York Road details

[cfmrc]

This is the design for the name board roundels for York Road. The name bar will be cut out and applied as an extra layer.


Any comments?

Tim

[burkitt]

The colour, proportions and font all look good to me.

Are you intending to cut the sign out from the white surround, or use the whole thing?

The photo of the York Road platform you've shared definitely shows a roundel applied directly to the wall with no square surround, and the evidence of other photos is that this was the standard when roundels were retrofitted from circa 1908. The square white surround appear to have been used only on roundels at new or rebuilt platforms.

[cfmrc]

They will definitely be cut out. Wayout signs next.

Tim

[cfmrc]

Had a great day at the MRC mini exhibition with YR in its first outing as a diorama.

The standard stock also ran and looked the part. This train may get a new mechanism and act as a prototype for the gate stock which is currently at the design stage for etching.

Signage and posters soon.


Tim

[spsmiler]

I went to the exhibition, said hello to Tim, saw this layout - its superb ... the level of detail is fantastic. Oh and all in 2mm fine scale, which means that everything is very, very small.

[cfmrc]

York Road spiral stairs are now complete, after a weeks work: the illuminated steps will help to draw attention to the lift and give a raison d’être for the funny shape on the southern side of the tube station. 



The construction was aided by John Jesson producing laser cut step sections using the MRC laser-cutting facility; rather like a castle stairway (the top step shows the profile). 



Once glued together, the centre section was cut away, the steps trimmed with a high speed tungsten carbide trimmer and a new brass ventilation shaft turned up to the correct diameter, complete with plate work jounts scribed into place. The aluminium collar helps to centralise and support the stairs towards the bottom. The reason for the polished conical tip will become apparent later (it’s not an ICBM).  



The copper pipe of the stair shaft had a window cut into it using diamond discs and the position of the stairs was then determined. 



There are a number of conduits surrounding the ventilation shaft and these were represented by brass square section and strip. The vertical plate joints were scribed in using a tool in the lathe, where they would be conspicuous. 



The artwork for the tiles was already available from the station building. Tile strips were cut out and thinned down from behind with a scalpel and tweezers so that they were almost like a transfer. 



A paper liner was marked up and the individual tile patterns glued into place. I’m sure some clever person could have drawn all this up and printed it, but I’m more of a make it directly sort of person.



The liner was held in place with photo mount and a chrome metallic pen used to finish the top of the ventilation shaft cone and the top of the main shaft lining. Finally a light cured resin spherical lens was made to go on top of the cone. The reason for this? There is an LED positioned immediately above the main shaft in the roof and these reflective / refractive devices might capture and improve light transmission down the stairwell. I did not want to fiddle with extra LEDS. 



The final scene fulfils the aim we had two years ago of showing how a tube station is laid out. It’s not really realistic modelling, but I’ve found it great fun to do. 



Just for completeness here is a link showing the famous Covent Garden steps. www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fiwl8o3d7eebb1.jpg%3Fwidth%3D3024%26format%3Dpjpg%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3D4d5f74c09a51902e8548e2fd49a23467d3bf2a61 
I think that’s enough tube modelling for a while, apologies for the long post!

Tim

[spsmiler]

superb!

[cfmrc]

The York Road diorama will be exhibited at the Ally Pally show on 16-17th March this year.

Tim

[cfmrc]

York Road now has its ‘modern’ signage and electrical conduits. It will be on display in diorama form at Ally Pally (16-17th March) on The Model Railway Club stand.

The signs were printed (Ben Weiner made the artwork) and the edge mouldings on the name board were built up with paint.

The signs were thinned down at the back by careful scraping with a #15 scalpel blade to make them less bulky.

The conduits were laser cut as etched strips, by John Jesson, sprayed with white primer then given a wash of stone water-based colour.

The station now needs loads of advertising signs, a couple of benches installing, a Nestle chocolate machine and fire buckets with a hose cabinet. 

Tim

[cfmrc]

After some careful internet image acquisition & editing, York Road now has a full set of 1920s posters. A pile of fine ballast, bench, fire cabinet and buckets are still needed to replicate the prototype photo.

The images needed quite a bit of cleaning up and brightening before copying & pasting into the PowerPoint file. This software has a useful re-sizing capability and allowed mixing & matching of the posters for variety. The images were loaded onto a dark grey background and then printed at high resolution using an inkjet printer. The original PDF retains much of the resolution of the individual images which are degraded in the photo image.  Commercial posters do not generally include the ‘local’ advertisements which are very characteristic of an area. 

The edges of the poster boards were touched in with a black pen. 
The posters certainly add a splash of colour to the model and help with the atmosphere.  


Tim

[jimbo]

Since they don't generally use ballast in tube tunnels, is that a pile of builder's sand for some repair work underway? Or is it a dump of sand to refill the fire buckets when they get damp and go solid? Drunk men would sometimes discreetly pee in them! There were bins at the end of platforms later for spare sand. Also fire bucket sand was useful for staff to clean up vomit, and then had to be refilled.

[cfmrc]

Not quite sure about ballast. The LER drawing shows fine granite clippings in use:

This image also shows fine ballast.

I have modelled the YR track with effectively a smooth ballast, nearly flush with the sleepers.

Tim

[cfmrc]

As can be seen in this YR photo the bench along the platform has a lady sitting on it. 

The bench was made a few weeks ago from modified Shire Scenes etches. I thought that the lady would best be served by this figure from Modelu
:
On arrival I was most impressed with the quality of the printing, especially the magazine. Unfortunately, once all the supports were removed I found that the lady had a rather extensive protuberance below her derrière. 
Trimming this away wrote off the magazine and, I’m afraid, the poor girl’s right arm. Even then she would not fit on the bench that I’d made with her coy Princess Diana posture, and would look more like a child perching on the edge of a wall. Serious surgery was therefore contemplated. Those of a squeamish disposition should look away now. 

She was electively fractured just below the knees and placed on a thick sticky tape operating table for distraction therapy. 

As this was judged to be about the correct length, a small amount of light cured adhesive was introduced into the fracture site and polymerised.


After checking her against the bench the void was made up with more light curling resin added with a pin in small increments. 

During the same operation, a new light cured prosthetic right arm was made.  After a rapid recovery and following a bit more minor plastic surgery the lady was sprayed dark brown as a base colour and then painted with suitable acrylic wash colours. She is now reading the Daily Sketch, marvelling at the Flying Scotsman’s non-stop run to Edinburgh. Her newspaper was made from cigarette paper and held in place with varnish.


The end result is one step closer to reproducing the B&W York Road photograph and, unlike many figures on model railways, she is sitting properly on the bench with her feet daintily touching the ground. 

For all that I think I must be mad to have spent virtually a whole day working on this figure.

Tim

[spsmiler]

Its looking even more fantastic every time its updated ... the sheer level of detail really brings it to life.

As someone who has seen this 'in the flesh' what also makes this even more remarkable is its size (or rather, lack of size). Photographs, sometimes perhaps in macro mode, can be deceptive because they make everything look much larger than it actually is.

[cfmrc]

Just awaiting fire buckets from Modelu.

Tim

[cfmrc]

The Standard stock on YR now has lights.


If you are at Ally Pally this weekend, do make yourself known. YR will be on the main MRC stand.

Tim

[cfmrc]

I had a really excellent day at Ally Pally yesterday - didn’t stop talking!

Thanks to everyone who has provided info: still a long way to go.

Tim

[cfmrc]

I had a really fun time at Ally Pally with the YR diorama last weekend. It was great to have visitors being able to get really close to the model to actually see it! The interest in underground modelling is clearly developing and I spent some considerable time showing individuals historical images and also construction images using the iPad. These have now been ordered into logical albums, which will also simplify giving talks. 


Tim