Southern Fabricator

With the windows completed and the roof in place a ‘topping off’ ceremony has been held by yours truly by way of a brown ale or two before tackling the chimney stacks and painting them. I have previously used balsa wood for each of the station waiting room chimneys with moderate success, but I found detailing the stonework awkward, as the wood was too soft to maintain any close definition. Now however using a foamboard core and then overlaying it with clear styrene detailed pieces with the stone courses engraved seems for the moment to have provided me with a much better result. My main task is to match the existing stonework paint and fit the chimney pots to them. I had been looking to reproduce the terracotta and steel flue pipes that adorn the top of the four chimney stacks without resorting to use something commercially available. The decision was to use suitable sections from flexible cotton buds, which was nearly scrapped because the PVA glue didn’t seem to want to adhere sufficiently to keep the pipes in place! However I ended up using ordinary pins down the centre of each pipe that not only solved the adherence issue, but also added extra insurance against them being accidentally knocked off. The final task was to add the timber barge boards and other details to the roofs and then attempt to weather the building somewhat, which maybe revisited when I have learned more about this skill. As with the other buildings, the only thing now is details such as the guttering and down pipes and also the services pipe work to finish off. As an overview of Garsdale Station building progress, I have posted a few pictures of their general orientation to each other using a temporary mock up. The one issue with taking pictures of the building process is that that it shows up mistakes and omissions too readily. So I’ll try not to rush things along in future! The remaining issue on ‘The Long Drag To Garsdale’ has been to glue the existing station waiting rooms’ roofs with the chimneys and other details before going through this whole building construction again for the railway workers stepped terrace houses on the down line to Carlisle approach to Garsdale Station. This time however I’ll only post brief descriptions and pictures of their progress instead of repeating the whole process to you. After the railway cottages are completed, the Coal Road over bridge will be my next consideration before constructing the 2724mm Dandry Mire Viaduct.

I'm using Evergreen clear 0.4mm sheet and styrene strip 0.25 x 1.5mm

Hello DonB, I've just reviewed this post and come across your post. Foam board is a sheet that is comprised of two sheets of paper with a very fine closed cell urethane sheet in between. Here in NZ it is sold in craft shops as foam board.

The Hollies of course sang my title for this post. Now at last the glazing can be fitted to the windows. I had already cut these out at 25mm and 35mm square 0.4mm clear styrene sheet when I made the entrance lobby/porch windows. The immediate concern is window dressing as once the tile roof goes on the access to the inside of the building will no longer be possible. Because there will be no internal lighting, I decided to apply the three-foot viewing rule to my building here and use 1.5mm thick black card cut into a suitable shape to cover the window apertures and clear styrene glazing by using a 4.0mm wide spacer strip at each side to trap the curtaining. From these I made combinations using clear 20mm wide gift ribbon, 10mm wide 200gsm paper strip highlighted with a coloured mini felt tip on the edges then PVA glued together before attaching each of them to the building. The Porch roofs were a fiddly enough proposition, but now for even more fiddly window detailing using Evergreen styrene pieces. These are pre cut using #103/122 for the window sides and rails and #116 for extending the bottom cills past the stone block work. When I made the Garsdale Signal Box window modules I used a minimal amount of styrene glue but was disappointed with the resulting discolouration of the glazing. So when I did the station waiting rooms and restroom windows I resorted to using PVC glue with a much better outcome. Now since I don’t have access to a surgeon’s tools and operating microscope, a fine screwdriver, a craft knife and a #4 ox hair paintbrush will suffice to maneuver the window components into position. This is deep concentration stuff so therefore food and drink will be passed under the door for some time until I can come up for air! So anyway, starting on the rear of the building and moving left to right I firstly prefit to check each of the top and bottom rails before applying a drop of PVA glue to each corner of the window aperture to secure them. Then the sides and centre rails before finishing with the window horizontal rail and bottom cill detail. The time approximately per window takes me between 10 and 20 minutes depending on how successful my concentration has been! Having now completed the building’s rear wall my time is certainly coming down. Hopefully my average should be under 10 minutes by the time I get to #42. Well almost done! The stonework arches above the ground floor doors and windows needed to be carved out from the foamboard carefully using my sharpest jewelers’ screwdriver, then both the arch cavities and the lower window cill extensions were painted accordingly.

Before I can fit the glazing to all the windows, I need to paint the building exterior. Being new to scratch building I have found painting with acrylics a challenge, in as much the matching of the paint colour to the images in photographs is always a compromise depending on the photographers use of filters, time of day, decade and of course the weather. So with that in mind I started with a light grey wash, then I mixed a light grey along with yellow oxide, burnt umber, plus a touch of crimson red and black/white to achieve the basic stone colour. I then highlighted individual stones in straight yellow oxide with others with a lightened yellow oxide and then left it to dry thoroughly. Finally a very dilute light grey wash was applied to help tone down and lighten the building’s overall appearance. Other coats maybe applied later, but that depends on my use of lighting for the layouts station and its effect on blending in the background diorama. Incidentally, the Greater Waikato Railway Modellers have been very busy over the past months with building new diorama for our exhibition layout featuring a canal section to not only delight but to give more operational room for the DC layout we take around to our NZ modelling exhibitions. So I have included a few photos of their work in progress here.

Now a moment to reflect about using printers for roof tiles, perhaps I should have made myself a bit clearer here. I do have a printer/scanner, which I could use but choose not to. The printers aren’t the issue with me, but the price of inks here in NZ is! Printers are a dime a dozen, so much so they are now almost cheaper than a set of ink refills themselves. I did find your comment and information given helpful and I’ll try my best not to be such a cheapskate.

Tennessee Ernie Ford might have been a handy help for roofing the original prototype building, but 16 tons is just my guess anyway. Now for a different approach than the way I used to fabricate the roofs on the smaller station buildings I made earlier. Because of the slight bow that occurred with them, (the roofs had to be massaged gently back straight), so this time I kept both roof halves separate whilst I glued the cut cardboard slate tile strips to the vanilla (paper still on) foam board. I like this method: Create a grid with columns 4mm wide vertically and rows alternately 3.5 and 2.5 mm horizontally. Cut rows of tiles using both a 3.5mm and 2.5mm row. To keep your tile strip aligned mark the under roof with a few parallel lines to the gutter. Start at the bottom and lay a strip, lay the second strip on top overlapping to 2.5mm line and offset by half a tile. Use PVC glue and a small brush. Keep going until you get to the top, and then do the other side. The roof pieces are then sandwiched between a flat surface with weights placed on top and left for the PVA glue to cure. Apparently bookbinders use this method when covering their cardboard blanks with the finished outside material. The 120 tile strips I had cut previously using my template made earlier. I’m still researching easier ways (perhaps I should invest in a guillotine to produce them in bulk) without having to resort to using a printer. The one thing you get with scratch building is some individuality in each of the tile roofs instead of uniformity. I realise that this can be a very repetitive process especially when gluing the tile strips as well, but the outcome is satisfying when the roof is complete and painted with three coats of light grey despite the time involved. This was about a ten hour effort on my part, but then we are having wet winter days here South of the Tropic of Capricorn and this helps one get ‘into the zone’ with few distractions. Wet days do have a few advantages as one can spend time marking out tiles in preparation for all the remaining Railway Cottages… or not just now in my case. The ridge tiles I also cut in strips rather than individual pieces, although the later would be appear closer to correct. I use cereal packet cardboard (approx 0.25mm thick) for the slates and also ridge tiles that when they are reverse folded for the ridge tiles you can sometimes get the rolled apex effect as well. The roof sections on the entrance porches are yet to be attached with their slate tiles and flashings to the main building and then the main roof assembly will be done. BTW thanks for likes and comments from those of you following my blog as I attempt to recreate Garsdale Railway Station by scratch building it from 3.0mm Foam Board. I’ve still got a long way to go yet.

Alright, here goes the marking out the front details of the railway side terrace houses. The entrance lobbies have a higher roof apex than those on the 3° slope stepped houses; otherwise all other details are similar. The gable roofs of the lobbies took a bit of fiddling around as I found out due to extra allowances needed for the 3.0mm foam board to line up correctly to the terrace house wall/lobby detail and their roof tiles. All to do now is a spray coat of acrylic primer on each exterior, then fit the window glazing, lobby entrance dividing panel and roof slate tiling before fixing all three of them to the main front wall. No completion pressure here then! Moving on to the main assembly, I pre-cut the mid roof support beams and made rectangles for the first floor slightly undersized for ease of fitting, then started gluing the back and end walls together checking the quoins were aligned and square. Fortunately I had plenty of the Dandry Mire viaduct plywood cut for the inside of the pier supports to use as temporary supports for the terrace house assembly. The internal short walls had extra strips and angle pieces added for strengthening to help keep everything together. Here’s the process: First the back and end walls, then the two middle walls, glue and fix the three first floors to their supports and then the front railway side wall. The top middle roof supports were glued into place last. About 30minutes work allowing for keeping all components square. I then placed some weights (piers) on top of the front wall to ensure everything stayed together overnight while the PVA glue bonded. The next day the whole assembly was then sprayed with acrylic surface primer over the entire exterior surface. The remaining roof supports that were originally off cuts from the middle and end walls were held in position with temporary pins then glued in. Next up was to fit and glue the three entrance lobbies/porches to the front of the building before tackling the slate tile roof.

Now this is where we all might learn something, as this is a test of my observation! I tend to start with the quoins on my replica of the Georgian era buildings, because they provide the basis of the Yorkshire stone courses and how they fit with the doors and window openings, but I’m getting ahead of myself here. My earlier buildings of the Garsdale Junction Railway Station were a lot smaller in height and width. These Railway Workers Cottages are considerably longer and will take me into the next largest structure, the Dandry Mire Viaduct. I decided to draw up the ends and then the back of the railway terrace houses first, mainly because these are mainly hidden away from visitors and operators sight and I needed to see how the stone block work would work out with the quoin, door and window details. After removing the paper from the pre-cut cottage sides/ends, it became obvious that I would need to flatten the foam board sheet out before proceeding further. Not that it bowed much, but better safe than sorry! The door/window template proved worthwhile as this saved me time, but it still took about 5 hours from drawing in all the windows including the three front lobby position details. Marking the stone courses then individual stone blocks completed the effect. Only the door and window apertures need to be cut out ready for the final assembly. Although it seemed an endless undertaking at the time, it took me another three days to complete due to other interruptions of the garden chores nature, plus time I spent also on loco and rolling stock maintenance on my club’s old Greater Waikato Railway Modellers OO layout down the road from me. The interruptions were a welcome diversion to rest my eyes from close detail work and to aid my concentration!

Measure twice and cut once. I first learnt this when I fabricated steel that it was not appreciated if you wasted any material. Using a 1.0 x 0.76 x 3.0mm Foamboard sheet (they come in all thickness and sizes, 10,5 and 3mm and in sizes A2, A3 and A4), I lightly draw out the sides and ends using a 0.5 HB mechanical pencil. Ensure you start from a square corner, most are. Then for cutting out use a new sharp edge angle blade. This is because you need a clean cut through the paper both sides of the board. Once you have all the visible components cut i.e. the pieces you want to draw detail into, (other structural pieces can be left with the paper on.) Go boil a kettle (have a cup of tea/coffee?) and place them into a Pyrex dish or a flat bottomed container like a metal tray that won’t shatter. Once boiled pour the water over the foam board on both on sides. You need the paper layers to surface bubble all over to enable the removal of the outside paper. After taking the foam board from the dish (avoiding scalding one’s fingers of course) placing them on a flat surface and finally using your fingers, gently rub the paper off from both sides of the piece. The reason being that this helps avoid later warpage. Cardboard slate tile roofs on foam board are a different challenge; I’ll cover this later on. Now I’ve seen a few methods shown on You Tube and so forth, but for me the foam board I’m using must have a different quality paper from any shown and likes to retain its covering apparently. Yours may quite easily peel off after taking a hot shower, mine didn’t! Don’t be afraid to re soak the board to remove stubborn paper, as its closed cell construction will leave it with a flat non-soggy surface to draw on once it has thoroughly dried off. Placing the pieces on a flat surface and sandwiching them between a heavy board and/or books on top will help too. Well I said that these buildings were a challenge and sure enough it arrived in the form of longitudinal shrinkage. The six-terrace house length worked out by yours truly of 570mm had shrunk by about 5mm, which meant that it affected the window/door positions. Only the length was affected and the 100mm wall width had only a negligible change. This shrinkage was not a problem in my earlier shorter station buildings and this was a handy misfortune, being that the Dandy Mire Viaduct may suffer from the same issue later on. The cure was straightforward, add an extra 10mm onto the length and cut back to the correct length afterwards. I suspect that boiling water shrunk the foam cells, but until I find a better method of paper removal I will live with it! The old pieces I saved for other building purposes later.

These will certainly be a challenge! When I used the AnyRail program as a guide to get an idea of all the buildings positions and their sizes on the layout, I also drew out a section through view of them on a spare piece of 3.0mm thick MDF to get their relationship to the baseboard’s structure i.e. support joists and risers. My reasoning at the time (2015) was that because the Dandy Mire Viaduct needed the diorama depth to accommodate it and I intended to have a lower return tracks/fiddle yard beneath the top baseboard. The latter could change due to a possible alternative of maybe using a dual Transverser system at each end of the layout. So as I developed these ideas, the diorama board holding the Railway Workers Cottages was suitably redesigned to have a 3° slope around the station area. When looking at pictures of the Stepped Terrace houses they are on this approximate slope, whilst the rail side Terrace houses are level. Now as I commit to build them, the rail side terrace houses will be first with the stepped terrace houses on the 3° slope later. More on the baseboards and construction once the buildings have been made. The first thing I did was to make some cardboard mock ups so to evaluate their actual size. This also proved handy as my dimensional drawings needed to be modified slightly for the upper window lintel height versus the barge board/gutter line on the roofs. Then I had to attend to the end elevation drawing that affected the wall height as well. As yet I haven’t come across sufficient dimensional information to gauge how my own stack up. Lets hope I got it right!

After the initial assembly of the box, it was obvious to me that from the operator/visitor view point that the interior would need to be furnished. The current lever and frame at the box is 33 levers in a forty frame, and I believe the Northallerton line through Hawes in Wensleydale will be achievable one day. Therefore on my layout of Garsdale Junction this is reflected and gives me more operational value. I came across Steve Hewitt’s fine Semaphore signal work here on RM Web (before I joined) that gave me an invaluable insight into the original signalling from a 1956 Garsdale Diagram so much so that I decided to base my revised track layout on that diagram. No doubt on my AnyRail Station plan someone has already spotted the signal numbers and positions. There are many photos that I would like to post here, but copyright infringement would prevent me. Needless to say that many of you will no doubt know the area well and seen the myriad of material available about Garsdale Station through the Internet these days. The point and signal levers are coloured as close as possible to the prototype as I can tell, but I’m open to correction. The building of the back wall with its repeater instruments and gauges was easier to make than the lever and frame with all its levers. To begin with I used a piece of clear styrene, as I didn’t have any other sort on hand, and scribed the interior panelling timbers. Using 2.0mm Evergreen angle cut down to 1.0mm (3”x 3” actual size) as best I could for the angle supports for the shelf above the lever/frame and gradually built it up from there. That was my best guess from half a world away at the actual angle size. Now if someone could be kind enough to enlighten me further it would be appreciated. It is frustrating for me not to be able to define the detail on the instruments further, but then I’m glad I didn’t choose to model in N scale. I take my hat off to those guys who do. You can see my results below as the photos are self-explanatory. As with all the station buildings I still have a long way to go with detailing it all. Next up the Garsdale Railway workers terrace houses.

At the start of this blog I posted some of the pictures of my version of the Midland type 4c signal box that took some time to construct. The first problem for me was to check and recheck the window height (as it didn’t look right) against the prototype pictures and a pic of ‘Signalman Owen’ standing in the signal box entrance. The building dimensions also gave me a length to width problem. I scaled my width at 55mm then after a few days of deliberation arrived at a length of 125mm less the access steps on the South East gable end. The addition of the staff toilet ‘on suite’ (during the mid 90’s?) was not featured in pictures from earlier years so keeping my options open I may add it to the signal box or build the waiting room additions that were removed when the station was ‘preserved’. Firstly cutting out the clear sheet, then using Evergreen strip and angle pieces I built up the window frames and doorway closest to the prototype sizes, as the styrene shapes would allow. The pieces were pre fitted to the basic signal box, then put aside until the box detailing was completed. Then I took a crash course in acrylic painting from my friend Paul at the Greater Waikato Railway Modellers Club, and then jumped in feet first, or put my foot in it. (It was my first attempt at painting after all).

The Restroom Just finished off both the waiting rooms glazing details, as far as I can go at the moment. May need to come back to those later on. Getting to the second structure on the Garsdale/Hawes platform that should have been an easy build but for one thing, I made the top window lintels the same as the Waiting Rooms. This was an oversight, as I didn’t check my original drawing against a photo of the prototype that shows a squared lintel instead of the rounded top corners. So after a mid build correction we have perhaps the most necessary building at Garsdale Junction from a visitors point of view. Some of my photos came out grainy for some reason but you can see the result. All the Station buildings tile roofs are constructed from foam board with the tiles made from cardboard strips glued to the foam board. Now if anyone can tell me how to prevent shrinkage from PVA glue bowing the roof structure it would be appreciated, as I may have to re think how to construct the terrace railway workers cottages roofs as they are greater in area and the problem could be amplified. Extra roof bracing I guess could help. I may revisit the roof and tiling on all my buildings, as I’m not entirely satisfied with them. In particular the size of the ridge tile capping. The other is the width uniformity of the slate tiles. The camera is an excellent tool for critiquing one’s workmanship. I only wish it wasn’t mine! I devised a tile template of sorts that has helped me to maintain better accuracy after cutting out a lot of tile strips. I did come across various computer generated tile patterns, I don’t know what you guys pay for printer ink in the UK, but here in NZ it’s an astronomical price (the printers are almost cheaper than a set of inks!). At the moment a good lead pencil and ruler will suit me just fine.

Carlisle Waiting Room has progressed along to the point of detailing the window frames. Of course I apply the 3 feet viewing rule at the moment. Hopefully as I up skill it may get shorter! Now for the Leeds Up line Waiting Room. As this is my second attempt to model these buildings you will probably notice that the quoins detail has been scribed on rather than using a card quoin glued to the foam board. This was because the quoins appear to be flush with the stonework, not proud. Also I changed how I achieved the cills on the windows from the Carlisle Waiting Room. Working with foam board I am finding is a medium not only easy mark out, cut and file, but also accepts cardboard and styrene providing one uses a PVA glue and stay away from glues that melt the foam board. It pays to test the glue out on piece of scrap first. If you want to take on a real foam board challenge check out the skill of Emmanuel Nouaillier. So until my next post, Cheers

Well as you can see I'm still getting my head around this Blog thing. I Just used the Edit button to continue instead of this. As you can see by the photos they show up my warts and all efforts on the Carlisle Waiting Room. The last pic shows my attempt of Yorkshire Stone colouring using acrylic paints, with the Up Line Leeds Waiting Room in the background. Presently I'm tackling the window details of both buildings. The 3.0mm foam board has been scribed using a 0.5mm HB propelling pencil after cutting out the building sides and removing the paper from both sides of the foam board using boiling water in a suitable Pyrex dish lid, by carefully rubbing the paper off with one's forefinger. Using a plan of the building, copy it to the foam board. Allow for window/door detailing and mitre the corners to suit. Ensure that your block courses align on all building sides. I use full strength Exterior PVA glue to assemble.

Thanks for your interest Knuckles. I'm still working through with it. Check out David Neat https://davidneat.wordpress.com/

Well hello to my first attempt to post my scratch built Version of Garsdale Junction Station and its associated buildings. I have been inspired by the many RM Web contributors and offer an insight into my 3.0mm foam board efforts. From this To this It has taken me a while to regain some of the skills in modelling that I had when I was 16 or so, but now old age only affects one's physical abilities to accomplish what seems a challenge to model in OO Scale. I had started planning for this project back in 2014,hence 'The Long Drag to Garsdale' title. I must acknowledge Physicsman's KL and Rob's Bakewell Station blogs for their dedication to this hobby. So I will have more to come soon. Well thanks for your comments; at least I feel that I can expand on this project further. Back in April 2014 I started to browse through all the information I could find on modelling a UK style railway after coming across Richard’s ‘Everard Junction’ You Tube postings. Using a free downloadable AnyRail5 program I learnt a lot about helixes and gradients and decided to plan a layout that I could fit into my garage. Whilst trying various layout ideas, I began reading through Jeff’s 1st Kirkby Luneside experiences and hopefully learn about more modelling from his contributors and other RM Web pages on how to avoid most of the basic mistakes we all make. So above all I wanted have portability on a robust baseboard, a basic prototypical layout (hence Garsdale/Hawes Junction) and also because I live in New Zealand near middle earth, I needed plenty of photographs and ‘cabride’ videos of the subject matter. For me the Settle and Carlisle Railway won through. So planning and research does take time, but it is well worthwhile. Here are some of my original layout plans and building dimensions/positions. I had one major issue, how to model the Dandry Mire/Moorcock Viaduct Yorkshire stone prototype block work sizes? I wasn’t keen on investing large amounts of money on materials that are not available here in NZ unless one imports them from overseas, so that using Foamboard became my best option. This medium is relatively cheap to obtain and with a little patience gives results that as a first time scratch modeller that are gratifying. So why did I start on the station buildings? For a start less block work while I work through my own methodology to do things quicker and secondly I had already made scale plans of the buildings using research, photos and block and quoin counting. I’ll admit I’m no expert, but as one learns one improves. Below is the Down Line to Carlisle Waiting Room. It is nowhere finished yet as the fine detailing is yet to be done.

Do like your work Rob. Has inspired me to scratch build from 3.0mm foam board a oo scale version of Garsdale/Hawes Junction Station and associated buildings. Cheers from NZ Phil