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Lisa

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  1. Lisa
    Hi All
     
    Recently I have been suffering pain, but I have now started to make progress again. I have finished the modifications to the DCC bus wiring, following the modifications for the Dairy Stream bridge.
     

     
    I have also modified the cassette alignment to make the alignment more reliable.
     

     

     
    Lisa
  2. Lisa
    Hi All
     
    Havn't been around for a while. I've just come out of hospital, good old NHS, having just had some surgery to my left jaw. There is no pain for the first time in months.
     
    I hope to do some modeling tomorrow after i've walked Maisy. You probably guessed Masiy photograph is used as my icon.
     
    Lisa
  3. Lisa
    Hi All
     
    There are several ways in which building can be constructed for a layout. I have decided that I am going to build them using embossed plastic sheet. Some of the building, like the workman's cottages for the dairy and the gas works can be built by modifying commercial kits, for Kestrel aka Gaugemaster.
     

     
    I could have built the cottages from scratch from sheets of embossed plasticard. This would have allowed the building to be more individual,but would have evolved much more work.
     
    Modifying kits is often referred to as 'kit bashing', this enables the finished building in this case to be made to suite the prototype and fit in the available space. This visual appearance can be achieved by painting the bricks the correct yellow/red colour and weathering them. The model will be fitted into the available space by building it in half relief, and at the same time we get four half relief cottages from a kit designed to produce two whole cottages.
     

    In order to make the completed cottages strong enough to withstand layout transport they were built on a plasticard plinth and have a blank back wall made from plasticard. The plinth was fitted on place, after the windows were fixed in place. There were six small holes drilled into the plinth to allow the fumes from the plastic weld adhesive to get out, if you don't do this the windows would go cloudy.
     

     

    Lisa
  4. Lisa
    Hi All
     
    When I wrote the the blog entry 'Chagford - Building Homes for the Workers 2' entry I assumed that the acrylic, water based, paint I assumed that the paint would dry within hours. I have been surprised that weeks later the non diluted paint, which I used to paint the brick colour onto the base coat coloured the mortar colour, has not dyed.
     

     
    My previous experience with acrylic paint has been on paper, card or foam-core card base. All of the above are water permeable, whereas high density styrene is not. Therefor the only way for water to leave the paint is through the layer of paint. As the paint dries it becomes increasing more non permeable, so the water has nowhere to escape, and thus the paint does not dry.
     

     

     
    My experience in some ways flies against the above, since the most dilute paint dried more quickly and completely than the non diluted paint. I had to make a decision of what to do with a building that has remained tacky. My decision was to wash of the paint and start again. I applied a thinned coat coloured the mortar colour and then use a technique from an article in Model Rail, which used wax crayons to colour the bricks and then applied a varnish to protect the finish.
     

     
    Lisa
  5. Lisa
    Hi All
     
    Last night I completed building my own workbench, up to now I've been working on the kitchen table. Currently I get the power supply from a extension lead on the top of the bench, hopefully I will soon have the 4 way attached to the side of the bench instead.
     

     
     
    I also need to fit a side and back to the bench to prevent items and tools from falling off, and getting lost.
     

     
     
    Lisa
     
     
  6. Lisa
    Hi All
     
    The previous photographs taken were taken using a white background, and the whole setup is placed on my kitchen window shelf, the window is a large one facing east. I think that I need to adjust the white balance on my camera because the pink fringing.
     

     
    I've then spent an hour reading the disk based manual for my digital camera, and I have found that I have just as much control over the camera, as when I use my manual reflex camera.
    The time of day in which the photographs were taken, affects the light quality, and therefor the quality of the resulting photographs.
     
    I will have to experiment to see what settings give the best pictures when working in macro mode! The results are shown below. The slight change of background colour left to right is due to shadow.
     
    All I now have to do is improve my colouring skills!
     
    Lisa
  7. Lisa
    Hi All
     
    I have plenty of experience of using acrylic paints, but this is the first time I have used them to paint 2mm buildings. They have the advantage of being much cheaper than model paints, since you only need a small selection of colours and you can then mix them to obtain a full pallet. They also are water based, which means that if you make a complete mess, you can simply wash a plastic model in warm water, dry and then start again. When you are happy with your finished painting you will need to apply a mat varnish to prevent damage.
     

    I took the unpainted cottages, and first painted the slates the correct shade of grey for Welsh slate. This was initially undiluted acrylic paint, but this did not between the slates. I then added a little water to the paint, and repainted the roof,this time the paint went into the inter slate gaps.
     

    Next I painted the door area white, and let it dry and then over painted the door area, bright red as this was the door colour of the Chagford Gas Light and Coke Company. But the two layers of paint hide the door detail, and I then removed the paint using a wet cotton but and a cocktail stick. When the door had dried I then repainted the door red.
     

     
    I then painted the window sills windows and door frames. Next I dry brushed the brick colour over the walls. The colour only painted bricks and not the mortar. The Cottages still need detailing including weathering.The last photograph does not do the actual building justice!
     
    Lisa
  8. Lisa
    Hi All
     
    One of the problems which I have had whilst writing this blog, is taking photographs of very small models. This problem is made worst because I have problems with hand shake, when trying to hold them camera still. The above problems are more sever if I use the optical zoom function on my camera.
     

     
    What I have been trying to do is take hand-held shots of work in progress, because I feel that this gives a more spontaneous feel to the blog. In order to get better quality photographs it will be necessary to stage shots in order to use a tripod to hold the camera.
     

     
    I have experimented using flash and using additional lighting. With the flash there is a tendency to get pictures with areas in the centre of the picture which appears shiny, this happens because the flash is reflected by shiny surface of the plastic surface. The additional lighting requires careful setting up in order to get fine surface detail in the photographs.
     

     
    I hope that I can find a way to get photographs which capture the feel of the project, but are of a higher quality than so far achieved.
     
    Lisa
  9. Lisa
    Hi All
     
    I have been building part of the boiler house for the Chagford Dairy of the Cooperative Wholesale Society. Or should I say a quarter of it as the rest is off scene.
     
    The model building is based on the boiler house kit from Kestrel. The basic shape is correct, but the windows and the door construction are wrong on this kit. This type of construction is called scratch bashing, as I am modifying a kit, but adding feature which are built from scratch. The end of the building was first cut in half using a raiser saw. The large door into the building where cut out and replaced with a plain sheet of plasticard fixed to the inside. The lapped door was then built up on this base.
     

     
    Next I turned my attention to the building side, the widow less side was cut in half. An aperture slightly too small for the window was then cut out, working from the back of the sheet. Then the sides were filled to size, at this point the bottom of the aperture was lined up with a course of bricks.


    Next a piece of clear plasticard was glued to the reverse of the sheet. Using very thin strips of plasticard the window frames were built up. Small amounts of glue on the clear plasticard will smear it, but window in industrial building were never kept as clean as house windows, so this doesn't matter.
     

    The building was then carefully assembled, making sure that the corner was square. After the glue dried the building was offered up to the corner of the layout to check that it fitted as required.
     

     

    The boiler house will of course need painting and weathering and the back corner of the roof will need to be radiused to allow the curve on the extension backscene.
     
    Lisa
  11. Lisa
    Hi All
     
    Once the final layout size was determined, I then started to design the track layout.
     
    At the initial stages I had decided the the main line curve would be 190mm radius. An arc of this radius was drawn on the front of the baseboard, using a ruler type compass. Templates for the various points were produced, complete with sleeper centrelines, using templot.
     

     
    The point templates were laid out as shown in the photograph above. This allowed the lengths of the loop and sidings could be checked using actual wagons. I knew that my length of my trains would have to be shorter than on the prototype but I feel that a train of 4 wagons and a brake, in BR days and 5 wagons in independent days would capture the correct feel. The tramway company did not believe in using brake vans, and because it was a tramway the Board of Trade could not force their use!
     
    I had decided early on that I would decrease the distance between parallel lines from the generally accepted 12.5mm between the centrelines. This has the effect in making the layout appear larger than it is to the viewer.
     
    Sidings on the model will have well very severe curves, but the only restriction on the radius of curves was would the wagons go round them without coming off.
     
    The station is a terminus, despite the layout being an oval, the line after the loop and the platform becomes a private siding for the Dairy, and on the prototype there was a baulk bridge over a stream just beyond a white gate. My intention is to include the bridge, but to leave this until I have laid out the loop and sidings.
     
    At this stage the layout was checked to see if the proposed operation sequence would work. Initially I had intended not to have a carriage siding, but the early part of the sequence would have required excessive shunting if the carriages were left in the platform overnight. It is much easier to check the sequence using real rolling stock rather than using paper based methods.
     
    The track in the area where the bridge will be installed is not glued down, but is held in position with screws for ease of removal. Once the track has been removed the baseboard will be able to be cut and carved to represent the stream channel and a link piece will be screwed and glued beneath to maintain baseboard integrity.
     

     
     
    Lisa
  12. Lisa
    Hi All
     
    When making sharp curves, i.e. sub 800mm radius I have found that the standard way of producing 2mm track by using the track jig to produce a herring bone does not work.
     
    I output the template from the track design package without the sleepers showing. This is because the package does not work correctly when the radius of the curve is sub 400mm radius. The template was cut out and fixed to the baseboard using masking tape.
     

     
    I marked the mid point between the rails at each end and then with a compass set to the radius of 190mm I then fund the centre of the circle, using simple school girl geometry. Then I drew in the arc, the centreline of the track.
     

     

     
    Standard sleeper spacing is is 30†which scales to 5mm. Using dividers I divided up the track centreline.
     

     

     
    Then it simply a case of drilling a 1mm hole at the centre of the centreline arc, placing a pencil in the hole and then placing a straight edge against it and positioning the other end on one of the divisions on the track centreline and drawing the sleeper centreline.
     

     
    Construction can now commence!
     
    Lisa
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