Chandwell

I think your problem is likely the lintel and sills as they are part of your window. You can apply a bitmap (the bricks) to a shape via clipping like I show in the videos. However, they will only clip to a basic single shape. Try it with a basic rectangle. Draw a rectangle and make sure it is on top of the bricks. Select the rectangle. Shift-click the bricks to select them too, right click and do the clip like on the video. That should work. So you then need to make a simple shape with holes for the windows. Just white rectangles on top of your wall will work of course, but to make basic holes you need to cut the holes in the basic rectangle shape. You can cut one basic shape from another by using Path > Difference. Draw a rectangle and fill it in, say, red. Draw another rectangle on top and fill it in blue. This is your window. Select both rectangles and do path > Difference. You should be left with a red rectangle with a hole in it. Put this rectangle on top of your bricks. Select them both then clip. You will now have a brick wall with a hole in it. Draw your lintel and sill on top. Inkscape is basically a free version of Illustrator so I’d be surprised if you can’t do this in Illustrator. If you already know that software then it may be best to stick to that. I’ve just done a quick search and yea you can do this in Illustrator. Here’s how: https://design.tutsplus.com/articles/quick-tip-how-to-crop-raster-image-in-adobe-illustrator--vector-4989 Hope this helps. If not I’ll do you a video.

Hi Stuart, It's hard for me to tell which part you're trying to add the texture to. Is it the black rectangle? I.e you want the bricks to fill the rectangle, but miss out the holes for the windows?

Oh I love those. The dark brown brick is so effective. Superb. I wonder if I could do a video to show how to do something similar to what you want. Maybe even offer to email a file to people to follow along. A kind of add your own texture thing. May be worth exploring that as an idea...?

Apologies for the links. I’m not meaning to hijack a thread, but these videos may be relevant to helping you. This one includes a sequence of how I used Inkscape as a planning tool for my station build: This is a playlist of all my Inkscape-specific videos, starting with an absolute beginner’s video: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL_zJxqOqiTyefmgOeZnLtQ8kaNMMyGiQR And this is an example of the kind of building you can ultimately achieve using only Inkscape, which might hopefully inspire you to give it a go.

Hello everyone. Like others have said above, I use Inkscape to good effect with downloaded textures and also Scalescenes ones. I still like to cut out arches and lintels individually though to give a little bit of relief: I like the idea above of having a library of bits to arrange into buildings. I worked a little bit like that to design my station on Inkscape by arranging standard-sized rectangles until I had an arrangement that I liked: I’m more than happy to answer any questions about Inkscape either here or on YouTube as I think it is a fantastic tool in our scratch building armoury.

I thought you may like this tongue-in-cheek look at Chandwell in its current state. Here is a Visit Chandwell Tourist Board video from 1993 in which local celebrity Britney Scroggins shows you exactly what you are missing out on by not being in Chandwell right now.

Quick update to show my plans for the side of the station. This is intended to have a look like Sheffield Victoria with bits of Darlington, Bingley, and Sheffield Midland. All quite low so as not to obscure the view into the station. I’m starting to build it this weekend.

Thank you, everyone, for your excellent suggestions of things I could use to improve/replace my columns. I like the plastic tube idea, although the wrapped-paper round the end approach is definitely in line with my approach to things generally! I am going to leave them for now and see what I think in a week or two. They do grate a little with me, but maybe I will stop noticing them once my attention is turned to the next build. If you're interested, I have completed the video of the build, and it's here.

I think that the canopy is finally finished! On the whole I am really pleased with how it looks. The LEDs I managed to install along the main girders have worked well. I used standard 7/0.2 (I think) wire which once painted matt black is well-enough hidden along the girders. I have posted about the glazing already. It is my own design printed onto inkjet acetate. It was way too shiny at first and looked like it was made from sunglasses. My experiment of varnishing it with acrylic matt varnish worked out really well, thankfully. It took the shine away and left a kind of frosted glass look, which is better than I could have hoped. It is glued to the card frames just using normal PVA glue. The columns leave a lot to be desired. As usual, I wanted to avoid buying anything else special (already pushing a Fiver for the acetate and the LEDs!) so I didn’t buy any fancy laser-cut brackets or 3D printed columns. I tried a few things but eventually settled on cocktail sticks. At 2mm wide, these seemed about the right kind of size for the canopy. I used little balls of Milliput shaped by hand using nothing other than my fingernails to shape into some kind of base. Each one is slightly different and they have ended up looking a bit like painted cotton buds. Not my best work, especially when looked at closely, but on the whole the effect is decent enough. Sadly the roof needs to remain loose and easily removable and I made the decision to glue the columns to the canopy rather than the platform. This means that despite my best efforts, some columns float about 0.5mm above the surface which can be clearly seen on camera if not by eye. It’s annoying and something I may look at addressing with paper or Milliput perhaps. As ever with Chandwell, I have tried to keep it dirty and a bit depressing. I’ve tried to make it look unkempt by keeping parts of the glazing missing, and the wooden pelmets (?) boards at the ends missing. The canopy will be attached to buildings at the head of the platforms and the front of the layout, which is why the ends and front are currently floating a bit. That will be the next job, I think. Off to edit the video now. I have hours and hours of footage to sift through.

Thank you Graham. I never told you but Smithdown Road was a huge inspiration to me years ago, and I still think of it when I think of building a tail-chaser. The track plan must have been some kind of dark magic because despite your excellent video tours, I never really fully understood it!

The glazing of the roof continues. The printed acetate was too shiny. It looked like thin plastic (which it is) instead of dirty glass. So I tried brushing on some matt varnish and it’s ended up looking ok. Not too shiny and a bit frosted. It looks much more like grubby glass now than it did. The main glazing is now done. I’m now adding the top bit on. I don’t know the architectural term but the bit at the apex of the roof above the main bit for ventilation. Once the glazing is done I will add strips on top of the beams to represent the ironwork surrounds on top of the main trusses. I think it is going to work out well enough.

Thanks Duncan. Yes, it’s loosely based on the rear part at Ilkley. The bit that is now Marks and Spencer. There are some great pictures of it in this thread on page 12. The best it about it is the columns were square-profile and didn’t have fancy brackets so I won’t need anything fancy other than my trusty Cornflake packet!

Making some progress. Main structure done and painted (not a strength of mine!) and the first glazing panel in place. I just printed this onto inkjet-compatible acetate. It’s working quite well so far, and so I think it may work out in the end.

My plan is to do something like that. I will make a grid in Inkscape that is of the correct dimension for the space I have, and then use lines to suggest glazing panels. I am concerned I’ve gone too large to be realistic on the number of panels that would be used, so may do half tile/wood, and half glazed, but I am not sure yet. The most obvious problem I have is that my printer cannot print “white”. So I’d need to commission a screen printer or just use black strips. I will go black I think. I am going to model some, of not most, of the frames empty though, which will lead to a challenge of its own I think. This may be one of those things where modelling in N is an advantage as it may be less obvious that something is wrong because it’s so tiny. But we will see... I can’t wait to see your interpretation of Skipton. If it’s anything like what you’ve done so far, it will be nothing short of spectacular.

Thanks. In the plus side, I’m only “being inspired by” Ilkley! The back part of the roof (which is now M&S) was of a different design to the front canopies which were more like this, I think. But still... I need to think a bit about what I do once I have the frames made. Would you say those panels are about 1ft by 5ft? Two on top of each other therefore about 10ft?

Wow! Thank you! That is very kind of you to say. I am really pleased that you find my thread inspiring! Enjoy the videos too!

Lovely picture of the roof. What are the dimensions of those glass panels do you think? I’m having a crisis of confidence at the moment that I’ve made my main truss too large for it to be glazed in a similar way to this.

Ha ha. I know! It made me laugh. Not 100% sure about lighting yet. I’ve ordered some 3mm and 5mm warm white wide-angle LEDs and will see what they look like hidden in the apex pointing down. I need the wires to be hidden so may use copper tape. I also need the roof to be removable so I can get into it. I think a bit of trial and error will be in order. Also trying to decide whether to glaze it and if so, how. Current thinking is to use printed acetate with suitably grubby appearance. I’ve not thought that far ahead yet as to be honest I am not sure if this structure will even work! Have you thought about how you’re going to do yours yet?

I have finished the platforms and am happy with them. I tried to model puddles and crumbling tarmac with a half-decent effect. I’m moving onto the canopy now, which I am loosely basing on the one that used to be at Ilkley. There are some wonderful pictures elsewhere on RmWeb which have inspired me. I am hand-cutting the trusses and making them out of three layers of 0.5mm card. These are being fixed together with 54x2x1mm matchsticks of card and a 2mm high strip of Cornflake packet. I’m using normal PVA glue for this and a jig made from Lego. If you want to see more of the platforms, the latest video is on my YouTube channel:

My attention is turning to the Station End of the layout and here’s a look at how I am planning my scratch building of the station and the disused warehouse behind it. Chandwell is on a hillside so the ground is higher at the back right than at the front or the left. I use simple folded bits of value copier paper to work out the arrangement of how everything will fit together. The warehouse will be half relief. The station at the end of the platforms will be ultra low relief and the buildings at the back will be quarter relief. There includes a set of steps from street level to warehouse level. It is all a bit complicated in my mind so I find that doing mock ups like this is very cheap and allows me to be sure that what I am visualising will work without wasting any glue, card, printer ink, or time... At least that is the plan!

PS. The guttering is just the edge of a bit of cornflake packet coloured in with a Sharpie pen and then cut very thinly.

Yes, absolutely everything was printed on a 5 year old 70 quid Canon printer. I think the tricks are: Use 120gsm matte photographic paper - good surface to print on but thin enough to fold. Set the printer driver manually. Set it to ultra high quality and trick it into thinking it is printing on Canon Ultra Photographic paper or whatever. It’s not, but it makes it try harder. Set the colour density manually too. Set it to “dark”. It uses a lot of ink but it’s worth it. Final trick is FOUR coats of varnish. Two gloss to start with as the matte soaks into the paper and leaves a residue. Then two matte or ultra matte. I brush this on. It makes the paper solid, waterproof, and blends all of the disparate bits of the buildings together. Almost all the buildings have three or four different layers of card to build up relief. Things like lintels are just stuck on top rather than included in the base print. This adds a subtle 3D effect that finishes it all off nicely.

I have finished the video that shows the building of The Weir if anyone is interested.

Yeah, I think it makes a big difference to only have a few rooms lit, especially on a building like an inn. Thank you - that means a lot. I am trying to make this an atmospheric (if dirty, dingy and a bit depressing) layout.

Thank you everyone. I’ve finished the build tonight. Here are a few shots of it on the layout in its final position. I’m really pleased with how it turned out although there are some things I wish I had done differently (the chimneys are over-scale and I dribbled glue down one end of it in a moment of distraction). But on the whole I think it suits the town perfectly. On to the “station end” now...