage some of the blockwork from the old laminates, and used that to rebuild the relief stones. They are now double thickness, and this actually improves them.

 

And a simpler, less fussy centre stone, that whilst not an exact copy, manages to suggest a familiarity with the original.

 

I'll let the glue dry, finish scribing the blocks, and stick these back on the pylons later this week.

 

:-)

 

Scott