4mm Life in a Northern Town - Ever more York

[AJC]

Some wonderful images there Simon.
I wonder if much has been published on this topic - there's a nice collection in this book, though more retail and city orientated than those huge examples in the Guardian article:

View attachment 199263

There’s a few (tens, possibly?) of these local surveys - which are quite interesting - but relatively few in print. Lots of ephemeral web communities, which is appropriate, I suppose. Most towns have a few survivors, Tonbridge has a dozen, that I know of, for example. My favourite is one on a backstreet advertising the services of a painter, who specialised in signs…

Adam

 

[Neil]

I do like a good ghost sign but I've yet to establish how old the Stubbs signs are (there are more on another face of the building) and if they were present in the time period I've set Northern Town in. I know that I'll have been past the building in the early sixties as I remember looking upriver at the bridge over the Foss next to Stubbs as barges travelling in opposite directions had managed to jam themselves under the bridge where the river narrowed.

I do know that the signs were refreshed in relatively recent years which of course sparks a whole new debate about if and how that should be done. An excellent example of this would be the over restoration of York's iconic Bile Beans sign.

Finally another piece from the Guardian, it seems that there's a fellow fan there.

 

[DougT]

I've just been playing Bile Beans Bingo, waiting for the first mention of that iconic sign in York! I had to resist doing it myself!

There was no prize.

 

[michael mott]

Looking at the last sign in Simon’s link there is a true ghost under the sign Field Saddlers that is in Grey that is in larger letters and says Field Harnesses.
Michael

 

[Osgood]

Ghost signs don't have to be on buildings.......


1954 Foden OG/4, Sam Satterthwaite, Streetly Garage, recovery truck.

 

[ColPeake]

Lovely to see you model the Subbs building Neil, I first "discovered" it in 2003, when the painting on the sign on the rear elevation and that closest to the road looked very fresh, in contrast to the boarded-up shop at the front. What is interesting is that another sign further up the building and presumably less accessible remained in 'ghost' format.



Colin

 

[Neil]

Thanks for the photo Colin, after worrying whether the sign writing was present in the fifties and sixties I asked the question on the York past and present Facebook group where it was suggested there was an image from that era. A bit of searching brought up a black and white photo of the same side of the building as your photo with the sign just showing. I'm therefore happy that my version would be in period.

 

[Matt.S.]

This is really starting to come together with some character Neil - the signwriting is a great disruptor as you look towards the corner.

 

[Yorkshire Dave]

What is interesting is that another sign further up the building and presumably less accessible remained in 'ghost' format.

Not only that, it's also how it's been shoehorned in between the rear of the building, the windows and the chimney stack up the wall.

 

[Neil]

What have I been doing over the last month or so? In my stash of bits, bobs and potential projects I had a couple of the Bachmann junior 0-6-0 tanks derived from their googly eyed Thomas. One of them went under the knife to produce this seen coupled to a pair of Tomy trackmaster carriages cut and shut onto a pair of GWR toad underframes.



I also had a trip to Aberystwyth, the VOR shop to be precise, where I picked up a card kit for a DVLR station. My plan was/is to use the kit as a plan or cutting template for a version in plastic so I made copies of the bits I wanted on the printer. I prefer the smaller DVLR style building so chopped up the prints to see if it would work.



What previously occupied the site.



Now replace by the proof of concept card mock up.



Time to get out the plastic. Firstly the blind alley, sticking the prints to plasticard with dilute PVA caused the plastic sheet to warp when dried.




I remembered I had a stock of sticky backed label material stored away for future use which I used for the second attempt.



You can see that I've started to cut the panelling out but it's hard to see if the panels line up from the front so turning the sheet over better reveals the degree of success.



I was happy with that so continued. At the moment all the panelling has been cut out and the individual sections await the construction of the basic building carcass so that they can be overlaid onto it. There's still quite a way to go.

 

[Bagpuss]

Lovely to see you model the Subbs building Neil, I first "discovered" it in 2003, when the painting on the sign on the rear elevation and that closest to the road looked very fresh, in contrast to the boarded-up shop at the front. What is interesting is that another sign further up the building and presumably less accessible remained in 'ghost' format.

View attachment 199405

Colin

I remember Stubbbs when it was still open it was like going back in time and a good ironmongers.

 

[y6tram]

I remember Stubbbs when it was still open it was like going back in time and a good ironmongers.

I also remember Stubbs when it was open . You perhaps already know Niel there is another sign on the rear of the building facing Piccadilly, which is relatively complete.

 

[steve1]

I also remember Stubbs when it was open . You perhaps already know Niel there is another sign on the rear of the building facing Piccadilly, which is relatively complete.

Do you mean this one? Neil already has an even better version.



steve

 

[y6tram]

Do you mean this one? Neil already has an even better version.

View attachment 202979

steve

Yes that's the one

 

[Neil]

Thanks Steve and Alan, I managed to find a near square on shot of the sign on the internet, taken when the area in front of it had been cleared and before the new building blocking the view had been built.

 

[Neil]

For a variety of reasons I've done very little over December, activity only picking up post Christmas. Here's where the light railway station building has got to.

 

[Neil]

It's been a couple of weeks and I've made reasonable progress with the DVLR station building.





However it doesn't look like this at the moment as I have fitted the roof skins (what's seen in the above photos are the roof bases, 80thou for strength) and started to detail them with ridge capping and a representation of the ribs.

 

[Neil]

Another couple of images to bring the story of the station up to date.






Nearly finished; once the paint has fully hardened there will be some gentle weathering and detail painting to do. I do like the Edwardian cricket pavilion look of the DVLR family of buildings, a fiddle to do but rewarding too.

 

[Neil]

I've had a busy couple of weeks since I last posted, so there's not much to show. I have had the paints out and the first victims have been this trio of Oxford seven plank opens.



They were the ones with the weird sandy factory weathering and out of the box they looked like identical triplets. The first thing I did was to alter the shape and size of the black patches behind the number and weight lettering. As the numbers were neatly applied I left them as is. Once my alterations were thoroughly dry I applied a weathering wash of a warm dark grey (black mixed with a drop of cream) over the body and repainted the 'metal' parts of the underframe in a stronger mix of the same shade with a drop of red oxide added. Since taking the photo I've given the sandy couplers a wash of the warm dark grey paint which has improved them a good deal.

 

[Neil]

Ooooo, look what arrived in the post yesterday.





Ok, I know we're all about making rather than shopping but I always wanted one of these as a boy and at seven quid I just couldn't resist. Will I be tweaking, modifying, altering it? Well no, I won't; it'll stay just as it is because I like it.