magmouse
Western Thunderer
Yes, or perhaps some ivy or similar growing up that corner of the building, to hide the gap?
Nick.
7mm Heybridge Basin
- Thread starter Richard Gawler
- Start date
Yes, or perhaps some ivy or similar growing up that corner of the building, to hide the gap?
Nick.
Richard Gawler
Western Thunderer
Thanks Nick I think some kind of climbing plant about 10 mm thick would work, and it wouldn't look stereotyped either.
Incidentally, the whole layout still looks okay with this mocked-up building in place. The visual balance viewed from eight feet away becomes somewhat unbalanced, but this doesn't seem to matter at a normal viewing distance. It is as though Heybridge Basin is a bare and open space, which it is, and there is somewhere more sheltered nearby. I think this works in 7mm because of the space involved, it wouldn't be so good in a smaller scale.
I fancy a pair of Lombardy Poplar trees here. This is all the crossing needs to help it to depict an unmade road leading away towards the village and they are correct for the location.
Would the easy way out be to angle the building the other way, so it is the front corner instead of the back that is against the fiddle yard divider?
Eastsidepilot
Western Thunderer
If the building is going to be a pub I would suggest the front wall would face the road ?, unless you intend the surface in front of the building, as you've shown it, to be road surface.
I can highly recommend this book which contains artists drawings of the area showing in some cases then and now situations.
Col.
Richard Gawler
Western Thunderer
Col. the book looks good and I have found a copy online.
I want to imagine the pub was here before the railway, and so logically it would be facing the navigation. There would not be any road here. The pub would be reached by a driveway, and the railway has put in an occupation crossing.
If I turn the building to the right as you suggest, the crossing looks more spacious. The access driveway can curve around more naturally, and the building is more dominant. There is space for a bay or oriel window on the left. I might have to put detail onto the rear wall. I will see more of the trains before they go off scene.
If I turn the building to the left (as before) then the structure seems to flow along with the curving backscene. I like this but others may not. The rear wall will never be seen.
I ought to add the backdrop panel across the end of the fiddle yard and assess the look again. Sometimes I find in quite difficult to visualise the complete picture.
I want to imagine the pub was here before the railway, and so logically it would be facing the navigation. There would not be any road here. The pub would be reached by a driveway, and the railway has put in an occupation crossing.
If I turn the building to the right as you suggest, the crossing looks more spacious. The access driveway can curve around more naturally, and the building is more dominant. There is space for a bay or oriel window on the left. I might have to put detail onto the rear wall. I will see more of the trains before they go off scene.
If I turn the building to the left (as before) then the structure seems to flow along with the curving backscene. I like this but others may not. The rear wall will never be seen.
I ought to add the backdrop panel across the end of the fiddle yard and assess the look again. Sometimes I find in quite difficult to visualise the complete picture.
Geoff
Western Thunderer
Pubs are two a penny, but I can't remember seeing a model of a farrier's premises, it would be different and Charlie would no doubt appreciate a roof over his head.
Geoff
Geoff
Rob R
Western Thunderer
It's your trainset.
If no one else likes it that is their problem, not yours.
Richard Gawler
Western Thunderer
Two further cases for the farrier instead of a pub is the rather nice pair of doors (the kit provides detail overlay parts for these); and the fact that the settlement already has The Old Ship.
Rob you are correct, but I wrote this to try to provoke some ideas. If I ask for inputs I may get replies which make me think differently or better.
Fairly obviously portraying a farrier or a pub does not make a jot of difference to the big picture; but choosing the angle of the structure to the front of the baseboard has quite a big effect. Also this effect seems quite difficult to capture in a photograph.
Anyway, I am a lot happier with this layout than I was even a week ago because the ballasting is done and this has set the appearance and character of the railway, and I can now relax with details
Dog Star
Western Thunderer
Great, you need to enjoy what you have created.I can now relax with details
Richard Gawler
Western Thunderer
Thanks Graham. The ballast has lifted my spirits and the model has cheered me up each day since. I know, it is going to work out and I can follow it through to completion.
I have worked up a backdrop panel to divide the layout from the fiddle yard.
The two machine screws at the bottom are working as dowels going into clearance holes in the fiddle yard.
This will teach me to try to building a modular layout with a curving backdrop, but the backdrop is clear of the extra baseboard (Module B) and I can re-purpose this baseboard for example as a headshunt beyond the traverser.
So I now know what the space for the farrier building really looks like.
It ought to be possible to cantilever a lighting rig off this panel, and attach a demountable display board to the angled front too. I can see a final shape appearing.
Yorkshire Dave
Western Thunderer
If you were to cut an identical panel (blue), add some extra blocks of wood (black) you could make it into a double sided divider. In the top you could cut a hole to take a drop in lighting rig.
Richard Gawler
Western Thunderer
@Yorkshire Dave this is a marvellous idea and I will come back to it when I have a design for the lighting rig.
Richard Gawler
Western Thunderer
'Lady Marion' was recorded at Heybridge Basin.
This photograph appears to have been taken from the opposite side of the navigation, near the present-day boat yard. The goods yard looks swept and tidy, as though this was an official photograph.
Ian@StEnochs
Western Thunderer
Richard,
Superb view but if it was an ‘official’ I think the proud driver would be looking straight into the lens!
Superb view but if it was an ‘official’ I think the proud driver would be looking straight into the lens!
Richard Gawler
Western Thunderer
I have had a quick look, but the driver's feet are so far apart this is the only way he can fit onto the footplate!
Lighting rig
New
Richard Gawler
Western Thunderer
I haven’t done any modelling for a month but I have built a lighting rig for the layout.
This is my fifth lighting rig so I ought to be knowing what to do but the technology changes every few years and each rig is different to the previous. The criteria this time are for the rig to be reusable for any future layout around 1.8 to 2 metres long; and to be as unobtrusive as possible. Also I want to be able to reach through it to use a display cabinet hung on the wall behind.
I began with a kit from Wholesale LED Lighting of Leicester. This has a 4000K “daylight” CCT tape and the effect is perfect at home with a cool white strip light above the layout, but just a tiny bit too warm used on its own.
So I added a strip of 6000K “cool white” and a controller to adjust the proportions of light from the two strips. This controller has three spare channels to use with other layouts or even new general lighting in the room.
The supports are from a pair of very lightweight lighting stands. Time will tell whether they are just a bit too lightweight, but they were cheap enough to cut into pieces and rebuild differently.
I have fixed an offcut of tube into the extension baseboard . . .
. . . and one bracket drops into this.
There is a suitably shorter bracket in the fiddle yard.
The lighting bar is an L-shaped aluminium extrusion with a corner LED profile inside.
There is just enough room to squeeze both tapes into the profile.
The idea is, if the bar gets knocked it will just swing; and its willingness to move will discourage people from hanging coats or indeed themselves on it.
Both brackets adjust vertically by about 100 mm. At the moment, the bar clears my head. The bar is just under two metres long so it will pack into a two-metre drain pipe for transit. So far so good
This is my fifth lighting rig so I ought to be knowing what to do but the technology changes every few years and each rig is different to the previous. The criteria this time are for the rig to be reusable for any future layout around 1.8 to 2 metres long; and to be as unobtrusive as possible. Also I want to be able to reach through it to use a display cabinet hung on the wall behind.
I began with a kit from Wholesale LED Lighting of Leicester. This has a 4000K “daylight” CCT tape and the effect is perfect at home with a cool white strip light above the layout, but just a tiny bit too warm used on its own.
So I added a strip of 6000K “cool white” and a controller to adjust the proportions of light from the two strips. This controller has three spare channels to use with other layouts or even new general lighting in the room.
The supports are from a pair of very lightweight lighting stands. Time will tell whether they are just a bit too lightweight, but they were cheap enough to cut into pieces and rebuild differently.
I have fixed an offcut of tube into the extension baseboard . . .
. . . and one bracket drops into this.
There is a suitably shorter bracket in the fiddle yard.
The lighting bar is an L-shaped aluminium extrusion with a corner LED profile inside.
There is just enough room to squeeze both tapes into the profile.
The idea is, if the bar gets knocked it will just swing; and its willingness to move will discourage people from hanging coats or indeed themselves on it.
Both brackets adjust vertically by about 100 mm. At the moment, the bar clears my head. The bar is just under two metres long so it will pack into a two-metre drain pipe for transit. So far so good
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Richard Gawler
Western Thunderer
My biggest potential pitfall is going to be not having enough light. There is plenty in the hobby room because the walls and ceiling are white and thay are close to the layout. The rig runs at three-quarters of its maximum brightness here, with some of its light reflecting usefully back onto the layout.
If the layout goes to a show I will lose all of the light reflected from the nearby surfaces. But it is possible to nearly double the output of the rig. The colour temperature dimmer works by running no more than one LED strip at is maximum power. For example, maximum warmth. Changing the temperature knocks back the warmth component while adding the cooler light.
If I need more light, I can run the warm strip at full power and connect only the cool strip to the dimmer. Knowing that the layout always needs more warm light than cool light, this will let me nearly double the intensity of the light.
These LED strips consume up to 8 watts/metre. I am hoping, the aluminium construction of the lighting bar will work as a heat sink, and they will run reasonably cool. There is no ventilation behind the diffuser.
A more useful figure may be that the LED strips are claimed to produce around 700 lumens/metre. I will guess, this is measured at a distance of one metre. With the strips about 0.65 metres above the layout, and light intensity decaying with an inverse square of distance, I am using about 0.65 x 0.65 x 700 = 300 lumens at the ground level on the model. I've spent a while searching for this figure without success so at least it is written down in one place now. This is the figure I will work for next time.
If the layout goes to a show I will lose all of the light reflected from the nearby surfaces. But it is possible to nearly double the output of the rig. The colour temperature dimmer works by running no more than one LED strip at is maximum power. For example, maximum warmth. Changing the temperature knocks back the warmth component while adding the cooler light.
If I need more light, I can run the warm strip at full power and connect only the cool strip to the dimmer. Knowing that the layout always needs more warm light than cool light, this will let me nearly double the intensity of the light.
These LED strips consume up to 8 watts/metre. I am hoping, the aluminium construction of the lighting bar will work as a heat sink, and they will run reasonably cool. There is no ventilation behind the diffuser.
A more useful figure may be that the LED strips are claimed to produce around 700 lumens/metre. I will guess, this is measured at a distance of one metre. With the strips about 0.65 metres above the layout, and light intensity decaying with an inverse square of distance, I am using about 0.65 x 0.65 x 700 = 300 lumens at the ground level on the model. I've spent a while searching for this figure without success so at least it is written down in one place now. This is the figure I will work for next time.
simond
Western Thunderer
Morning, Richard,
I’m not really sure what a lumen looks like, and whilst I understand all the words, I’m not sure Wikipedia is a whole lot of use either.
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
if the output of the led strip is 700 lumens per metre, presumably that is per metre of length, and the light is evenly spread over the semicylinder on the lit side of the strip.
if your led strip is 0.65m from the layout, which is 400mm wide.
At that distance the semicylinder area would be 0.65 pi =~ 2m^2 per metre length
average illuminance would therefore be 700/2 = 350 lux.
I’ve no idea what that looks like either.
I guess there is a way, get an illuminance meter, and then with the curtains open on a sunny day, and with the room lights off at night, and various levels in between, measure at various brightness settings of your dimmer control, and see what seems about right, and then make a note of the settings depending on the ambient light. Lux meters are available from Amazon for just shy of £30, but there is at least half a dozen free iPhone apps, and I guess also for Android.
You could also use a camera light meter, but bearing in mind that the 350lux would only be reflected by the 0.4m depth of your baseboard, plus your backscene height. The rest of the light would be lost, illuminating your legs etc.
Presumably there is a range of brightness from “too dull to see the detail” to “west end theatrical overload”, and presumably there is a range of acceptability which will be very much dependent on the viewer, I know my vision improved when I had my cataract op, but it had been declining slowly from my youth anyway. I certainly need brighter modelling lights now than even five years ago.
I can foresee roving WTers sneaking up to exhibition layouts and measuring their brightness…
atb
Simon
I’m not really sure what a lumen looks like, and whilst I understand all the words, I’m not sure Wikipedia is a whole lot of use either.
Lumen (unit) - Wikipedia
Lux - Wikipedia
if the output of the led strip is 700 lumens per metre, presumably that is per metre of length, and the light is evenly spread over the semicylinder on the lit side of the strip.
if your led strip is 0.65m from the layout, which is 400mm wide.
At that distance the semicylinder area would be 0.65 pi =~ 2m^2 per metre length
average illuminance would therefore be 700/2 = 350 lux.
I’ve no idea what that looks like either.
I guess there is a way, get an illuminance meter, and then with the curtains open on a sunny day, and with the room lights off at night, and various levels in between, measure at various brightness settings of your dimmer control, and see what seems about right, and then make a note of the settings depending on the ambient light. Lux meters are available from Amazon for just shy of £30, but there is at least half a dozen free iPhone apps, and I guess also for Android.
You could also use a camera light meter, but bearing in mind that the 350lux would only be reflected by the 0.4m depth of your baseboard, plus your backscene height. The rest of the light would be lost, illuminating your legs etc.
Presumably there is a range of brightness from “too dull to see the detail” to “west end theatrical overload”, and presumably there is a range of acceptability which will be very much dependent on the viewer, I know my vision improved when I had my cataract op, but it had been declining slowly from my youth anyway. I certainly need brighter modelling lights now than even five years ago.
I can foresee roving WTers sneaking up to exhibition layouts and measuring their brightness…
atb
Simon
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Richard Gawler
Western Thunderer
Barely two hours later the sunshine is rendering the rig meaningless unless I close the blinds!
I think what I should be saying is, given two LED strips to buy rated at 700 and 1,200 lumens/metre, the smaller one is right for my layout 500 mm deep. If my layout was deeper, or I wanted the light bar more than 600 mm above the baseboard, I would go for the larger one.