Kirkallanmuir

[Dave John]

Really, top class Jim. I'm hard pressed to get that level of detail in twice the scale.

 

I might get my wallies sprayed blue and lined out tae match.....

[Compound2632]

15 hours ago, Caley Jim said:

Just for you, @Lacathedrale someone sent up a drone and produced this.  

 

Looking good. I do like the sorting sidings in front of the fiddle yard - well stocked! How long is each board?

 

I note the representation of the famous Kirkallanmuir Fault [K.J. Lea, A Geography of Scotland (David & Charles, 1977)].

[Caley Jim]

4 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

...... How long is each board?

Thanks for the kind comments @Compound2632.  The three boards are each 1000mm x 650mm and yes, I need to do something about these fault lines!   They weren't so obvious when it was set up in our last house.

 

Jim 

[Caley Jim]

The next building to be tackled (did I mention that I hate doing buildings?) is the road level booking office for the station.  If you recall, the (island) platform itself is in a cutting off-stage.  In common with other buildings on the layout it will be 'based on' rather than 'a model of', in this case Strathaven (pronounced Stra'ven, 'a' as in 'station').

 

 

The right hand bridge was for parcels with a lift to the platform and the angled left hand one the footbridge, with the signal box under the landing.   In the case of Kirkallanmuir, the building is much closer to the road bridge.  There is no known drawing of the building, but this sketch appeared in The True Line (journal of the CRA).

 

 

Based on this and some estimated measurements from a very small scale (20ft-1in) drawing of the similar, but more elaborate building at Doune, I produced this initial drawing.  ( the windows and doors are on a separate layer so that I can use them easily to produce the artwork for having them etched)

 

A paper mock-up was printed and tried in place.

 

 

This led to some changes, making the 'step' between the two sections much smaller and, because there will be so little pavement in front of the parcels office door, swapping the door and windows on that section.  This, then is the drawing to which the semi-low-relief model will be built:

 

The odd shape of the roofline at the left back is because it will be up against the backscene.

 

The large stone panel with the company name on it was a feature of several similar buildings including this one which was the Kemp Street entrance to Hamilton Central.

 

 

My plan is to make the building in grey stone with blond sandstone quoins.   I'm in the process of drawing up the artwork for the doors and windows.

 

Jim

[lambiedg]

Jim

 

Reminds me of Larkhall Central. I grew up there in the 60s.

As is quite common my interest in railway’s didn’t develop until the structure had been flattened!

 

[Caley Jim]

1 hour ago, lambiedg said:

Jim

 

Reminds me of Larkhall Central. I grew up there in the 60s.

As is quite common my interest in railway’s didn’t develop until the structure had been flattened!

 

That was another building I was thinking of, but I could only find a very small tinted postcard of it on line.

Jim

[lambiedg]

It’s probably too late now as you appear to have your drawings ready but the CRA True Line had a feature on Larkhall around the time of the re-opening.

[Caley Jim]

2 hours ago, lambiedg said:

It’s probably too late now as you appear to have your drawings ready but the CRA True Line had a feature on Larkhall around the time of the re-opening.

Thanks @lambiedg. I was aware of that, but there's not really much there showing the street frontage. In any case it has the front gable the other way round, which doesn't really suit my location.

 

Jim 

[Caley Jim]

Little further progress to show as I've been drawing up the artwork for getting the windows and doors for the station building etched.  I decided it would be a good idea to draw up a few more of the buildings running down the street from the station and get the windows for them done at the same time, so that is currently a WIP.

 

On a whim I took a couple of 'ground level' shots through the bridges at either end, just to see how that looked.

A passenger's view from the end of the platform.

Subsidence was common in mining areas.  

 

And a driver's view as he approaches from Bonkle.

 

The 'arches' are the supports for the polythene sheet covering the layout when it's not being worked on and the object behind the water tank is a container of moisture absorbent crystals.

 

Jim

Edited October 17, 2020 by Caley Jim
Spelling correction

[nick_bastable]

1 hour ago, Caley Jim said:

 

 

 

the object behind the water tank is a container of moisture absorbent crystals.

 

Jim

Jim

 

I would consider one of the very small dehumidifiers they crop up in Lidl and Aldi every so often or that rain-forest named company

 

Nick B

[Donw]

I like the low level shots Jim not something you see often of 2mm layouts.

 

Don

[richbrummitt]

20 hours ago, nick_bastable said:

Jim

 

I would consider one of the very small dehumidifiers they crop up in Lidl and Aldi every so often or that rain-forest named company

 

Nick B

After doing the research in types and reading a bunch of reviews I went for a desiccant dehumidifier (Meaco DD8L*) rather than a compressor type. It still works well at the sub 20C that the garage workroom is normally maintained at and the noise is little more intrusive than a desk fan. To begin with it removed a lot of moisture (several trays worth in a couple of weeks) but it has settled right down now to a kind of ‘maintenance’ level. 

*Usual disclaimer - Happy customer, no connection. 

[Caley Jim]

Thanks, @nick_bastable and @richbrummitt, but I find the container of Crystals work well enough.  I just have to empty it and replenish the crystals every six weeks or so.

 

Encouraged by the positive comment on the low-level photos, I've taken a few more.  I can't get the lens of my phone in a position to see through the bridges over the colliery branch or the exchange sidings, but here are a couple from on the bridges.   First, looking towards the sidings:

 

Now looking the other way from above the colliery branch:

 

 

And finally a view from the goods yard looking towards the warehouse and livestock landing:

 

 

The loose-heel switches show up rather well in the last two shots.

 

Jim

[Donw]

I expect you have covered it somewhere but how do you keep the loose heel switches in place.

 

Don

(Half expecting Jim to say by a bolted fishplate using 18BA bolts or something equally impractical)

[Caley Jim]

Finished drawing up the buildings this evening.

 

This is the block I'm basing them on :

 

I've placed a print of the drawing in situ on the layout and I'm fairly happy with it.  The slope of the street on the layout is a little steeper than that on which the prototypes sit, so I had to introduce a 'step' in the block at the lower end.  This will almost half fill the street behind the goods yard.

 

 

Now to draw up the artwork for the various windows etc.

 

Jim

[Caley Jim]

3 minutes ago, Donw said:

I expect you have covered it somewhere but how do you keep the loose heel switches in place.

 

Don

(Half expecting Jim to say by a bolted fishplate using 18BA bolts or something equally impractical)

I formed a little 'fishplate' from copper shim around the base of the b/h rail and soldered that to the heel of the switch with half its length projecting.  This was then slipped over the end of the closure rail and the toe of the switch attached to my design of p/b wire stretcher bar.

 

Jim

[Caley Jim]

Having drawn up the artwork for all the windows, fitted them onto a sheet and made sure they were all well tagged (the last two jobs are arguably the most tedious and time consuming in my experience), the sheet went off to PPD on Friday morning.

 

I've now turned my attention back to the station building.  Having worked out how the walls were going to fit together, templates were drawn out and printed.  These were then fixed with Pritt-stick to 40thou styrene and cut out.  The window and door opening were cut through the paper and once the paper had been removed a hole was drilled in each opening and a piece of broken fretsaw blade in a pin vice used to cut just inside the marks, finally paring to size with a scalpel.  The 40thou was then welded to some embossed stone styrene and cut to size.

 

The part at the top is the base, around which the walls fit, and the top part of the parcels office front wall is where the etched panel with the company name goes.

 

Next up will be to fit the stonework around the windows.  As i mentioned before, the 5thou I have is rather old and a bit brittle, so how easy it will be to use for that remains to be seen.  I might have to use 10thou and rub it down a bit as I think the scale 1½" thickness may be a bit too much.

 

Jim

[Caley Jim]

Despite the brittle nature of my 5thou styrene I managed to get the stonework around the doors and windows done with it.  I had to do one or two wee repairs where bits had cracked, but I think they won't be too obvious once it's painted.  I didn't get the piece around the double widow quite central, meaning the quoins are slightly wider on one side than the other, but this wall will only be visible at an oblique angle, so I won't tell anyone if you don't!

 

The mouldings around the panel for the company name and the little cartouche above the main door (which will have the 'CRCo' monogram, seen on the stonework of several stations, in it) have also been added, as have the steps at the doors.  On the back of the walls some little scrap pieces of 40thou have been fitted to locate the etched windows and doors.

 

The walls can now be assembled round the base and the corner quoins and stone capping to the gable added.

 

Jim

[Caley Jim]

The walls have been assembled now for a few days, but adding the quoins etc was a slow job as each section had to be left to harden before trimming the edge and adding the piece round the corner.  Likewise with the capping on the gable.

 

 

The roof over the entrance is just sitting in place and that over the parcels office is lying on my workbench/desk partially assembled, again waiting on the joints hardening before adding the hip at the end.  They can't be fixed until the windows and doors arrive and are fitted.  I hope to be able to fix the two sections together and still be able to remove them so that they can be slated while waiting.

 

There will be a short section of wall between the building and the bridge pillar, fixed on the layout, and I'm also going to fit the wee piece on the other side (on the print of the next building here) removable with this building.

 

Jim

[Caley Jim]

The two roofs have been fixed together, but is still able to be removed as one unit and has some 'locating points' made from scraps of styrene so that it will always 'clip' into place.  Any faint lines you can see across it are guides for keeping the slate strips straight.

 

 

I've also added the stonework detail at ground level (string course?), though the top of the outer strip has still to be chamfered once it has set hard.

 

Jim

[Caley Jim]

The roof has now been slated and fitted with terracotta ridge tiles and the stonework painted.   In addition the bit of walling and the passageway along the end of the adjacent building has been added to the side.  Also fixed in place, to the layout, is the wall extending along from the bridge parapet.

 

 

I plan to put a tree in the little plot between the two buildings to act as a view blocker.

This next shot shows how it fits in with the bridge and the other buildings.

Fairly happy with they way it's coming together.

 

Before I scrapped the paper mock-up I cut out the doors and windows on the front and fitted them in place with Pritt to see how they were going to look.

 

 

I'm not 100% sure about the colour of the sandstone quoins and details. The colour is a mixture of white, a dark brown (Humbrol 173) and yellow  and I think they could perhaps do to be slightly lighter, i.e. with less of the colours in it.  I will have to make another mix to paint the etched panels when they get fitted, so I can make that lighter and go over them again.

 

Gutters to be fitted to the roof and then there's no more I can do until the window and door etches arrive.

 

Jim

[Caley Jim]

After I posted the above, I gave some further thought to the colour of the quoins etc.  I gave them a dust over with some white powder paint on a soft brush (the whole building had already been so treated with a grey mix of powder paint) and the result is much better.  This is a composite image with the bottom half being from the last photo above and the top half after dusting.  Sorry, the two have been taken at slightly different angles, so don't marry up perfectly.

 

 

Jim

[Caley Jim]

Having fitted the gutters there's not much more I can do to the station building until the etched windows etc. arrive, so I've turned my attention to the next block of buildings down the street (see this post above).  Again I drew out a template of the front, printed it, stuck it to some 40thou styrene with Pritt and cut the outline and marked the window and door positions through the paper before peeling this off.

 

This time, instead of drilling a hole in each opening and then cutting roughly round with a piece of broken piercing saw blade in a pin vice I drilled a series of holes inside the edge of the opening, chopped between them with an X-Acto knife, pared them back a bit with a No.1 Swan Morton blade and then used this to cut back accurately to the line.  My objective was to avoid the distortion that can take place when you try to cut openings in thick styrene.  this way the distortion happens in the waste section.

 

 

Starting with the door in the bottom centre of the above photo, it has had the holes drilled, to the right the centre part has been chopped out.  The window above this has been pared back, while the one on the left has had the left hand edge trimmed, but that on the right has been cut, but not yet chopped out by cutting diagonally into the corners.  The rule is lying roughly on the line of the pavement.

 

 

Here these same openings have been trimmed.

 

12 done, 16 more to go!

 

Jim

 

[Caley Jim]

All the openings have now been cut out and the left had section has had the quoins and lintels scribed on along with fitting 10thou window sills and the slightly raised stonework at the top and sides in 5thou.   On the rest 10thou sills have again been fitted and the  raised window surrounds in 5thou.

 

 

The sticky-up bit at the top right is the chimney which rises straight from the front wall.

 

I'm now going to try and create a random stone effect with paint between the quoins of the left hand section, then the quoins and the rest will get a pale blonde sandstone finish ........ hopefully!   

 

Jim

[Caley Jim]

For reasons which I'll explain in a moment I wanted to paint this front wall before proceeding any further.

 

For the right hand section, I wanted a random stone finish with the blond sandstone quoins, but not as dark red as the building it's based on, so I made up a mix of white with a little Humbrol 62 (matt leather?) and grey.  I didn't mix the paints too thoroughly so that I was able to apply it in slightly different mixes.  Before that had dried i took a thin mix of grey and applied random spots of it so that it blended into what was already there.  Once that had dried I used a sharpened pin in a pin vice to lightly scribe random stone shapes all over it.   The quoins and the rest of the block were then painted in a pale sandstone mix of white with a little of the 62, grey, yellow and brown.  Again I didn't mix the paints thoroughly and applied it in a horizontal streaky fashion as sandstone is rarely all the one colour.  Also, the right hand section had a little more brown added to it.   The whole thing was then given a wash over of thin white with a little grey in it to lighten the sandstone and also  pick out the 'courses' between the random stones.

 

 

I then set about lightly drawing in the beds between the sandstone courses (which was why I wanted to paint it at this stage) with a scalpel and then the joints, trying as far as possible to follow the building it is based on.  A dust of white powder paint was then brushed over it, which not only settles in the beds and joints, but also gives it a 'stony' finish.  The beds and joints are barely visible, but again, they add a wee bit of character.

 

 

You can just about make them out in this (cruel) enlargement.

 

 

The challenge will come in trying to match the colour for the quoins on the ends and the chimneys.  I'm aiming for a harled effect on the ends themselves.

 

Jim

Edited November 18, 2020 by Caley Jim
Spelling correction