JCL

Another "nicely made" but pricey item http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Hornby-RATIO-KIT-SCRATCH-BUILT-GNR-LUGGAGE-VAN-BRAKE-COACH-1019-NICE-mw-/370815279936?pt=UK_Trains_Railway_Models&hash=item5656502340

Wahay - this month's Model Railroader has an article on weathering track, and another one on ditches - who knew these things could be interesting? On another note, the only thing about the polystyrene that I don't care for is the fact that it does not deaden sound. If I was to do things again I'd have put down foam tape (campers or Woodland Scenics) with the cork base to help reduce the noise. I wonder if, once I've finished the electrics, I can stuff something between the ribs underneath?

Well, that was a long night. I made some good headway on the cattle dock! I haven't done much with wood (well in 4mm scale) for a long time - not since I entered a competition in Hemsby in the late 1970s! So dor a bit of inspiration I had a look around the corners of the internet and found this site: http://www.railroad-line.com/ There was plenty on there to be going on with - I was in danger of just browsing the site and not doing the build, so I dived in and landed - well - here. The brick walls at the front of the dock are made from foamboard with Scalescenes brick paper wrapped around it, while the ramp at the back is shaped insulation (styro)foam. I still think this is great stuff! It only took me about 10 minutes to carve out the road that takes the cows up from field level to platform level. In real life this ramp was a lot bigger, but I'm hoping that it doesn't look unreasonable. I shaped it at first using a paring knife, before heading out to the garage and sanding it down with 60 grit and then 120 grit paper. This stopped it from looking like the "The Hungry Caterpillar" Then I started on the doors. The posts on each side of each door are scale 8" square section, while the middles are a scored sheet of basswood. The bracing was scale 2x4, ideally it would have been 2x6, but unfortunately I didn't have any knocking around. I also used a 90 degree notch in some wood to push everything together after gluing to make sure that it was all at approximately square, and you can just see that underneath the middle panel are two strips of wood. These are scale 2x4 to lift the scale 4" thick panel so it sits right in the middle of the scale 8" square post. I then tested the doors against the plans, and unaccountably they seemed to match! Next I tried the woodwork on the foam and it all seemed to fit (although it's a bit tight). And finally I attached the brickwork to the front of the foam and added a blue brick surface to the top. Tomorrow I'll do a bit of sanding, and start aging it by putting shellac on the wood and then paint it with a wash of burnt sienna and applying the watercolour felt tips on the brickwork. Then I'll paint the ramp the same colour as the field on the layout - a muddy brown. Finally, I'll glue it all together, and I'll head inexorably towards the waiting room with pencil and ruler in hand. But that's then, and this is now. It's one in the morning (or thereabouts), so I really ought to go to bed. I hope you like this one.

You might have guessed right now that I like to have a plan, or at least half a plan, before I start anything new. I've found out the hard way that if I go off half-cocked I'll end up having to do things twice! So, below is my plan for the cattle dock taken from the photo earlier in the thread of a partial view of one at Seacroft, and the silhouette of one at the back of a photo of Wainfleet. All of the measurements have been taken from the height of the platform being the height of the cattle wagon floor + the height of the rail, which I think will work. Behind the gates and panels will be a ramp so that a vehicle can get from rail level to "platform level". I'm hoping to make the gates either out of card and strip-wood, or basswood sheet and strip-wood, with the ramp made out of some left over polystyrene sheet (yep, that stuff again!). A lot of this is guesswork, so please, if anyone has any thoughts about it before I make a start, feel free to let me know! cheers Jason

Looking great and you've got the airbrush out. I bought one a while back and need to sit down for an hour or so working out what's to do before I start. Just a quick question, what do you use to clean it afterwards?

I couldn't afford a building, but those chimney castings look really fine. Good luck with the build!

I'm following Lee around now. I have really enjoyed reading up on your work, it's looking amazing and I'm definitely clicking on the follow button.

I have to admit, mine can sound like a bandsaw when a trip train is going full thresh on the mainline.

So, I've found a thin (1/32") piece of Bass wood that I'll use for the fences, and some square section wood for the bracing. I'll make the dock in two sections:- the end bit with the wooden funnel, steps and gate as one section, and the ramp as the second section. I was wondering how they keep the cattle from roaming if one should get away, but looking at the map on the last post there seems to be a fence that goes around the whole yard. That'll keep me busy; I hear the matchsticks a-calling. I'm assuming that the white on the brickwork is lime either from washing or that is leaching out of the platform wall. To get the measurements of this one I'm going to take the height of the platform and measure it against the height of my Bachmann cattle truck on a piece of track. I'm going to assume (there's that word again) that the platform will be the same height as the floor of the waggon on the track. From there I'll be able to get the height of the gate and fence. I should be able to get the length of the fence as well - at least up to the large post in the middle. I'm also going to assume that the two sides are a mirror image of each other and that the large fence post is in the middle, so I've an idea about how long the fence will be as well. I'm pretty excited about this as it'll be a completely different build to the signal box and the pinfold. My challenge will be butting the wooden parts against each other, oh and there'll be neary as computer in sight!

Next up is that cattle dock. Now I don't know about the '60s, but I do know that when I was a kid there wasn't a lot of livestock around Wainfleet. A couple of farms with freisians, chicken farms and the sheep that kept the grass down on a lawn on Silver Street, but that was about it. This seems to be reflected in the size of the dock. The map below shows "cattle pens", (I think that was a bit grand). There was a ramp from the road that ran along the back of the yard up to platform level and a gate at the end. I'm assuming that the users of the dock reversed up more or less to the gates, opened them, and then moved the livestock straight onto the the wagon in one go before moving out and letting someone else have a go. A big assumption I know, but it seems to make sense. The only photo I have of the dock at Wainfleet is this crop Although it appears to be the same shape as the one at the old station of Seacroft. Seacroft was a tiny station that although made of brick, had a platform that was the length of one carriage. Only a mile or so out of Skegness, it closed in the 1950s. Even though it was so small, it had a waiting room the same size as the one at Wainfleet, a signal box, and a station house that looked like the one at Havenhouse (a smashing little station between the two and notable for it's connection to a narrow gauge farm potato railway mentioned in the Potato Railway book by, I think Oakwood Press). Seacroft ended its days as a pet crematorium before the whole lot burned down. It's all fields there now. The photo is again a crop, and below that I've overlaid it with an illustration of the gates. I'll hopefully be able to work out how it all goes together. I'm not sure hot the large vertical post on the right fits in. Does anyone have any thoughts? Scratch that, it's another gate - it's amazing how you can stare at something for so long and not see the blindingly obvious!

Well, the concept worked and the building went together fairly quickly in the end. I used Scalescenes tiles on the roof, a door from the internet and internal bracing on the sides using mat card that I had spare. Looking at the photo I just need to cut back on an internal brace and the building will sit square. I'm not sure about the roof as I don't think the amateur flashing on the ridges is working, so I'll see if it grows on me.I can always int another one off. I really enjoyed the research on this, and it's not every day you get to find out the square root of the sum of two squares! Anyway, that's the back corner of the layout done. Hope you like it. As that was a fast one, and I haven't got any more news about the coaling situation, I'll do one more "fairly" fast one - the cattle dock. This one is interesting as it's tiny and "seems" to be a ramp with a gate on the end. I have a couple of very small photos and a bit of a map. How far I get on this depends on the wood I have available. I'll try to find the photos in the morning. cheers Jason

Thank you I just thought that if I left it to trial and error I'd still be at it at Christmas! An alternative to Photoshop for laying out the shell could be Inkscape - it's free and uses lines - then cover in standard brick. I just thought the patina (do bricks have patina?) of the damp would be great!

It's getting late, but I thought I'd try to put the building together. Unfortunately what follows are awful photos, but it's all I have at the moment, sorry about that. I first of all ran a pen along the back of the fold lines to make sure the folds were as good as I could make them. Then I used folded tabs to glue the sides to each other. As I glued them, the building had no choice but to assume the correct shape. The good news is that my measurements and calculations are right - blimey! - and the building is what I was expecting. Tomorrow I'll be tiling and strengthening the pinfold. After that I'll make sure I photo it with t' big camera.

Those Dart Castings will be exactly what I'm after once I start details. Thankyou.

It's been a busy day. Converting a snow blower back into a lawnmower for the first mow of the season's not the easiest thing to do, especially when you only do it once a year and have to remember how to put it back together! Anyway, done now, and I've finished the plan ready print as shown below. You'll see the roof surrounded by the sides. The octagon on the right will be the base. There will be a hole in the middle of in in case I need to get into there. Best foot forward and all that. While I'm getting on with it, and this is wildly off-topic, this is the Empress, the CPR train that came through Fernie the year we first came here. We were lucky enough to arrive in the middle of Fernie's 100 year birthday celebrations. Hope you like it, normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.

My grandad had Westfield Farm on the corners just there. The family also have Dovecote Farm which is an eight sided tower. Unfortunately I don't have a picture of it to hand. I'm still undecided about the plan above because of all the edges to the cut paper walls. There's only one way to find out. So, carrying on, I'm going to use the photos that I have to "skin" the vertical walls. The photos are fairly square but will still need to be lined up so the courses match. I'm going to do this in Photoshop, but I think most graphics packages would allow this to be done. First of all I've drawn rectangles that are the exact size of the walls when printed out. Then I opened the photos and drew guide lines where it looked like each wall finished The top wasn't too difficult as it was the edge of the tiles, and the sides were ok too as the boards on each sides had definite ends to them, but the bottom was slightly mode difficult as in reality the building is set into a slope As I cut out each side from the photo I overlaid them on the plan Each side was a slightly different size when I pasted them in, so I made sure that the top was aligned to a top left corner before shrinking it so that the right side was against the right edge of the rectangle. In the photo above you can see that I have a bit of a problem in that the lower edge doesn't meet the bottom of the rectangle. To get this right, I then stretched the height of the rectangle by dragging the bottom down. I don't necessarily want to bring the bottom down in line with the bottom of the rectangle, my main aim is to get all of the brick courses to line up. This is a really old brick agricultural building, built about 1800, so the bricks are interestingly laid, and fairly easy to line up. Normally I would also straighetn p the courses, but they are a bit wonky on the real thing, so I won't be doing that here. Anyway, lining them up gives me this: Of course, the big shame of all this is that the sides that I have photos for will be facing the back of the layout! Next up, it's getting rid of some of the clutter such as cars and wheelie bins (cheers, but you've done your job now). There are lots of ways to do this, and the methods change in different software, but I do a straight clone by taking bits of brick from one part of wall, and covering over the foreground in another part, making sure all the time that the courses line up. I have to be careful doing this because I could end up with repeating patterns, so I then add a few random bricks in from elsewhere to break things up a bit. Until now, I've taken bricks from one part of this wall panel and pasted them into another part of the same panel. The problem is that I can't do this further down. The damp that's in the bricks has led to the wall having different characteristics at each level, so I'm going to colour balance all of the walls I have and then copy and paste bricks from a different wall panel. The first photo shows the differences between the original walls, and the second shows what happens after I've upped the red and yellow and added contrast. So that'll be about it for the walls, I'll finish cloning out the items that are in the way, and then create new walls Frankenstein style by using parts of other walls until I have eight of them. Next episode: Yes, this time it'll really be about raising the big top. Edited to say I lied, the Dovecote was a round tower, slightly wider at h bottom than the top, with a small flat area in th wall to fit the door.

Thanks very much Stephen. No,don't worry, it won't mess anything up as the measurements were approximate in the first place, and it'll be at the back of the layout, so if its a bit smaller it'll still be ok. I took Welly's measurement that didn't include the lid. I saw from the photo above that the ground isn't level there anyway, though it will be where I'm putting it. I used to live top end of Wainfleet All Saints at New England corner, so Wainfleet St Mary was practically abroad when I was a kid. I was talking to someone the other day about the fact that I can't remember ever cycling or walking around that area, even though the absolutely beautiful church at St Mary (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:St_Mary,_Wainfleet_St_Mary_-_geograph.org.uk_-_105792.jpg) is beautiful and more jam packed with history than you can imagine. As you can see from my avatar, my horizons have broadened since then.

But before luck, I need a plan. Now I have all the dimensions I need to at least build the core of the building, I need to put the pieces together like a jigsaw puzzle. I'm thinking of doing this a bit differently to the way I did the CPR water tower. In that case, I made an eight sided cylinder, braced it top and bottom with octagonally (oops, the spellchecker didn't like that one bit!) shaped inserts. Then I plonked the roof on the top. This time I'm going to have a go at having the roof and walls integrated to produce a sturdy base onto which I can "hang" the texture and items that give the building character. This diagram shows the first two building sections, each has one piece of wall and one piece of roof. You can see the measurements I made to put this together. Below is the completed roof and wall basic plans. I have attached textures to two of the sides. To do this I have used the graphics software to stretch and pinch the photo elements until they line up with the wall rectangles. Hopefully this will give you an idea of what I'm trying to do. It may be a crazy idea, but then again, it might just work... Stay tuned tomorrow for the next episode - "Erecting the Big Top!".

I'm probably not showing anyone anything new in the next few posts, but I thought I'd show you how I'm going to attempt to convert some photos into a "kit" of parts to put together. These are the problems I have to get around: The location means that I couldn't get all eight sides of the building The light means that there are branch shadows on the brickwork The light also means that some of the walls are in shadow and some are in brightness, so they will have to be matched up. On the upside: The building will be to the back of the layout and I don't need to reproduce all of the walls individually. I have only 1/2 finishing something, so I'll somehow re-jig the walls I have to make new walls I have two photos where the walls are square on so I won't have to do a lot of manipulating I have a measurement (the wheelie bins) so I know within a few inches/cm how high the building is First things first, the measurements. Measurements In the photo above, you can see that I've taken (on advice ) a measurement of 1m for the bin. On the photo this equates to 4.13cm. So I divide 100 by 4.13 to find my ratio, which is 24.2130 . I can now multiply other measurements on the same plane i.e. the same distance from the camera by the ratio to find out how big they are. The height of the building is 10.41cm on the photo, multiply this by the ratio, and I get 252cm. The width of the wall section is 16.65cm on the photo, and 403cm in reality. To get to 4mm scale, I'm going to divide these values by 76. Obviously this is approximate, but as I can't get over there to measure up, approximate is my friend! In my drawing package I can draw some rectangles that are 5.3cm long and 3.3cm high From the photo it looks like the roof isn't quite the same height of the walls. I measured it, and from the bottom to the top of the tiles the roof climbs 6.31cm. Now, as I'm stood on the ground, the wall will look lower than it actually is, so I'm going to make it approximately 7cm. This gives me the main dimensions as shown below: Ratio: 24.21307506 (size in real life/size in photo) Sizes are in cm Size on Size in Size photo real life in 4mm Wheelie bin 4.13 100.00 1.31 (known measurement to create the ratio) Wall Height 10.41 252.06 3.31 Wall Width 16.65 403.15 5.29 Roof Height 7.00 169.49 2.22 All of the measurements from now on will relate to the model. Now I need to get some more roof measurements, and I would like to try to do it without trial and error. The roof is made of eight triangles. I know how long one edge is - 5.29cm, and I also know that the other two edges are the same length. To get the length I need to know the profile. Chatting to Pythagoras, I get this: And so I know that the eight roof triangles have two sides at 7.26cm, and one at 5.29cm. If I have everything correct, I'll have a roof with eight panels that will rise in the middle, 2.22cm from the walls. Next episode "Origami Barmy!"

OK, I've been through my photos and found some more sides to the building. Unfortunately the building is on private land, so I caught on camera as many sides as I can. The last photo was taken from a little further down the road on the river bank. Looking at all of the photos I've found that only one side has a large door, and there doesn't seem to be any windows (or indeed guttering!). I'm going to try to use some of the brickwork on the photos to produce at least a couple of sides and Scalescenes brickwork on the others. If you look at the third photo you can see from the wall that they applied the 1:1 scale brickwork slightly wonkily! A prototype for everything, eh? Next episode "Measure for Measure".

I think it's Iain Robinson in disguise! Show your true self.

He must have a huge supply of bogies and spare wheels. Mind you, like you say, they keep selling, so someone wants them.

No problem welly yep, it's just to get an approximate height as I don't know the size of the bricks. Once I have the height and width of a wall it shouldn't be too difficult putting together the plans. I'm quite looking forward to this one.

Thank you, they seem to be about a metre high. I might ask my mum, who still lives in the area if she can measure hers - that'll give the neighbours something to talk about!

Can someone tell me how high a standard wheelie bin is? It'll give me an idea about scale as I didn't have a tape measure with me the last time I was in Wainfleet.