Lcut Bridge

Xmas seems to be rather extended this year.

An unexpected present has just  arrived from Jakub at Lcut. In keeping with my hints about TAoC it is an overbridge based roughly on the ones to be found on the Fairford branch.

The first thing that struck me is just how many components are in the box considering  the price. In fact I couldn't find a sheet of paper big enough to put them all on to take a photo.

I've always taken their kits to be a starting point and this one in particular gives you a fair amount of freedom in how you put it together. The downside of that is it is possible to put it together in a way that might not meet with the full  approval of the Civil Engineer's department so I highly recommend making much use of photographic evidence.

Whilst a nice kit in its own right it has also made me realise how much I want to play around with their products as a scratch-building aid.

This has certainly given me the much needed impetus to push on with the replacement Apa module using my first attempt at EM gauge point building from, oh let me see, almost exactly a year ago. That in turn frees up my original Apa box for a tramway layout although the jury is still out on whether that will be in 7mm or 4mm scale.

On the subject of small suppliers I've also had excellent service this week from Alan at Quarryscapes this week, who produces 3d replacement parts for the 14XX. The more I look at photos of the real thing the more work I realise I need to do..

Legless

OK, confession time. Not my first and it won't be my last.

I've often remarked that what catches tyro modellers out is the silly stuff.

Building the baseboards for Upwold had gone really well, and I was congratulating myself on the legs being relatively sturdy and how easy the adjustable feet made it to get the boards level. Not only that but I was also really happy with the working height I'd chosen.

Then I decided to take the boards down so I could work on them as individual units

Which is when I realised the implication of having decided to make the layout semi-portable.

Many years ago my brother was helping my parents move some furniture out of our house in Herefordshire. In those pre-Ikea days I think it had probably come from Waring & Gillow, but it was still intended for home assembly.

But not for home dis-assembly, as my brother discovered when by removing one part he caused the whole wardrobe to collapse around him.

Gentle reader, you will be ahead of me by now.

Suffice to say as I lifted one of the boards I had a brief Wile E. Coyote moment of utter calm just before the rest of the layout crashed to the ground.

Looking back I can see where I went wrong. OK a child of five could see what I got wrong, but probably not why I got it wrong. To accommodate the existing furniture in the office I abandoned my original plan to use trestles. Instead I decided to use simple plug in pairs of legs. To be quite honest if I'd put the layout up in the intended semi permanent home the unexpected consequences of taking it apart wouldn't have been that bad, because the units it is fitting in around would have kept most of the pieces in place. But setting it up on the (patio/terrace/slabs - delete as appropriate) meant the safety net wasn't there.

So back to the drawing board. I suspect it might just mean building a different set of legs if Upwold ever goes on the road.

In the meantime I've not been making much other progress to report on. Once again lots of disparate jobs are progressing slightly rather than having any single project making significant progress. I'm hoping for some big news on the building front very soon though.

As a taster the guys at Lcut have taken on board some of my comments about their small signal box kit and both increased the size of the door to 4mm proportions and, much more impressively, managed to cut recessed windows.

This remember, sells for the pocket money price of  £6.00 when other laser cut buildings are being sold at premium prices.

Signal Box Progress

I really don't have either the eye sight or the steady hands needed for painting individual bricks. This has been confirmed by progress with painting the signal box.

Any requests for photos from any closer than this are going to be politely but firmly refused. I'm actually quite happy with the roof and the red brickwork has been rescued from a near disaster. I'm also impressed how painting the one handrail of the staircase dark grey has helped disguise its chunkiness.

It is the engineer's bricks that have caused me grief. First of all for some stupid reason I prevaricated about buying a new brush to paint them, and secondly having had to fill the corner joints I'd managed to obscure many of the laser engraved mortar lines. I've already alluded to my poor eye sight and unsteady hands, a mix to which was added to by the distractions of the need to get two important PowerPoint presentations out the door before Sunday and a poodle throwing herself loudly and repeatedly against the kitchen door.

All in all then it isn't surprising I've made a pig's ear of it. Hopefully tomorrow I can tidy it up a little. On the plus side I think I've got the colour right, for which I can thank Kevin Robertson's "Western Region Signalling in Colour"

I'm sat here now wondering if I should follow Iain's example and cut the quoins out of brick paper and overlay them. I took one of the photos of the kit parts using a scanner, so in theory I could use that to produce an exact 1:1 fit

The 100th Post

Having spent a considerable number of the last 99 blog posts procrastinating about building a signal box it seems fitting to use the 100th to unveil that Apa now has a signal box.

OK, there is a lot of work still to be done on it, especially the brickwork on the corners, and the roof section is still separate whilst I make my mind up about whether to fit an interior. The base it is sitting on is temporary as well.

The attempts to add relief to the flat out of the box walls have had mixed success. On reflection I think I've been too subtle about it. but I think I need to wait and see what it looks like when painted.

This isn't going well!

Overall I think it has improved the overall composition of the scene. Its final position will be over to the right rather more so as to better relate spatially to the weighbridge hut from my normal viewing position in the office chair. Looking at the picture below it bigger than it does in the flesh for some reason. Possibly that is because of the overexposed roof.

The theory of the original plan was that the signal box would draw the eye away from the ends of the box and distract you from noticing that only half the station is modeled. My first impressions is that it has worked and it is also pulling the eye back from the join between the back scene and the hedge.

Cheating

With a weekend that is currently scheduled to involve working until 9pm on Sunday night I'm wondering, as ever, about how to make life easy for myself and what shortcuts I can take.

By now I should know of course that every shortcut turns out to be a diversion with a Road Closed sign at the end of it. But something has to be done about the signal box.

So yesterday morning this popped through the letterbox:

It is a laser cut kit for a GWR signal box from Lcut Creative costing the massive sum of £6. At that price I think I can afford to try it out as an experiment.  I was thinking about using it in conjunction with their other style of GWR signal box window, or with my previous attempt to utilise the Ratio frames, to help speed up building a model based on Blodwell. First of all though I'm going to build one straight out of the box. Although not correct for the TVR it has roughly the right footprint and will at least let me judge if it improves the composition before continuing to invest time in the scratchbuilt/kit bashed  box.

To be honest I want to see what results I can get with laser cut wood model since I still think it is a possible way forward for the buildings on Llanrhaiadr Mochnant. I'm a little concerned that I have yet to see a painted version of one the Lcut Creative models, and I'm not sure whether the interlocking brick approach to corner joins will work or not. Actually if I could get the toy poodles to stop jumping around I might have built it by now, but I've found by bitter experience that starting work on anything whilst they are in the room is a big mistake, especially if glue, paint or scalpels are involved.

Incidentally one nice touch is that the kit includes parts for both right and left handed doors, which also gives me a couple of spare pieces to experiment on.

An attempt at adding some relief to the flat kit wall

Lcut Creative have some You Tube content on the techniques for building these kits, and a comprehensive manual available to download.

Whilst on the subject of cheating, though I know it isn't really, I've also succumbed to order a very small selection of Silfor products. I think Apa is now at the stage where I can justify the relative expense  and I can use them to best effect.

I've also been thinking about a few other things that might make life simple going forward. Most of these are below the baseboard. Something that crossed my mind the other day though is whether anyone has considered a discrete coupling, in the spirit of the Sprat & Winkle, to fit a NEM coupling socket? I know there is the Kadee option.