Dunalastair

Oops! Duly corrected, thankyou. I should have known better ...

The major parts for the tramway diorama have now printed, so more painting is next on the agenda. Today's wet weather will be less helpful in the drying stakes. @009 micro modeller posted an image last year of the surviving track, linked again here, apparently 18.5", which sounds like a nominal 18" either with wear or possibly centre-centre. But I fear that Ruby will have long gone to the glue factory. https://www.rmweb.co.uk/forums/topic/163553-abandoned-rails-in-the-roador-elsewhere/page/32/#comment-5042005

I wanted a little LMS context for the Berkhamstead location, so I put in a starting bid on ebay for an Airfix Stanier coach. Rather to my surprise nobody else bid for what might be a slightly tatty model but which will hopefully serve my purposes for a diorama and be a little different from a generic Mk1. I tend to feel a little guilty when the seller has gone to some trouble with the listings photographs and the model then goes for a small price, but the postage inevitably bumps up the final cost. I have been on the other side of such transactions in the past. Short of chopping the coach down, which would smack of vandalism, this now sets the size of the diorama - I had been considering using a couple of wagons if my bid had not succeeded. Might I have ridden in one of these? If I had, it would have been in short trousers, but most rail trips when I was a wee boy were on ex-LNER lines, and by the time we moved to Perthshire in the mid sixties, the Callander - Crianlarich line had just closed and most would probably have been replaced on the Stirling-Perth line. I used to travel regularly (but not commute, thank goodness) from Northampton Castle past the castle at Berkhamstead to Euston. Early trips in the eighties were in the final days of electrically-hauled Mk1 corridor stock, non-stop to the Smoke (or did we stop at MK?). I would probably not recognise Northampton station today. I do remember once getting off a slower train at Berkhamstead to explore the castle and walk up into the pleasant countryside of the Chilterns, but I was unaware of the history of the NG tramway, even though I probably walked down the canal towpath past the route and the tramway underbridge. An underbridge which is now printing in miniature form upstairs.

Yes, Ruby at Berkhamsted. I have now printed the 18" gauge skips and butchered some Airfix figures to (hopefully) suit. Paint is drying quickly in today's heat! Also https://www.irsociety.co.uk/Archives/24/Berkhamstead.htm

Bees? Jeeves?

Playing with an idea for a diorama based on a well-known narrow gauge gasworks NG horse worked tramway, one which has been mentioned on here before. The render assumes 4mm scale, with the Thingiverse horse as a placemaker for a white-metal casting borrowed from another diorama. Any suggestions as to where I am thinking of? And the name of the horse?

Probably applies to those of us learning to tune bagpipe drones as well ...

I have been describing a 3D print build of a much simplified diorama of Dundee East as it was first opened (pre Tay Bridge but after the D&AR gauge was changed to standard from broad. https://www.rmweb.co.uk/forums/topic/185925-dundee-east-formerly-scottish-terminus-diorama/ The scale is about 1:200, so the photographs and the closeups especially are rather cruel. The static diorama is 104x85mm. There are more photographs of the prototype and discussion in the original thread, but here is an early image of the outside of the station from the city side. The screen seems to have been higher than the arches of the shed behind. https://lightmoor.co.uk/books/the-dundee-arbroath-railway/L9177 The facade changed significantly after WW2.

So here are four of those cruel closeups : early days at Dundee East station. Not many customers today - the last service trains must have departed and the loco will head for the sheds when the crew have finished talking to the stationmaster. Note the low platforms as per the useful suggestion earlier in the thread. I will also now post some of the photographs in the 'dioramas' thread.

On the W&UR, frozen debris in flangeways apparently caused issues in the winter. A shovelful from the steam tram fire was a solution lost when the diesels took over ...

Thankyou for the kind words. Putting a ruler on it to check this morning is came out at 104x85mm The perennial issue with a larger version is lack of space.

So after some painting and assembly, this was the result : I may yet experiment with some (probably very cruel at 1:200 scale) closeups, but these hopefully show what I was aiming at.

No suggestions? Another example of a forced perspective diorama, using manual design Simple model of the narrow gauge bridge at Weedon Depot, Northants, with the portcullis gatehouse in the background.

I may have asked this before, when I was describing my manual attempts at designing forced perspective STL models (using 123D Design) (example below) but is there a simple and accessible tool to take an STL design (typically designed as an assembly, not a simple shape) and transforming it into a forced perspective shape? I seem to remember asking / Googling this before and getting answers like 'Blender', 'mesh' and 'lattice distortion', but deciding that the learning curve was too long ... The example represents the unbuilt narrow gauge Cottenham tramway.

One of these? https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/694680311242585186/ BTS1 bodied by Barton Transport themselves known as 'Viewmaster's.

Yes, brown! I took a 'streetview' tour on Bing maps of what remains of that part of the city of jute, jam and journalism, and the stonework (much now cleaned up after two centuries of smoke) was indeed generally brown - noticeably more so than the grey of Edinburgh or Aberdeen - more indeed like parts of Glasgow. Though I am using quick-drying Tamiya acrylics, the painting needs a fair number of stages, including tidying after brushes go where not intended. The 1:200 loco is especially fiddly, though not as bad as the previous 1:300 version. I am probably about halfway through now, but I am away for the bank holiday weekend so there will be a pause for a few days. I have not seen the marvellous Burntisland layout layout in the flesh, but I have enjoyed various photographs and videos of it. It provides inspiration for models of the 19th century railways which we now seldom see represented, sadly. But even 1883 and Bouch's train ferries could be seen as 'modern image' compared to 1858, never mind the days when Dundee had railways with three different gauges.

That was my understanding of what happened in the earliest days. Wiki describes how the harbour line only opened in 1837, with horse traction. In 1861, the Law incline was bypassed and the original terminus was one of Scotland's earlier closures, along with Edinburgh's Canal Street, which I modelled previously. Moving from the barely narrow gauge to the slightly broad gauge line (albeit changed to SG by the time of the opening of the East station), here is the kit of parts for the 1:200 diorama, a little over 100mm long. Note the glazing in the end screen and the lowered platforms. One issue with such early prototypes relates to colours. In the case of some of the the better known lines there were at least paintings / coloured lithographs, but the D&AR seems to have lived its early years in monochrome. I am tempted to paint the girders in 'hull red', as Dundee was a ship building city, but I suspect that they would have been black.

I have thought about it previously, and it would better suit my original interest of narrow gauge - albeit only narrow by a smidgeon. I didn't think that locos generally worked down the incline to the original terminus? There is a nice 3D animation of the D&N and the Earl with its vertical drive at https://digitaldirtvirtualpasts.wordpress.com/2018/02/27/dundee-to-newtyle-railway-making-of/

In 2mm, the yards might also have fitted, but then, yes, it might be difficult to draw a clear boundary, what with the mineral depot, Camperdown junction, the line to Tay Bridge and the Docks. Operating might work with a pilot, if uncoupling could be reliably arranged, but running around might be awkward under a roof. I have now printed most of the pieces, including the five girders. My slightly upscaled 2-2-2 is not quite right for Dundee (it was designed for an Edinburgh project but should do, if only viewed under the girders. Being a pioneer in the design of locomotives, Dundee had some interesting machines. the Earl of Airlie was a different gauge (though still not SG when built) so would not have appeared on the Arbroath company's rails. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earl_of_Airlie_(locomotive) Now there is a locomotive for the Dapol / Hornby wishlist ...

My maternal grandfather used to work in the offices at York during the war, until he joined up to work on railways in North Africa and Italy. I have an idea that he might also have been involved in fire-watching on the station roof during air raids. I don't suppose that he would recognise much of the area around the station now.

Thankyou for the useful feedback. I have indeed now lowered the platforms. I'm not sure when the current higher platform standard came in, but if I am representing the earliest period, then a lower platform seems appropriate - it might have been raised when the concourse was created. I have now printed the walls with the doors and windows, so i will probably stick with the round topped doors and windows - I think I recognised this earlier in my posts. As to the 'girders to the platform surface', I'm not sure that the difference would be very apparent at 1:200, and again I would rather not have to reprint the walls. An initial semicircular girder printed this morning - the rest will hopefully follow after the platform which is currently on the printer. My quick-build dioramas tend to be a little approximate, due to a combination of scale, printer limitations and learning through the design, but if I can achieve an impression of the original then I like to think that the project was worthwhile. 'Picky' comments are useful, if only to point up the compromises (and errors) which I have made. This will be a static 1:200 representation of the original, but even at 1:76, Dundee East was a compact prototype and would seem likely to make an interesting model, always allowing for the constraints of operating under an overall roof. It would be especially good to see an operating model in the original condition. Has it not been done?

Bright and sunny by the (Great) Ouse this morning ...

Following the earlier discussion, I have changed the screen to represent the three-window stone version, removed the internal wooden screen and pushed the buffers further back. All now much simpler. Some general simplification relates to how a model assembly might work. Hopefully those thicker side walls might now better resist the sideways forces of the arched girders.

Nicely observed, @Orion, thankyou. That blowup of the aerial image provides clear evidence of the facade arch projecting above the roof, and I can now visualise how it might have been arranged. As to the lower image, I had looked at that photograph before without spotting that the windows and doorways were so different. I wonder why the facade was changed? One clue might be the 1858 town plan at https://maps.nls.uk/view/74415320 which indeed seems to show the three window embrasures. That also shows that there was almost no concourse, with the buffer stops very close to the screen. I did previously wonder if this might have been a draughting error related to the awkward sheet boundary location, but given the quality of OS work at that time that seems unlikely. I wonder now if the screen might have been rebuilt at the same time as a larger concourse was created? At this date, the link I posted earlier (https://maps.nls.uk/view/74415343) to the other side of the sheet boundary also shows shorter platforms, without the outer faces which made this a four platform station in later years. It may be that the platforms were extended (and multiplied) at the same time, as trains got longer and traffic increased when the Forfar direct line was built. Traffic was later transferred to the Tay Bridge station, through the tunnel when the bypass line was built, but being originally from Edinburgh rather than Dundee, I'm not sure what the sequence might have been. More worms! Identifying an earlier design for the screen is timely, as that may be the next component for a trial print. My current plan is for a much-simplified (as is my usual way) and small scale diorama framed and viewed from the inside of the station, which limits how much of the exterior I need to represent. I would, however, like to get the geometry something like correct.