Now with Added Wings

I've really got into this project, and after some serious scribing, I finally finished the Wing Walls this evening. Following my own ideas, and backed up by the frankly brilliant Iain Robinson, I painted up the stonework to match the already painted main portal  and loosely propped the walls in front of the portal. Hopefully I'll get a shot of the placed portal in situ with a loco for effect this weekend.

I have to say, I think the Foamex project has definitely succeeded, and whilst being very time consuming, has resulted in a much more pleasing result than the printed cardboard kit I was previously using. The added bonus is that it's incredibly lightweight, so if anyone is interested, these would be great for a portable layout. Hope you enjoy, Lee

Ok, I spent the weekend finishing off the architecture, adding some more capping stones and the parapet wall, then I set to painting. Not 100% happy with the colour, but the photography seems to do it justice (albeit changing the colour in a bad light situation) so I'm happy enough to show it at this point.

I may well revisit the paint job in the near future, but for now I give you...The Tunnel Portal in Stone...

I've yet to add wing walls, but I'll have a look at rebuilding the station platforms and adjoining retaining walls first, so I can work out where the right hand wing wall will go (the left hand side butting up to the start of the long retaining wall section.

Scribing, Scalpels and Foamex

Hello all. I've been very quiet on the blog as of late, as I just haven't had time to do any modelling, or had any enthusiasm due to being just too darn tired of an evening. But! I've been given an injection of enthusiasm, reading the various modelling blogs and forums out there, so have delved back into the architecture aspect of Railway modelling. 

I've not given up on the Station Building, merely put it aside for a while as I investigate a new technique.

At work, we have an awful lot of offcuts, destined for the bin, of a product called Foamex, which is essentially a compressed polystyrene product that we use for mounting large format exhibition prints. I've used it before as a substrate for sticking printed wall sheets and indeed Air Drying Clay, but this time I decided to see whether I could successfully scribe onto it. 

Initial attempts were based on trying to make an alternative to the printed retaining walls I've been using on my layout.

Version 1 seemed to be quite good, but I thought a bit blocky:

I gave it a bit of texture by roughing it up a bit with 60 grit sandpaper and bashing it about on the garage floor, then hand scribing with a sharp scalpel blade, making the mortar gaps a bit wider with a screwdriver for added emphasis.

Version 2 with added individual carved stones:

I was initially happy with this, before I spent yesterday morning travelling to work on the train and passing through Dewsbury station (a look I'm trying to emulate) I saw that the stonework was smaller random Ashlar, so upon getting home, I set to work building a tunnel portal, scribing in the smaller ashlar stone work. This involved printing out a sheet of Random Ashlar from Scalescenes.com, sticking it onto the Foamex sheet, then using a scalpel to cut in the stone pattern. Once complete, I peeled off the print and went over all the lines with sharp scalpel, scratching in more detail. It took up a whole evening, but even unpainted, I'm very happy with this, so I'll continue with the build and get the parapets in, then have a go painting it up.

I've not gone away

If anyone is still reading this blog, I've not abandoned it, it's just my life is so busy at the moment, I've not had a chance in months to sit and continue with this project. It's still sitting on a shelf in my Dining room and I glance at it every time I pass thinking I really must carry on.

I'm not 100% happy with the roof already in place, so my next post may well be the roof coming off. I saw a really good technique demonstrated by Chris Nevard that I may well try, but it's going to be painstaking and slow...

So bear with me and I'll try to carry on at some point :)

Lee

Is it level?

As I was coming to paint the next section, I was aware that the walls of the model weren't flush to the floor. Due to the nature of applying the clay to the substrate beneath. the clay surface ended up being tapered towards ground level, and indeed with shrinkage, was about half a mm away from the bottom in some places, so a distinct gap appears when siting it on a flat surface. To remedy this, I placed the model on a sheet of greaseproof paper on a flat surface and with the edge of a scalpel blade, pushed filler under the gaps, scraping smooth with blade and allowing to dry. Once dry I was then able to shave the surface flat with the blade and then rescribe the stonework covered by the filler. The result was a pleasingly flat wall.

The same will have to be done with the Stationmaster's house section of the building. As you might be able to see in the photo, it's not quite level, but that can be easily remedied. It'll need a bit of retouching, but that's not really a major problem, especially as I'll be gluing the booking office to it and filling the resulting gap between the two walls, so it would need a bit of attention blending the two structures anyway.

An initial undercoat has been applied to the Booking Office, the next stage will be to glue the two structures together, fill in the resulting gap and then begin blending the colour to match the existing building

Windows and Doors

Now that the walls are pretty much complete, it's now time to come to the windows. I drew in the window shapes when I drew the elevations for the wall sections, basing them on a sash window design. I'm lucky enough to work at a company with access to a vinyl plotting cutter, so having drawn out the window and door frames, I then output the files using the vinyl cutter onto a matt white vinyl. This was then applied to a piece of semi flexible CD case material and then cut out with a sharp scalpel to the outside edge of the frame (The door frames were applied to a piece of 1.5mm cardboard)

To give the frames a bit of rigidity when siting within the apertures on the model, I glued a 1mm x 1mm square strip of foamex to the rear of the frame. Apologies for the quality of the photo - I'm still getting to grips with the camera on my phone :)

Test fitting showed that a little shaving of the inside of the window apertures was necessary, but much better to do this now, rather than after the model is painted.

The windows have now been taken out and the  inside of the apertures were then scribed as necessary, ready for a coat of paint before gluing in permanently. Now I know all the windows and doors fit, it will be much easier to paint the walls with the windows removed, then they can be glued in once dry. Of course a little touching up may well be necessary, but hardly a hardship with a fine brush.

The Scribing on the Walls

A couple of free hours while the wife was out last night and after the kids went off to bed resulted in getting off to a great start with the scribing on the next building. So much so that I actually finished the stonework on the first building.

A quick fix

The great thing about clay is that that if you go wrong, as I did, you can just patch up with a little wodge of clay and start again. As I've made up the structure whole and applied the clay to the assembled building, I've had to line up the stone courses around the whole building. Using a set square is essential, providing you've nice square walls. I went a bit astray on the gable end of the building and was left with horizontal lines scribed in the walls that wandered off from level and didn't have a hope of meeting up with the other side, so I simply wet the offending area, then smoothed a small wodge of dampened clay onto the wall with my fingers, continuing to wet it until it was nice and flat.

I then put it to one side whilst I paid a little bit of attention to the third building, sticking some sills beneath the window apertures. As it was only a thin layer of clay, it dried in next to no time and I was able to correct the lines and finish off the stonework.

All Scribed and ready for test fitting windows (no, not Microsoft)

The next stage now is to make some windows and doors for the structure and make sure they fit before scribing the edges of the window apertures ( I made the mistake of painting before fitting the windows last time and had to spend some time shaving the insides of the apertures to make each window fit, then having to touch up and the shaved areas)

Next post I'll show the windows before fitting, then hopefully I can get to painting up...