grahame

Cutting the wall panels and adding them is tedious and time consuming, but they do look quite good. I think this decorative work may take some time.

All the card bits are cut and glued on leaving the cladding to be added from plasticard. I've given it a dusting of grey primer which when dry makes any unwanted hairy and fluffy bits and strands go hard and easy to cut and file off with a sanding stick.

I've started to put on the wall panels. These will be overlaid with brick embossed plasticard to represent the brick panels and plain strip to represent the concrete framing. The windows will be fitted from behind directly to the plasticard through the apertures cut in the card after the building is painted. Some of the printed windows can be seen in the pic below:

The two Hatfield Close towers were built at the end of the 60s/early 70s. They were constructed as concrete frames with red and yellow brick infill panels and looked quite smart. Later they succumbed to the rage of cladding everything, but the ACM used was deemed highly inflammable and was later ripped off and replaced by terracotta tiles which gives them an overall dull redish look. Finding pics of how they originally looked in the brick finish has been very difficult. I've only found the one on the previous page.

Just glue some sides on and voila . . . a set of cardboard bookshelves. Next I'll turn it in to a block of flats. But first to mow the lawn.

After a window count up I'm going to go with 10 residential floors (instead of 12) and the ground floor giving 11 storeys. And I've made a start in cutting some of the floors (I wont do them all but probably need a couple more) and marking up the front wall panels. There is a recess where the chute balconies are so it's not just flat fronted.

Thanks. At one time during the station re-building it seemed like as fast as I was researching and making the models, the developers were tearing down the real buildings - the two tower blocks, SER offices, Fielden house, the old tube station entrance building, two shop rows in Boro High Street to put the new bridge in and so on. And before that it was the 'More London' development that saw Dominion House, Battlebridge House, and shops and pubs in Tooley Street eradicated. Apparently Colechurch House is now slated for redevelopment.

As well as the mods to New London Bridge House, I've needed to make a few alterations to the building site model and the other side of Joiner Street next to Southwark Towers. Joiner Street used to go under the station from St Thomas Street to Tooley Street. Another similar road under the station was Stainer Street that ran parallel but that is now just a pedestrian walkway after the station re-building. I don't think Joiner street even exists anymore.

Note in this pic that Southwark Towers has gone (at 328ft was jointly the tallest building in the UK to be demolished) but that New London Bridge House is still standing, although for not much longer. At 309ft tall it was taken down in 2010.

After a little on-line research on the residential block, Hatfield Close (see previous page), for the east end of the layout, I've found some drawings and dimensions. I'll be making it as a low relief building against the side backscene and located at an angle. Next is to check out my stash of pre-printed windows and see if I have enough of suitable sized ones.

Top two floors now lopped off and new top roof fitted. Here's how it looks on it's supporting block. The glass reception will need a little adjustment. And this is it roughly in place which allows a road each end of the width to pass - probably not quite a wide as they should be but hopefully I'll get away with it:

I've glued the two halves back together which surprisingly went together easily and accurately - very relieved. But, yep, I'm going to need to lop off a couple of floors (and hope no-one notices the lack of height, narrowness and rather tubby look as the waisted section is now effectively thicker). I'll mark and cut when the glue has dried.

It's tricky as the a period I'm trying to model and capture - late 70s/early 80s to early 90s (when NSE ended and privatisation took effect) - saw a lot of change. It's between the two major rebuilds that the real station has undergone in the last century, firstly, the infamous 1972 to 1978 rebuild under British Rail, and then the 21st century redevelopment in 2012 to 2018 under Railtrack. And even in the dozen or so years I'm modelling there were many changes (buildings torn down, new ones built, pubs closed, shops changing hands and so on).

This one? Don't they call it a power box these days? Or the station announcers kiosk? Which I understand people mistake for a signal box. But both will feature, although I do need to get the models finished. The power box is reduced in scale length, even in N/2mm it would be massively long and I've only a little shed. Although at over 12" long it's probably one of the biggest signal/power boxes I've seen in N gauge.

As alluded to in my layout thread, while fiddling and placing the buildings I realised that I'd need to slim down my model of New London Bridge House to fit everything in - space so easily and quickly gets used up. Such is the need for compression and simplification. Consequently I've cut a two inch section out (one inch either side of the centre line to preserve the waisted look). It does mean that it's much more slender (perhaps too much so) and I think I'll need to take off one or two of the top floors to help preserve the overall height/width relationship. I'll glue the two halves together to get a better look and feel. I'm just glad that I hadn't decorated the outside. One side of the tower sits on a low block and the other side has a glass entrance reception beneath with a walkway between. The walkway is now much narrower but at least I should be able to fit in the road behind that leads to the bus and taxi stands.

Or three rail plus one. ;-)

Yes, Guys hospital tower won't be included on my layout. It's just on the wrong side of St Thomas Street which is the front edge boundary of the layout. It's even taller than the two tower blocks that are included, although both of those have since been demolished, and would be huge as a model. Building the layout is great fun although with so much to do I wish I had more time to spend on it.

As a break from the current little disagreement over comments, here's something a little different. There are no steamers or motion to comment on, in fact there are no trains at all. And I've not even laid any track (yet) but here's a pic of the latest development of my N/2mm layout. The buildings are only simply temporarily plonked in place. You can just make out where the lines will run with the bridge sides roughly in place in front of the cream/fawn coloured buildings - they will run behind the shop row on the left and off scene;

Thanks. Despite CF being an inspiration, I'll never match that especially as LB is N gauge whereas CF is 2mm finescale. Besides they're also different time periods - none of those smokey steamers for LB, but despite that I'll probably run one or two (maybe occasionally). Plus CF is north London and LB is in South London - a far better place. And, of course, the hard work is yet to be tackled - the track laying and electrics.

I did check my etched hand brake wheel stash but being N/2mm there was nothing near the size required. But other scales, now that's a good idea.

I'll have to go a measure them. But I have looked on line and all the cart/wagon wheels I've found have a huge chunky axle boss in the centre while those on the restaurant windows (see previous page for pics) are slender and appear to be specially made decorative ones. I've cut a hole in the baseboard to accommodate the basements of the Georgian terrace at the front (so it doesn't appear to be floating as in the pic above) and stood up the smaller tower of No1 LB (which was leaning in the pic above). The buildings are still only temporarily placed in position and here's another pic of the left end of the layout. I've adjusted the perspective a bit to reduce the diverging verticals of using a wide angle lens.

I could do with some wagon/cart wheels for the La Spezia restaurant windows, although with the other buildings in place (just temporarily in position in the pic below) it won't be easy to see. ;-)

I've been adding some details to the Station Approach row so that I can get the triangular section completed and in place to fit the bridges and viaduct. Some of the signage still needs doing, such as a the bookies William Hill branding but that will have to wait until I get a new printer. Fortunately it will only require gluing to the outside so I can progress. And I'm not so sure what to finish the first one (on the left) as - I quite like the idea of the Aardvark staff agency (as in the B&W pic I posted above) - a touch of the Goons, as in "aardvark never hurt anyone". Now that section is accurately located I can move on the the next section - the approaches to the through platforms. Despite the seeming large width of the baseboard, the space is rapidly being eaten up and I'm a little concerned about how everything will fit in, particularly the New London Bridge House tower block which I may need to slim down, something I'm not looking forward to have to do. And the width of Tooley Street, although being at the back it probably wont be noticeable that it's rather narrow.

The betting shop front is done, except for branded signage which will have to wait until I get a new printer. But it will only require gluing to the outside so I can progress.

I've been detailing the shops on Station Approach (later renamed Guildable Manor Street) so that I can get the triangular section completed and in place to fit the bridges and viaduct. Just one (Willian Hills bookies - the dark blue one) to fit out.