Great Chesterford Junction Part Two

G`day Folks,
Well the little news agency is 99% finished......it just needs guttering and down pipes, as does the other building built before it.
I will do them both at once in the next couple of days.
The LEDs were fitted to both ceilings today and then the whole lot was inserted and fixed into the building.....note the heat shrink tubing......we don`t want any shorts when it`s all closed up.





Then put slates on the roof and fitted the roof along with a dormer this time.





A view of the low relief conversion.





And the back...........no great engineering skills required here to seal it up.





Running the lights







I`ll need to see what`s next in my pile of kits to be built.
Gormo

 

Thanks Phil,
Yes I did technical drawing when I was at High School and always enjoyed the process.
I still feel a hand drawn technical drawing is more appealing to the eye than a digital drawing, however, even in the most skilled hands, it is not as accurate as CAD or other drawing programs.
In LibreOffice Draw, I can create shapes with measurements down to fractions of a millimeter.
Provided I can then cut them accurately, I finish up with a model that fits together very well.
Another handy tool is a digital caliper, ( they occasionally turn up in Aldi tool sales ),........the card I use fits broadly into the measurement of 2mm thick, however when checked with the digital caliper, it varies from 1.30mm to 1.40mm.....nowhere near 2mm..!
So when I factor in the thickness of the card into my drawings, I`m much closer to getting the drawing, and ultimately the model right, rather than assuming the card is 2mm thick.
Those subtle variations in measurement can make a difference when you`re working at 1/76th scale or 4 mm to the foot, so I use all the help I can get.
Gormo

 

G`day Brian,
Yes that`s true, but I should have put it into context.
If you design a model building with pencil and paper and drawing instruments, and then glue that paper to card and cut it out, I doubt that it will be as accurate as a drawing created in a drawing program and printed onto paper and glued to card and then cut out.
The two methods will yield a similar result, but the software method will result in a more accurate print out to work from.
The design drawings you mention were used as a reference with specific dimensions so that things could be built from them.
Give the engineers shop the drawings and they build a full sized thingy majig from steel or aluminium or whatever..???
In model form, the design drawing is printed out and glued to card and " used " as part of the model, so it must be as accurate as possible.
Some people can do it in pencil......I prefer to print it out from my software.
Try and draw a line....0.65 mm wide and 2.12 mm long with a pencil and then change your mind and make it 0.66 mm wide instead..........not easy my dear chap....and destined to fail
Gormo

 

Still kit bashing........
I have been working on the Metcalfe row of low relief shops kit. The kit contains two blocks of two shops each.
They are being re-clad with Scalescenes paper and various other little touches to help them blend into my town scene.





The top floor only, will be lit in this building, so I`ve added room back scenes that can be partially seen through the windows.





And it gives this type of effect.





The shops also have had interior detail added..........this is my model railway shop





And this is my daughter in law`s cake and pastry shop





This is the mostly complete model. ....Scalescenes roof slates, home made sills and lintels and shop signs.......but still requiring more detail.




How it looks on the railway





This is the second block of shops under way........this will be my son`s music shop.......he`s into guitars and music and he`s in a band





The shop on the left will be my eldest grandson`s restaurant.....much more to do,

Gormo

 

G`day Folks,
I`ve done some experimenting with this build in regard to how I mount the room back scenes, and I think I`ve come up with a rather good little variation.
Instead of putting in a flat back wall in the room to be detailed, I `ve tried using a curved background.
This has a couple of interesting advantages........
#1 When you look through the window, it creates a sort of 3D come Cinerama effect because there are no obvious corners to see , except those that may be printed on the image.
#2 You can create one small enough to do just one window as seen in the right hand section in the pic below.....this suggests there may be a dividing wall between the two windows.
The LEDs are mounted through the back scene and rest against the front wall of the building so that they can`t be seen through the windows.
I don`t know why I bother really.........it will be very difficult to see all this detail when it`s on the layout.........but even a suggestion of something interesting seen through the windows lifts the model slightly.





The unlit window on the top floor has curtains and a blind fitted to the back, and then some light card is fitted to the back of that again to completely blank out the window.





The curved sections were formed around my torch, of all things, as it was the right size to do the job.
These LEDs were all wired in parallel to get as much brightness as possible out of them......if they were wired in series they would be dimmed considerably.





The music store stays open late and overlaps the opening hours of the restaurant next door.
Diners quite often here guitar riffs through the common wall.





More as it happens
Gormo

 

Thanks Chris,
Yes I`m happy with the result and I think it has a lot of potential ,so will most likely use this method from now on.
I`m nearly there with the building........just the roof and back to be done plus a chimney and maybe dormers.....not sure about the dormers.
I`ve added my signs over the top of the kit signs......Adrian is my son and Samuel is my grandson.....also added sills ,lintels,and stone capping on the balcony.




The shop side panels in the kit are a separate piece and when fitted into the building you can see a joint......I guess you could run a down pipe over it ,but I`ve elected to put some brick paper over it instead.






And this is how it will butt up to the other shops from the same kit



And finally a very short shaky hand held video to try and give a better idea of the effect achieved with a curved background in the rooms.
It`s much easier to see without curtains, but I should have thought of that before.?.....anyway.....




Gormo

 

G`day Folks,
I`ve been away up north for a while and consequently not got much done on the railway since the last post 26 days ago.
I`ve been back for a while but the railway has had to play second fiddle to other commitments and some future planning for our family.
Also I have been walking past my work table every day and not stopping to create anything for the railway until today.
First thing I did was get this last group of shops under way again, as I need to complete this and remove the table from the room by next weekend





Then out to the shed and a slight track alignment was set in motion..........the area is about 15 inches long and it`s where I want to put a low relief goods shed.
The original track had a slight curve to it, so I`ve taken it up and will re-lay it straight. It will deviate off the original cork base so I`ve added some card to the side of the cork to support the track at the same level.




More as it happens
Gormo

 

A bit more done today
The new straight bit of track has been inserted, pinned down and painted with one coat of paint so far









Also finished off the building I was working on









And the whole lot together




And just for a change of direction, we took our little MGB out for a run the other day, up to the Blue Mountains which is West of Sydney for you overseas members.
The car had been sitting idle for too many weeks, mind you we were away interstate for nearly two weeks. Anyhow it had to be put on the charger the night before and then the next day we took it out to give it a good run and move the oil through it.
The round trip was about 110 km, or about 70 miles, with a visit to an art gallery and a picnic thrown in......good stuff..
The trip out was done with the roof off and the trip home with the roof on
This pic was taken just after arriving back home




More as it happens
Gormo

 

Well folks,
The buildings have been moved back out into the shed, where they belong really ?
They have been placed on the layout in a rough approximation of how I think they will finish up. The jury is still out on this one as I`m trying to visualize how it will blend in with the rest of Bamford.





We have a road and footpaths to go in......the triangular brick paved part of the platform will be a low green mound with some shrubs and trees on it and some platform fencing following the line where the bricks and the concrete pavers meet.
I think another green area with a couple of trees to the left of Samuel`s restaurant and also up the end to the far right will receive a similar treatment.
The idea is to soften and blend and hide the obvious edges where buildings meet background scenes.





I hope to tie it all together to make a quite quiet, compact little community focused around the railway......we`ll see how it goes......




Gormo

 

G`day folks,
We have been sorting through pics at home lately and getting some printed ,because during the Covid lock downs over the last two or three years or so, we fell behind with that process.
We normally don`t 100% trust digital storage because it is easy to wipe data, or systems change and you can fall behind and have compatibility issues etc. etc.
I know.......I`m an old f*rt and I`m behind the times....I should use cloud storage and or back up my data blah, blah ,blah....
Back in the real World.......stuff happens with digital storage.......so Julie and I prefer a hard copy.........for example, we have family photographs from the 1800`s still in good condition.....to me that is a system that works....
Anyhow.....whilst digging through a couple of thousand photographs in various folders in my pictures folder, my wife stumbled upon some pics I had forgotten about.
This was an experiment with a mirror and a camera to try and get pictures of my railway from seemingly impossible angles where the camera could not fit.
It`s difficult to focus properly, with the camera looking at the image in a mirror, and of course everything is reversed, but you can mirror reverse the image back to normal in photo editing software.
Some examples below and the foreshortening seems to create a pleasant atmosphere......see what you think..???













Gormo

 

Thanks Paul,
Yes it`s a bit of fiddling about to get it done, but it results in different views from angles and positions where the camera simply will not fit.
Gormo