Day 16 Fencing

This is really only a half a day, as I’ve been spending time putting together the Autumn issue of the Micro Model Railway Dispatch. Articles for inclusion come in in fits and starts so. It’s best to put them into the magazine layout as and when they arrive.

The idea of a rusty, corrugated iron fence in the background of the skip loader has been rather well received so I spent some time mocking up that. My time could probably been spent more productively working on the case for the layout. But that’s woodworking. As most of you know I hate woodworking, so I really have to be in the mood to do that. Here’s a few mock ups of possible layouts. The general hope is that using under scale corrugated sheet fencing there will be an element of forced perspective. Especially behind the mound right at the end.

From this angle the full length fence looks good. It’s a nice looking scene.

Here the fence looks like it is the backscene, there is a feeling of perspective.

The first consideration was a fence that runs the full length of the back of the loader section of the layout. There’s a hard edged cut off to break the two scenes apart. Though I like it, I’m not 100% convinced that this the solution.

With a 2/3 length fence, it’s still a nice looking scene

A section of fence that runs two thirds of the distance looks good. I like the fact that the fence doesn’t go all the way to the end of the scene. It helps to separate the scenes. This area could be filled with scrub, undergrowth and weeds to further help fill the area and separate the scenes.

I tried the 2/3 length fence running the other way. It’s not the same

Still a ways to go… More thinking to do.

 

Day 15 or so. Showing off.

As you know this will be an exhibition layout that will appear at train shows in the MidWest USA (model railway exhibitions in UK parlance). So it will need some kind of casing around it to protect it during transit and also add lighting to show it off during a show. Exhibition hall lighting is not perfect. I’ve been to some shows here in the USA where it’s downright horrendous. But the vast majority of exhibitors are content to show their layouts under the hall lighting conditions. Not me. So this is all very important when I consider the presentation. 

The easy way is to box in the whole layout and have it viewed from the front. Then as I was looking down the layout the other day I saw this view. It echoes a view I saw of a German Feldbahn clay pit tipping platform. The resemblance was eerie and momentarily stopped me in my tracks.

I love this low down viewpoint.

This is a view that you wouldn’t see if you could only see the layout from the front, head on, so to speak.

Clearly some kind of re-think of the showing of the layout is needed. The end needs to be open.

Having the end open creates a new vista of the layout. One where you can take in several feet of layout depth. That’s the experience I want to give the viewer. To be able to draw them in to the scene and forget that they are in an exhibition hall. Because when you look at the layout from here, there really is a lot of depth to take in.

Quite the depth to the scene. Not bad for 16mm scale.

This end of the layout is really resolving itself now. I’ve said a few times that I thought there should be a small hut at the base of the retaining wall. I think that my ubiquitous corrugated shed (which is actually 1:24 scale) shows that this would be a good idea. Look at the juxtaposition of surfaces and textures. The wooden retaining wall, in front of that the corrugated hut, and in front of that the breeze blocks of a sand bin. Quite the view.

Now I have to start pulling together the other scene on the layout. The skip loader, compared to the tipping dock, there’s not much there at the minute.

This area needs more

Currently, there’s only the loader in this scene. So I added my corrugated wall to the background for ideas. Let’s face it a a rusty corrugated iron wall fits into any industrial scene. Hmm… If I placed it behind the sandy mound at the back there, perhaps the fact that it is 1;24 scale might force the perspective, adding extra depth to the scene.

Some more research is needed here methinks.

Day 14 (or so) Bins

What I really want to be able to do on this layout is to empty the contents of a skip into the back of a truck. A long search, accompanied by helpful advice on the NGRMOnline forum, has sourced some good ideas for suitable builders lorries to receive a load. However, one particular manufacturer is quoting 2 months delivery on an item, While another would appear to be reticent about delivering to the USA. (To be honest, I don’t blame them. The transatlantic mail service is not what it used to be.) So, I’m giving consideration to making a bin to tip into, while I wait for a lorry to arrive from wherever it may be. 

From the outset I’ve been considering the concept of tipping different grades of sands or gravels into different bins. I thought perhaps three at the start, now I think only two different grades would be needed. To that end, I started to mock up the size of bin that would be needed. I’ve no idea how this feature would translate into 16mm scale so mock ups are a must.

Mocking up the bin

As you can see, once you add the Land Rover and a bin, the area starts to fill up. I think I could only get away with the one bin on the layout. A few millimeters here and there in the size of the bin are going to  make all the difference. Proportions of height to width, are important. If you make it too tall and thin it’s going to look flimsy and like the walls could collapse under the weight of sand. Too short and fat and the sand or gravel will spill out of the bin as the amount tipped into the bin increases. 

How much gravel/sand will a bin hold? How much spillage outside the bin will there be?

A mock up and test is needed.

The bin holds a lot of sand/gravel

Successful tipping experiments

What this tells me is that despite the long drop there is no overspill. Perhaps as the bin fills up the chance of material ending up outside the receptacle would increase but right now I’ve emptied 6 skip loads into this bin and there’s no overspill. I’ve also run out of fine buff ballast so I can’t add more. I think that’s a success.

I’ll add a handle to the back of the bin so I can easily slide it rearwards off the layout to be emptied or perhaps even change it out with a lorry when it is full. All in all, a successful days work.

  

Day 13. Jiggery Pokery.

There’s a lot of glue setting going on on the layout today as I prepare to think about boxing the layout up in its display case to help protect the EPS substructure.

If you’ve been following along with the blog posts. Then you will have noticed that I have made several jigs to ease construction of layout elements. Here they are gathered together for a photograph.

All the jigs

It was James Hilton, in his blog at Christmas who described his use of jigs or templates, on a project he was working on. The relevant part of the video is here. I took this information on board and saved it 'til later. As I started work on this layout I realised that now was the time to make use of this insight. 

The jigs were all very simple and very easy to make. They were made from foamcore and stripwood. Oh, and one piece of embossed styrene that just happened to be the right size.

The one that looks least like a jig, the large carpenters square, was pretty important as it enabled me to lay the sections of stripwood for the tipping dock deck and retaining walls squarely.

Above that is my old faithful mitre box. It was taped to a piece of foamcore and an adjustable stop, also made of foamcore, was taped at varying distances to get the correct length of decking, posts and styrene girders that I needed.

Above that, the one that I used to make the three rail fence. That one took some working out, getting the rails at the right height.

To the right of that is the one I’m most proud of. If one can said to be proud of a jig. The one used for the posts for the safety railing on the tipper deck. 

To the right of that, is the one for the bents to support the deck. It was the first one I made and if I had made it later, after having built the others. Then I would have probably done something different. But this did the job perfectly.

These simple jigs made the constructional tasks on this project much easier. They were really easy to assemble. If you ever have to do several of the same thing on a project, then you should probably be assembling a jig. 

Day 12 The skip loading chute. A day of mixed fortunes.

I wasn’t expecting this to happen…

When I changed my mind about having a workshop on the layout and replacing it with a loading chute. I knew exactly what I wanted. Something akin to the one that features on David Barham’s Fen End Pit layout. I am not planning an operating dragline excavator though. 

Having a working feature like this at the front of the layout opens up interesting opportunities at a show. One could invite viewers to load the skips, thus drawing them into the world of the layout rather than just watching. 

The first mockup of the chute was well received over on the NGRMOnline forum and I got some good feedback on things to incorporate. 

As per usual, a drawing was produced, The most important thing about this drawing was it would enable me to get the size of the panels for the chute correct. Something that required me to dredge up knowledge from grammar school technical drawing classes to correctly design and build it.

A quick layout drawing of the loading chute

With the help of the drawing, progress was pretty swift. By lunchtime I was well on the way to having it completed.

Coming along nicely

Though much of the design is inspired by the design on Fen End Pit, as I worked further on it, I decided it needed a bit more bracing between the legs to aid rigidity. Plus it would give the structure my own touch of individuality. Luckily, I did have enough right angle section to be able to do this, and as my afternoon tea break approached, things were looking very good indeed. 

Another structure looks pretty good.

While the kettle was boiling and the tea brewing, I took it outside to give it a quick spray of primer, and then let it dry whilst I enjoyed my Earl Grey and biccies. 

Suitably refreshed, I went outside to continue priming.

OH SH!T.

A gust of breeze had got up and blown the model off the bin I had been spraying on, and it had fallen on the concrete path. To say I was shocked was an understatement.

Perhaps as a testament to my construction processes, the chute only broke into two parts. So repair shouldn’t be too difficult. But it most certainly wasn’t what I was expecting at the end of the day today. 

Day 11. Railings

I was pretty nervous about this project, so I spent quite a bit of time working out the best way to complete it. 

In smaller scales of course, you just go out and buy some fencing to suit. If there’s anything in 16mm scale I couldn’t find it. So scratch building was called for.  

I did my due diligence, researching dimensions and sizes. I wanted to use styrene tube for the posts and rail. In the end it turned out I didn’t have any tube in the size I wanted. I had lots of 2.5mm rod though, and it looked like it looked right. So rod it was. I’d just have to drill a few extra holes, that’s all. These extra holes were going to be in the end of the rod though. But as I had already drilled out rod when working on the exhaust pipe for my “Huddy” I wasn’t phased by that. The first thing I needed was a jig.

Another task, another jig.

Pretty much every job on the layout has needed a jig somewhere to aid its construction. This one was no exception. Sections of strip wood hold the rod in place, and allow me to cut the rod to the correct length. A section of the corrugated sheet that I used for the sleepers had holes drilled in it at the correct distances for the safety rails. This should, in theory, give a batch of identical fence posts, and it pretty much did.

All identical (or pretty close)

A hole was drilled in the end of the fence post, to accept a short length of .75mm rod to locate it in the deck and similar lengths of the rod were placed in the holes on the post to help locate the rails.

From then on, it was pretty simple. Yes you had to be careful, but as all the rods had been cut to the same length and drilled correctly it all went together quite easily. I didn’t even need a jig for this stage of the project. Before long I had a pretty good looking section of safety railing.

First section. Yes, I’m feeling pretty pleased with myself.

The second section was a bit more challenging. But not much. It involved a right angle turn in the railing to enable it to go partly across the end of the deck.

But simply with careful drilling and lining up of the holes the pins were easily placed to make the turn possible.

By now, I’m feeling invincible

Some holes were drilled into the deck and the safety rails were put in place for the first time…

Well, what can I say?

Even the right angle turn worked out.

A quick spray of paint to cover the white and job’s a good’ un

Needless to say. I’m feeling pretty pleased with myself. This is something I’d never needed to do before. It was something that I didn’t have the foggiest idea how to do. There may even have been an easier way to do it. Though I’m not sure that just butt jointing the sections of post and rail together would have resulted in as good a join as I have this way.

The lesson everyone can take away from this is never be afraid to try something out of your comfort zone. 

Day 10 - some thoughts

(A day late sorry)

Sometimes you don’t realize how long you spend thinking about tasks on a layout until you actually start logging your time. 

Like with these daily blog posts. I look at the work I’ve done, and yes, some of it like cutting the deck of tipping dock. Took a heck of a long time. 

But then there was the working out how to make the jig for the yard fence. I swear that measuring up and working out where all the stops and supports went took longer than the actual assembly of the fence sections themselves. I may have already made a mock up of the wagon loading chute, but there’s a drawing being done to help me make the actual thing. The safety handrail for the dock is another thing being worked on. There’s a lot of time being spent thinking.

I have pieced together several drawings for projects for the layout. I use an app called Graphic. They help me visualize the construction and any problems that might occur. They may, or may not, depending on the structure, be to scale. They may, or may not, depending on the finished model be an accurate copy of the prototype.

Tipper shelter, so many things to work out. So much head scratching.

A drawing for the tipper shelter was a case in point. It was an absolute must. The prototype was so flimsy there was little to go on from the prototype photo. In fact the whole thing didn’t come fully together until I worked out how to make it stand up by itself. Which I couldn’t do until I saw the finished shelter.

A full size drawing didn’t help work out how to stand the shelter up.

The Handrail is not a difficult task. Not compared to the shelter or the forthcoming loading chute but it still needs a drawing.

Handrail details

I need to visualize how to actually construct the thing. How do I fix the rails to the posts? How do I fix the posts to the deck? This quick visualization explores the idea of the construction of posts from styrene tube, with a section of rod glued inside them as pins to locate them in the deck. Similarly, the rails will be located in place thanks to pins through the posts. Now I need to spend more time figuring out the jig to drill the holes in the correct place. I hope that once I get through this next batch of thinking time I’ll be able to get started on the handrails soon.

 

Day 9

After a little respite yesterday to review one weeks work. It’s time to move on again. I will try set out with the aim of working on an item for the layout a day. Working during the week on bite sized chunks to keep things progressing. There’s things like the fence, the handrail around the tipping deck, things like that. To that end I decided to start with the short section of fence around the end of the dock. It was simple enough to find drawings on the internet that showed the dimensions of a simple three rail fence. 

First up I needed a couple of simple jigs to get the same sized parts to fit the same way.

It might not look like much, but this simple arrangement of stripwood and foamcore board is the key to getting all the parts to fit.

This is how it holds all the parts together.

The assembled fence. Next a quick wash with alcohol/India ink.

In place and ready to be bedded in

One more simple job done.

The eighth day review.

After one week on the project, I thought it would be good to sit back and take a look at what happened in the previous seven days. This is an overall view of all 4’ x 14” of it.

Overall view

Yes. I know that at 4’ x 14” it’s over the four square feet maximum. But putting on my ‘Editor of the Micro Model Railway Dispatch” hat. I’m always happy to give larger scales line 16mm and 7/8ths some leeway. It’s still most definitely “in the spirit of a micro” as Carl would say.

Let’s take a look at the progress of the scenes.

The skip loader in a sand quarry setting. It’s difficult to to put over the effect of a full-blown sand quarry in a couple of square feet. But a few piles of sand will help. As for the “sand”. How do you model it in 16mm scale? 

I’ve no idea, but this is how I’ve started. After I’d covered the contours with spackle, I painted the surface a cream colour, just in case whatever I chose to represent the sand came off exposing the base contours.

The first ground cover was Woodland Scenics “yellow” turf, that looks more like a green. This was sprinkled on a smothering of white glue. Then I ballasted the track with Woodland Scenics buff fine ballast. It’s starting to look OK but some more sand is needed. It feels like Steve Bennett’s early layouts.

The other end of the layout has a totally different feel to it. More conventional in its scenic treatment. There’s going to be a lot of scrub and weeds and such underneath the tipping dock. Right now the two scenes are separated by a retaining wall. It might have some vegetation growing over it, it might help to blend, yet separate the two scenes. I am very inclined to add a small shed of some description leaning against it. But probably not a prefabricated concrete garage.

At the end here, a fence and gate is planned, perhaps with a premises sign. 

The previous two pictures also show the problem with vehicles in this scale. The Land Rover is a small vehicle and yet it’s eight inches (200mm) long. I wouldn’t want a vehicle much longer than this in there. I did find a 1:20 scale toy garbage truck that could probably could have been worked into a lorry. But it was 15” long, as the layout is 14” deep so fitting it in would be rather difficult, if not impossible.

So that’s it then. One weeks work. Still lots to do, but lots to keep me interested.

Oh, one last thing. How did I get the incredibly flimsy tipper shelter to stand up? This rear view should clear things up.

How to stand the shelter up. Extra long legs hidden behind everything

 

 

Day 7

Day seven. Technically that’s one week since the project started. From the outset, I doubted that I could build a 16mm scale layout in the time frame. I’ve come on a long way though. It’s definitely starting to look like a micro layout. How does the old adage go? The last 20% of a layout’s construction takes 80% of the time? I’m getting perilously close to starting on the last 20%.

One thing that has been causing much head scratching has been the shelter for the tipping point. In the photograph I have, the structure looks flimsy. Very flimsy. It looks like it would get blown away in a strong wind. I’ve since had it confirmed to me that these structures were not to the strongest construction. The problem was to be recreating that flimsiness while building a structure that will withstand trips to model railway shows. 

With only one photo to work from and no dimensions. A lot of guesstimation was involved. I had a feeling that to keep things simple, the shelter height was the same as a sheet of corrugated metal (why waste time cutting things?). The standard sheet height was eight feet. The internet also told me that a sheet was about 28” wide. Knowing that there would also be a one and a half corrugations overlap between sheets helped calculate the length. I had some corrugated sheet that looked right and cut it to size. After that, I searched through my stock of styrene girders and found stuff that, once again, looked the right size. There was even more guesswork attached to the roof. But no-one will know. Besides, I probably used the same frame of mind in the construction of my model as the man who built the original.

My take on the tipping shelter. It looks good enough for me.

As for looking flimsy, but being sturdy. I’ve accidentally dropped it a couple of times and it has survived each fall. Job done then.

One job I hadn’t done yet was to bed in the tipping dock. I’m surprised I hadn’t done it as soon as the rails were laid on it. Because that meant I could run a train on there. There’s still lots of work to do on the tipping dock, finishing off the shelter of course, hand rails around the edge and a buffer stop at the end for starters.

But that shouldn’t stop me fitting it in place and trying things out…

You know you wanted to see a run of the train on the layout… 

The Motor Rail uses Chris Rennie’s LocoRemote WiFi system. Right now I’m perfectly happy with it. The big thing is there’s no wires to the track and the rails can be as dirty as you like. The trains will still run.

I suppose that you could say that with trains running and some scenery in place, I have built a layout in seven days…

Day 6

Right now I feel compelled to work on the ground, the contours.

In the smaller scales you can model the ground level in something like a small quarry as flat and get away with it. Maybe a larger bump and rut in a rough road. You could get away with using different grades of  scenic scatter to suggest the unevenness of the ground.

Not so in 16mm scale you can model every bump and rut, every puddle. You could even model every messy footstep in a muddy morass if you so desired. 

I built up lumps and bumps with offcuts of EPS, and cut away the basic shape for my ground contours in the sand loading area and gave it a skim over with lightweight spackle. There’s lots of lumps and bumps and even a pile of sand shaped out. The areas that I cut away might end up being filled with water for puddles.

Shaping the ground on the sand tipper level

The lower level called for something much flatter. So I gave a general, level coverage to the area. Then thickened that up in places and dragged a piece of strip wood through it to simulate tyre tracks, then just because I was feeling silly. I took a figure and childishly walked him through the thick patches to leave footprints. Right now It looks like someone has been out in a snowstorm so I need to add a wash of earth colour to get rid of the snowscape.

Tyre track and footprints in the snow.

After letting the spackle dry for a while the surface was given a base colour to kill the snowscape.

The mud looks good (though has not reproduced well in this image), and you can still see the footprints among the tyre tracks.

The tipper vignette starts to come together

I sit staring at this mock up of the tipper shelter, and the picture in issue 134 of The Review trying to work out how to make one myself

All in all, another good day with lots of solid progress.

Day 5.

 First thing on the cards today was the laying of the rails onto the deck of the tipping dock. Spiking rail, as you know, is not my favourite task. But as confidence was at a high after yesterdays progress, I felt pretty good about pressing home tiny nails into basswood. 

Spiking in progress

When a succession of spikes go in easily, I feel good about it. Sometimes they don’t. Then the job becomes tedious. But this is still a new technique for me. I’ve been spiking little more than a year. I’m sure I can grow to tolerate it. 

But I did feel good when I had the whole deck spiked and a wagon on it..

A skip tipping on the dock. As it should be.

In other news, there’s been a slightly major change of plan. Having waxed lyrical in praise of the prefabricated concrete garage. It’s now gone from the layout, to be replaced by a skip loading chute. 

Last night as I was about to go to sleep, an idea came to me and I needed to sketch it so I didn’t forget.

Had to scribble this before I fell asleep

As I was emptying a skip at one end of the layout, it seemed to make more sense from a story telling point of view to load wagons at the other end. 

I had been having informal discussions with Chris Mears about his scheme, and he told me how he would get more pleasure out of loading and unloading skips than anything. That remark stuck at the back of my mind a while. Laying there dormant, until I needed it. 

There’s nothing wrong with my idea of a workshop scene. I’ve done too much research on prefab concrete garages to let the idea totally drop. But it doesn’t tell a story. Wagons would just appear from offstage and be tipped. Without reason. Small layouts, and particularly Micro layouts need to tell a story to get audience engagement.

If the two scenes here can be successfully separated to represent two ends of a small industrial system. Then a story can be told. Material is loaded into a wagon at one end of the line. Material is tipped out at the other. There’s countless small systems where this happens. 

I’m liking this concept more and more as I think it over. There is the potential at a show, to invite punters to load the wagon somehow, and then see the load tipped out. For a child, you could even tip some sweets or candies into a wagon to be transported to be tipped out in front of them. Audience engagement.

I mocked up a wagon loading chute to get a feel for the idea. 

A mock-up loading chute idea.

The mock up looks pretty good. I went a bit further and mocked up a few more scenes up and took a few more shots. This time I converted them to black and white to remove the distracting scenery and colour of my kitchen. The overall effect has great promise. As with Croft Original Sherry. “One instinctively knows when something is right”

A pile of sand or some change of relief is needed to help separate the two scenes

Aerial view

Perhaps a shelter for the tipping point could be useful.

Still lots to think about. A lot of headway has been made these last couple of days. Things are feeling really good.