Brettell Road, 1960s black country (ish)

Wagonman

Western Thunderer
Hi Adrian

Did you give this a go? I tried it and it looked great but then when it was fully dry it vanished.

Edit. Thinking about it, does the traditional oil slick look need daylight to work? Do they look different at night?

Cheers

Jim

Presumably as the real effect is caused by the diffraction of full-spectrum 'white' light, it would indeed need daylight to work properly. Or you could try a very fine brush and a full range of colours...
 
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Jim S-W

Western Thunderer
Just tried an experiment and you don't get the rainbow when it's dark and cloudy. Which is what the layout will be set in.

Cheers

Jim
 

adrian

Flying Squad
Hi Adrian
Did you give this a go? I tried it and it looked great but then when it was fully dry it vanished.
Edit. Thinking about it, does the traditional oil slick look need daylight to work? Do they look different at night?
No I didn't get round to trying it - too busy doing outdoor stuff - I bookmarked it for an indoor activity in the winter. As others have said I think it would require the full white spectrum of light to work so daylight or incandescent bulbs. If you are using LEDs then the visible light spectrum will be at very narrow frequencies so you won't get a full colour spread. I believe some LED lights use the UV spectrum and a phosphorous coating to give the appearance of white light so could be quite different to "daylight".
 

Jim S-W

Western Thunderer
Hi all

canalside-wall.jpg

I've started on the buildings for Brettell road with one that locals to the Stourbridge area will recognise as heavily influenced by the bonded warehouse. Construction is based on 2mm card overlaid with South Eastern Finecast garden wall bond. The large tiles were kindly laser cut for me by Tim. I get a kind of perverse satisfaction by putting the interesting bits facing away from the viewers!

facing-wall.jpg

The public facing side is plainer than a really plain thing. Only the little bit of detail at the top of the smaller building giving any vague nod to any sort of design or creativity!

courtyard-side.jpg

I plan to depict this building as abandoned, with all sorts of clutter in the now disused courtyard area. The base of the courtyard is foam-board and bearing in mind my wet theme I cut some holes in the top surface so that I could heat the plasticard with a hairdryer and give some variation to the floor for puddles. You can see how I approach the top of the wall with individual evergreen bricks (some missing of course!)

courtyard.jpg

Close up of the courtyard showing the battered doors. I decided to depict the main building chained up with the now customary padlock in place!

Cheers

Jim
 

Jim S-W

Western Thunderer
Thanks Geoff

Although the model is based on a warehouse I've depicted it as used for some sort of long closed industry. The smaller building was a small engine house with a boiler on the lower floor which would have coal delivered via barge.

The actual chimney is a skytrex model.

HTH

Jim
 

Geoff

Western Thunderer
Cheers Jim,
Its a very interesting building and I look forward to seeing the finished job, the chimney looks rather good from here and one might come in handy for a future project.
 

Jim S-W

Western Thunderer
Hi all

abandoned-lorry-2.jpg

I decided I quite liked the idea of doing an abandoned lorry for Brettell Road. Having mooched around for a suitable victim I quite fancied a kit rather than ready to plonk and I haven't built a vehicle kit for a while. I settled on a Coopercraft Bedford ML and set to work.

The kit is quite poor if i am honest. There's loads of flash and the fit of the parts isn't great. I also decided that the windscreens were far too small but being all plastic it's not too much hassle to fashion something presentable and as I've mentioned before I find poor kits strangely rewarding. I attacked the bed with a circular saw in a mini drill to gouge out some of the planks and simlulate rot. The above is the more presentable side!

abandoned-lorry-1.jpg

On this side I cut off a wing and cut down the tires to simulate flats. The rubber at the bottom was added with filler. The lorry was first weathered with a light blue to simulate fading, varnished and then gouache was used for the rust. another coat of varnish and washes of enamels were added to simulate dirt and grime. Finally the whole thing was dry brushed with Klear to make it look wet.

On the subject of road vehicles I will be doing a demo at Scaleforum this month so please stop by for a chat if you are going.

http://www.scalefour.org/scaleforum/2015/

Cheers

Jim
 

Jim S-W

Western Thunderer
Hi all

My abandoned warehouse is nearly there now. A spot of paint, Brassmasters windows and roof tiles kindly supplied by Mr Horn. These images show it roughly positioned.

painted-building-YS.jpg
Unusually for me the more interesting side is actually the side that people will see! The yard has been suitably strewn with waste from plastic strip and Scalelink bits. The 2 tanks are from Unit models.

abandoned-yard-dark.jpg

Cheers

Jim
 
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Geoff

Western Thunderer
The building has really turned out well Jim, I like the shot on your blog showing the building set against the canal, top stuff!
 

Jim S-W

Western Thunderer
unloved-track.jpg
I decided that the track in my little yard looked too neat so I have attacked it with some powder paint (rubbed in with a finger then sealed with Klear) and some weeds. I'm much happier with how it looks now.

loading-gauge.jpg
Although I don't have a goods shed I do need a loading gauge. I'm reliably informed that these were used to ensure that wagons leaving the yard were within gauge and not as some sort of protection for goods sheds. The above example is a typical midlands one and started out from the Smiths kit, I filed off the moulded lifting gear and replaced it with some spare handwheels (from Brassmasters) and bits of wire and brass.

weighbridge.jpg
This is a first for me, not that i've never built a weighbridge before (Although I haven't) but i've never actually built a kit building before. When I was a kid my dad built some for me, usually Airfix kits and Linka, but all my buildings have been scratchbuilt up to now. So in the interests of breaking new ground this is a Wills kit. I admit I filed off the panels on the end and rescribed the bricks and fancied a brick-built chimney but it is a kit. Oh and the guttering is bits of brass from Eileens!

Finally, you may have spotted earlier that Ive bedded in (most of) the abandoned warehouse, a few pictures follow:<

abandoned-line.jpg

warehouse-bedded-in.jpg

Jim
 

Jim S-W

Western Thunderer
Part of the plan for Brettell Road is to have an off scene steel works, the real Round Oak was (is) just down the line from the sidings at Moor Street. I plan to use the sidings at Brettell Road as an exchange sidings for this and I like the way that a lot of the uphill workings on the old Earl of Dudley's railway had the loco pushing trains up from the bottom of the hill so I want to replicate this on the model. My choice of motive power for these workings is the Yorkshire Engine company DE2 0-4-0 diesel shunter, of which Round Oak had a fleet and would be pretty new at the time of the model. Not that the loco's in such an environment stayed new for very long mind you. Luckily Judith Edge do a kit and this week I set to work.

de2-sub-assemblies.jpg

The kit breaks down into 3 sub assemblies. The chassis, the footplate and the body. It all goes together pretty easily due to the good design of the kit. It has a simple rocking compensation built in and I decided to use it as supplied. The above picture shows the main soldering work complete with the fiddly details stage to come next.

de2-mock-up-1.jpg

Losely assembled but not bolted together, I will be getting the chassis running with a high level gearbox and Mashima motor.

de2-mock-up-2.jpg

Rear view. The kit provides a resin bonnet top and sandboxes along with a little cover for the handbrake which is mounted on the rear of the cab on the right hand side under the window. I cant find any evidence for this being on the Round Oak examples so I filled the recess for it with a bit of scrap etch and filed it smooth. You can just make it out in the picture.

There was a suggestion that these loco's first appeared at Round Oak in a plain Yellow livery but I cant find any evidence for this being the case. If anyone has any it would be much appreciated.
 

adrian

Flying Squad
I do like these industrial loco's - it's something different. Just curious what was the purpose of the brackets under the buffers?
 

Jim S-W

Western Thunderer
They were the jacking points. There's a picture in one of the black country railway books of one being lifted with a beam at each end.
 
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