Two cities layout.

[Mark Dalrymple]

Nice work, Roger.

Nice colours, a good steady hand and some interesting techniques.

I have a pallet based on Troels Kirks DVD also, and use his method for painting the shingles, finding it easy and effective.

Great progress.  I have Lots of these kits to 'bash' as my layout progresses, so am finding your thread very interesting.  Thanks for taking the time to share.

Cheers, Mark.

[S&S RR]

Roger


Great work and techniques. Thank you for sharing them with us.

[Random]

Thanks.  I took this project on to practice a variety of techniques and learn a few new ones. It has certainly filled that bill. 

A bit more progress tonight.   I did some work building up the track and scenery base to the right of the station.  Most of the work is hidden under the books but it's just another layer of foam to raise things up.



And a bit more interesting are some details that got a touch of paint.  The beam will go on top of the stone wall to the right of the station to act as the transition between the bridge span and the ballasted track.

The other bits are the three layers of two fans.  These are from Blair Line and are laser cut from very thin lazerboard.  They will stack up to make two vent fans for the front wall of the yellow building.



The cover grill required a steady hand to poke out the leftover bits of wood in some of the openings but otherwise they were very clean.  They should provide a little more detail than the one piece cast metal vents on George's original. 

That's it for tonight.

Cheers!

[Random]

My cornice pieces are coming together.  I have finished the profile build of two 2 foot long sections.  I wanted to make enough to finish the express building and have a section left over to use as a master for a mold.




The spacing of the major components matches the original but the trim I am using for the major detail is deeper than the original.  As a result the over all cornice is about 3/32 deeper than the original.   I have had to outsource the frame and block details as I do not currently have a cutting machine and do not want to cut them all by a hand.



I am pleased with the overall balance.

[Random]

While I am waiting on the details for the cornice I decided to experiment on the windows.  Adding the window mullions by applying the glazing and then adding short bits into the window opening is tedious and difficult to keep everything aligned.  Someone, I think on this forum, tried applying the mullion behind the glazing as a single strip.  The only issue with this is the glazing covers the mullion and in a foreground model I felt this would be too obvious.  So I decided to try a variation on a theme.

First I painted the mullion strips to match the window trim, which in this case i left as a red that matches the brink.  (Color me lazy but i like the look.)




Next I marked the midpoint of the window openings across the back in pencil and cut a strip of glazing to fit between the marks.  I attached this with thin ACC.




Then I placed a strip of painted mullion against the edge of the glazing and tacked it down with thin ACC.  I then cut another strip of glazing and attached it against the mullion strip with more thing ACC.   The result is the glazing buts up against the mullion rather that sitting in front or behind it.




The only issue now is that small gaps can be left between the glazing and the mullion which might grow larger with expansion of the materials over time.  So I decided to stabilize the materials with a small bead of canopy glue. 





I apply this with a toothpick and then used my finger in an up or down motion to draw it into the gap and remove any excess.




Here is the view from the front while the canopy glue is still setting.




This is after letting the canopy glue dry overnight ad with a dark piece of card placed behind the wall.





I like the effect and installation was relatively easy.


Cheers.

[vinceg]

Looks good, Roger. Nice effect on the windows. I definitely like the clear plastic sheet look better than the Canopy Glue or Micro Krystal Klear effect. And with your windows having no mullions, making panes out of glue isn't really an option.

[postalkarl]

Roger:

Looks great so far. Keeep the pic coming.

karl

[GPdemayo]

What Karl said.....good looking brickwork. 

[Random]

Lots has gone on since I last updated this build.  Grab a beverage and a chair and here we go......


To start things off it was time to start the passenger shelter for the platform.  These are taken from a plastic kit.  I can not recall who made it and the box has gone walk-about.  I trimmed a bit off the end of each arm to narrow them by about 1/16th inch on each end and then glued them into holes drilled into the platform with canopy glue.




I squared the posts, placed the ruler across the top and added a few weights.  This was left to dry overnight.




Next I added a sub-roof made from card stock.  I cut this as a single piece and scored and folded it to match the inverted V of the supports.  There is a surprise hiding under the card stock.  More on that later.




Weights were placed over each support post to ensure that the roof seated properly.  (There is a hint of that surprise here.)




The next day with the glue dry and the weights removed the roof is looking very nice.




The view from below reveals the support beams that run the length of the roof under the card stock.  There are also deeper trim boards that cover the cut off ends of the support post arms.



While this was drying other work progressed elsewhere.

[Random]

Elsewhere on the forum I saw a post about the new cutting machines.   Let me tell you, after a week of back and forth, they are not the beat all end all for every project.  (I do still want one for cutting sigh painting stencils.)  The disaster below was the result of trying to cut the cornice details for the red express building.  This was the third attempt to get them cut. 




After this I went back to the tried and true method of straight edge, pencil, and sharp knife.



I easily spent 4-5 hours going back and forth with the cutting machine. I was working remotely as the machine I was using is out of town with a relative.  Drawing and cutting the details by hand took just under an hour.  Lesson learned.


Here we have two buckets of nicely hand cut detail pieces.




Applied to the cornice strips the details give a look that is very similar to the original kit's.   It took a couple of hours to glue all of the details in place.

[Random]

While the cornices dried I built up the red express building.  I used gel type superglue  to attach the walls.  This was a little interesting as none of the corners are square.




With the building tacked together I cut and fit the cornices.

This is the front.




This is the left side which faces the station.




The narrow wall to the right, away from the station.




I didn't like how the cornice sections came together over the short wall so I decided to rework that section.  I had to add an additional bay to the end of the cornice to extend it. 




The new section over the short wall butted into the back side cornice neatly but on the front side it overlapped a bit.  I added some more detail to the corner to make the two pieces transition together more pleasingly.  This is the stare step of trim right at the corner.




Here is a slightly different view of the cornice after some sanding and blending.




I'm much happier with the look  of the cornice across the front of the building now.






On the left side the side cornice blends into the back of the front section.




And here is a view of the back side that will face the track.




There was a lot of fitting and blending required but the results were worth it.   

[Random]

While I was adding the blending trim to the right side I got frustrated with applying small amounts of canopy glue to the boards with a toothpick (my usual method).  I remembered the bottles I had purchased to add the plaster slurry to blend the stone wall sections on the station.  The tips on these bottles are much more pointed than the canopy glue bottles and allow you to create a much smaller beed of glue.  I transferred a bottle of glue into one of these bottles.   As an added bonus, the cap is attached so you can't lose it on the work bench.

[Random]

Getting back to the build, remember those non-square corners in the express building?  I wanted to reinforce them but square strip wood clearly would not work.  So I used several sizes of dowel to reinforce the corners.  I applied a beed of canopy glue along the dowel where it would contact the side and set it in place.  Once that set I added some more glue to strengthen the joint.

The photo is a bit dark but you can see the dowel in both corners.




This dowel is a bit easier to see.




This corner is close to square but needed some reinforcement at the bottom where this is a gap.  (More on that when I address it.)

I used a larger diameter dowel on this corner.




I also glued the cornice sections together.  Here is the complete cornice lifted and flipped upside down.

[Random]

While all those joints were drying on the express building I turned my attention elsewhere.

I added rolled roofing to the passenger shed. This was done with the same black pastel paper I used to roof the station.  I pulled and blended grays and a little brown from my acrylic pallet to create some color variation.  After they dried I mixed them and pulled randomly.  I used my fingernail to tighten the strips down over the edge of the prior strip.  I added "nail" impressions into the patches with a metal punch.




I also went back to the yellow building and added rafter tails and the fans.

[Random]

Shifting back to the roof of the red express  building, I cut a sheet of 1/8th inch thick basswood to fit inside the cornice.  I added some stiffeners to the underside across the grain to keep it from sagging.  I then glued it inside the cornice. 




I flipped the roof over and settled the inset down on the stiffeners to make it level within the cornice.  I also added a small bead of glue around the edges to seal that joint.



The completed roof and cornice looks good.



I would love to prime and paint the cornice and roof but it has been raining for a week and I can not paint outside or vent my spray boot while its raining (the booth's vent is temporary and fits into an opened window.  Its bound to stop raining eventually.