4mm Timber Tracks GWR 2-Road Engine Shed Kit Build

[Ressaldar]

Hi Chris,

many thanks for responding.

I will keep my eyes open for the aerosol in the local art/craft shops and in the meantime, I'll try thinning the Reeves tube type and using it on some spare pieces.

The kit manufacturer's - LCut Creative (www.lcut.co.uk) suggest using a spray primer before applying acrylic paints, but I thought that as you say, the mortar beds might get clogged up and spoil the effect.

regards

Mike

 

[BrushType4]

I recommend halfords primer for my own laser cut buildings. The red oxide is great base for red brick buildings and tones down well when washed over with a whiteish runny coat to represent the mortar courses.

 

[chrisb]

After even more rummaging through the spares bin and more jobbing together pieces of styrene, wire and just for a change some tissue paper, the far rear corner of the shed has a little detail:



Obviously the walls need to be properly bedded down and the floor needs a dusting of swarf, sweepings and the odd lump of coal but I'm beginning to see hints of the atmosphere that I'd like the interior to have.

 

[chrisb]

This pretty much finishes the interior detail:

 

[Osgood]

What a great touch - the name plates leaning against the wall! I've found this thread very inspirational.

 

[john lewsey]

Everything he does is inspirational I checked out the link for his avitar it's just really nice

 

[chrisb]

Thank you for the kind words and the likes. I can't honestly take credit for the inspiration - I'm just copying details I've noticed in photographs of shed interiors and most especially details that John Dornom added to his roundhouse diorama (see MRJ 113).

With the shed floor and interior wall detailing complete, it's time to add the remaining detail to the roof interior.

First up, it's the overhead hot water pipes:



Again the usual suspects (brass wire/nuts/beads, styrene, etc.) were utilised together with some etched handwheels.

 

[chrisb]

With the overhead hot water pipes attached, time to work on the smoke troughs. These aren't supplied with the kit, which is a pity really since, of all the interior detail, they're probably the most obvious and most obviously missing if not added.

So, after dredging up some elementary trigonometry, the troughs were fashioned from styrene sheet and strip and the upper surfaces sprayed with Polyscale weathered black (primarily because I think it will be difficult to get good paint coverage on the upper surfaces after they've been attached):

 

[chrisb]

The last detail for the roof interior is lighting. In comparison with the trusses and troughs, this is a small detail but the effect should, hopefully, be quite large.



The stem is a made from a 25mm length of brass micro-tube and the shade is made from discs of styrene sheet formed with a punch. The LED is from DCC Concepts.

Eleven more to go...

 

[Steve Cook]

Looks quite fiddly to me Chris
It will be worth the effort though, your interior certainly deserves illuminating - I'm looking forward to those photographs already.
Steve

 

[chrisb]

A quick view of the interior with the lighting installed and the underside of the roof given a thorough coating of weathered black.



One thing this photograph reveals is that the wire supports for the smoke troughs need to be added. Hi ho..

 

[BrushType4]

The inadequate lighting is just right

 

[Rob Pulham]

The inadequate lighting is just right

What Phil said

 

[john lewsey]

What Bob said

 

[chrisb]

I sent a happy few hours reading the first two issues of Finescale Railway Modelling Review this afternoon and, by chance, one of the articles is on a fantastic shed diorama.

Much motivated, I then spent an hour playing:



It was all very ad hoc and for some reason the joss stick smoke seems to have made the lights appear rather green, not to mention leaving huge lumps of ash everywhere, but it's a start.

 

[chrisb]

With the interior essentially complete (although...read on), I decided to turn my attention to the exterior.

I started with the main road doors and immediately hit a snag. It may well have been my error but I discovered the doors are too long - they can only be fitted in the open position as they completely foul the rails if closed. (Which is OK, I guess, since I want them in the open position but they look a bit daft.)

Unfortunately, due to the framing on the interior side, it isn't a simple fix to simply lop a bit off the ends. So I duly fiddled around with the framing and generally bodged shorter doors of the correct length, adding hinges and handles etc. as I went. Then, of course, after all that work, the real problem materialized - the door parts have been cut from a rather coarse grained ply and the orientation of the grain is wrong. So, onto the junk pile went the doors and out came the styrene sheet:



I still need to add the hinges, handles, etc. but it's an improvement.

The kit comes with the old-style wooden chimneys but like a lot of the detail parts I find them too chunky so since the styrene sheet was already on the workbench I knocked up some replacements, adding resin rivets where necessary:



Next, the exterior office/store room was put together. I did modify the kit here a little bit, off-setting it from the edge of the main building a little which makes the rear shed wall look less cramped. The brickwork was then given a coat of gesso and the roof primed a dark grey ready to apply the slates:



Back to the interior briefly, I stumbled across a batch of engine lamps I'd detailed a while ago and I remembered seeing a photograph of a rack for stowing spare lamps and I thought this would be a simple detail worth adding:

 

[pete waterman]

Sorry to nit pick. There is a major problem with the Timber Tracks stuff. They don't talk to brick layers or builders our they would know you could never build anything with brick work like there's. Brick work is an art form and is worth getting right or am I being to fussy.

 

[Oz7mm]

Agreed Pete. I had my first go at a laser cut building ( a crew bothy cut by Phil Healey-Pearce for me) and discovered very quickly the complexities of brickwork especially near corners and windows and door openings. I now know about queen closers etc,

Also on the Timber Tracks buildings I have seen you get a piece of blank wall at the corners as the corners are simply butt jointed. Phil has overcome this by using the brick courses themselves to create finger joints at the corners. A lot more effort to draw but very effective both structurally and aesthetically.

 

[jonte]

The atmosphere you've conjured, Chris, is spine tinglingly awesome and something for me to aspire to.

Simply wonderful.

Thanks for sharing.

Jonte

 

[chrisb]

...There is a major problem with the Timber Tracks stuff...

As someone who usually hand scribes brickwork with the correct bond, headers and stretchers I wouldn't say you're being fussy.

But there are many other problems with the two Timber Tracks kits that I've built/am building - the careless orientation of the ply used for the road doors I described above being just one.

I haven't highlighted these problems perhaps as much as I should since my focus has really been on taking an average kit and trying to make a decent model out of it.

That said I have been asking myself whether the kits are really worth their price given the amount of remedial work needed and now that there's not much left in the box on this one I have to concede I won't be buying another.

I'm not sure I'll go back the hand scribing brickwork - it's a tremendous amount of very slow work. I will be attempting to improve my CAD skills though...