Graham T

Death or glory!

I use kristal kleer, which works well for me. Similar stuff I imagine.

Yes I probably will paint the remaining windows and doors before I install them. This project is a bit of a learning curve...

I've also used Flemish bond for the chimneys, when I think they should probably be stretcher bond? A simple reason for that - I forgot to order a sheet of stretcher bond card, and am nowhere near patient enough to wait for another order to get here from the UK! And I must remember to add the glazing before I fix the roof on, but that will have to be after the windows have been painted of course ...

I got onto a bit of a roll with this today, and have made quite a bit of progress on the toilet block... Still need to make a skylight for the roof, and then add capping stones to the tops of the walls. Will also have to visit the local model shop to see if he has some square section rod that I can use for the downpipes. That's what the small square cut out is in the rear wall - it's the drain for the flat roof. You've probably spotted that I needed to use close to a gallon of Mr Surfacer to fill the gaps in the quoins at the corners. This was due to me being thick and assembling the complete walls individually before fixing the structure together. So there's a lesson for the main building; I'll add the doors and windows, then assemble the four walls onto their baseplate before I fit the quoins. I'll probably still manage to have some gaps though!

This bit will be the store room and toilets at the right hand end of the building, as viewed from the front of the layout.

A pre-prandial update 🙂 Windows at the rear of the building have been cut out. You can see that some of the bricks have lifted a little from the laser cut sheet, but the sills, lintels, and quoins will cover all of that. I started here as this wall won't be visible from the front of the layout, and so the inevitable foul ups will be hidden from view! I decided against cutting the openings from the inside, as I was worried that I wouldn't get the cuts properly aligned with the brick courses. But I didn't want to fix the plans to the brick sheet with masking tape in case that damaged the surface, so I wrapped the tape around the ends instead. Naturally I'm making this up as I go along, so I'm not quite sure what the next step should be. Cutting out the remaining windows and doors I suppose. I'm not looking forward to cutting out the smallest windows, I can see that being something of a challenge. and quite likely requiring what @MrWolf describes as "specialist swearing". I wonder if I could get on Mastermind with that?

Useful ideas gents, and I might give them a try - but I think you have some rather misplaced faith in my metalworking abilities!

There are also smaller quoins on all the chimneys Andy, but they will all need a little bit of filler at the right angled corners to hide the joints. A layer or two of paint might even be enough to do the job. So the joints between the brick sheets are all at the corners too, and hopefully concealed by the quoins. That's the plan anyway!

Go for the stealthy land grab Colin!

The glacier formerly known as Chuffnell Regis continues to edge its way towards the sea. The walls have all now been cut from 2mm card and the brick sheets fixed on. I tried using Roket card glue for that at first but, although great for many uses, it's actually far too grabby for this. So I used basic Pritt-stick glue instead, which gives a strong enough bond but also a little bit of time for adjusting the position of the brick sheet. I started with the simplest elevation - which is also rather conveniently out of of sight once on the layout! - and added the quoins and the thicker section of brickwork at the base of the wall. The quoins are laser cut card from LCut Creative, and I've also used thin plastic strip for the horizontal stonework sections. Those will get very gently scribed later. I think I will clad the chimneys next, then construct a base for the walls to attach to, in the hope that I might be able to make a more or less square building that way! I haven't extended the walls down to set them into the station platform, but will have the option to add another layer of 2mm card underneath the floor later on if necessary, which I can use to set the building in. I'll see how it sits when I get to that stage...

I'm planning to use square section brass rod for the brake rigging on my 27xx. Good point about the insulation, which I hadn't considered. The other thing that's delaying my starting on these (apart from inherent laziness, that is), is that they are not just a straight run; as you can see from this photo on the 27xx they are cranked (offset?) to avoid the con rods... Photo: gwr.org.uk

Quite possibly, yes! They both seem to work 🙂

Happy birthday Neal! 🍻

Yes that would work. I'll just need to get my head around which piece to stick where! (As the bishop may have said to the actress...)

Thanks Robin, that's good to know. Perhaps Phil just got a dodgy print?

Not wanting to pour cold water on things, but @Harlequin posted about the SRMW bullion van on my thread recently, and wasn't impressed with the quality of the printing. It would be good to hear from someone who has tried out the printed bogies?

The drawing for the station building is now complete, and glued onto 2mm card which will form the shell of the structure. Next step will be to clad it in laser cut brick, and add a card base to ensure everything stays square... I did think about fixing the brick sheets to the opposite side of the card from where I have glued on the drawings, and then using the lines of the drawing to make the cut outs for doors and windows. But then of course all the openings would end up reversed!

Nicely modelled Andy. Perhaps add some flashing around the chimney?

The Falklands War got us a stay of execution, but of course that was only temporary. Quite early in my "career" a lot of my contemporaries were made redundant. Unsurprisingly, the RN hadn't thought this through particularly well, and so was asking lots of those people to come back the following year - but they would have to return their redundancy payments. Most of them, as you can imagine, didn't take up the offer!

I think we'd be pressed to assemble that many warships these days.

The reception wasn't always that great, to be fair!

There is of course such a beast - but I wasn't one! This was my office: Photo: IWM

I'll be putting some walls in, yes, but more for rigidity than anything else. I'm not planning on making interiors as they won't be visible.

Funnily enough, architecture was the only career that interested me as a teenager. But I joined the Navy instead!