Shadowlands and Tellynott

[Mark Dalrymple]

Thanks very much Dennis, Jerry, Gregory and Rusty - your comments and continued support is much appreciated.

I'm thinking my wife must be watching you all comment.  Yesterday she said 'nice brickwork - that's a different colour to what you usually use'.  Most observant of her!

Rusty - I'm not quite sure what you mean by 'half painted'.  They are kind of both half painted.  The brown brick structure is out of production and was made by Magnuson.  It is called the Fountain Brewery.  The DPM kit is the main wall from the Seymour building.

I've continued to potter away and picking out the details on the Fountain Brewery and yesterday made up a sign for the side wall.  Where this structure sits it will have a kit-bash of FOS boxing gym in front, so only the top half of the wall will be fully seen.  I also always intended to have an aerial walkway from the back of this structure going across the road and joining into the Edmonds Bakery timber low relief structure against the back wall.  Hence the nature of the sign.  'Sure to rise' is a famous phrase in NZ synonymous with Edmonds.  The sign still needs a spray of Dullcote, grouting and some weathering.  I will also make up a sign to go over the Fountain Brewery sign.

More soon, cheers, Mark.

[S&S RR]

Mark


The brick and the sign look great. Very nice work.

[PRR Modeler]

Everything looks great.

[Keep It Rusty]

Rusty - I'm not quite sure what you mean by 'half painted'.  They are kind of both half painted.  The brown brick structure is out of production and was made by Magnuson.  It is called the Fountain Brewery.  The DPM kit is the main wall from the Seymour building.

Ah, yes. The brewery kit! That's the one. Thanks Mark.

[Mark Dalrymple]

Hi guys.

Well - after a hour or so of picking out details on the brewery kit, I felt like a break.  So I thought I might go back and carry on with one of those parts of the hobby I feel I might have something to contribute.  From the brief list I made back on page 5 I chose this one to tackle:

Another is to discuss mock-ups within composition and how important I find these within the big picture, and highlighting this with how the displaying of two large dioramas on a table for a visitor to show how they would look when placed together on the layout led to some major redesign work and the removal of several square feet of layout bench-work in order to make the scene appear bigger.

So - one of the things I always try to do is to know what will be going next to the diorama I am working on. This is why I try to have things mocked-up, at least with 3-D shapes.

Photo 1 - After finishing this structure at the front corner of my corner diorama I discovered that the leading line created by the zigzagging roof-line of Roslyn's Manufacturing was too strong to be hidden from view by a raised gridded city block with underground station as first intended.  This is the sort of thing that I struggle to see on paper, but was blatantly obvious to me in 3-D.

Photo 2 - the next big chunk takes shape - using Lyttelton as inspiration including a section of roading photocopied and cut from a map (see page 2) I designed and created a new section to work in harmony with the corner diorama.

Photo 3 - making sure the leading lines aren't blocked.  The new road and river are placed as to keep the new vista open.  The road curves out towards the viewer to give a wider vista.

Photo 4 - If you plan well, many elements of design can improve the finished product.  Alleyways create a 'glimpses' and increase the depth of field.  Buildings at the front of the scene are deliberately kept low.  Favourite scenes are then still visible but greater texture is achieved.  You can also see here how photocopied buildings and even crude MDF mock-ups enable visualization of the entire scene.  Leading lines take your eyes deeper into the scene via chimneys and stacks, roof lines, trees etc. as well as track, roads and rivers.  Its good at this stage to spend time trying to note how your eye moves around the scene.  In this way you can find dead spots where your eye needs to jump a long way and make changes to help smooth things out.  Its also good to frame a square box with your fingers to view through.

Photo 5 - The two dioramas were set up on a table in the garage for a visitor from Australia (Mario) to best display both what I had been working on and what my intent was.  During this process I noted the incredible depth of field when looking at the scene longways from right to left.  It also dawned on me that this view would not be possible with my current design.  I felt this depth of field was so powerful that another drastic redesign including cutting away several square feet of my layout was imperative.  Again - setting these two chunks up complete with 3-D mock-ups lets you see what you can't see on paper.  This change was pretty major, including adding a whole new main L-girder bearer to support the new layout shape, but I consider the work minor when compared to the improvement it has made.

Photo 6 - A gap for the view.  Several changes have been made to the original plan.  The engine facilities were moved and one yard track has been omitted to give room for a gap big enough to stand in and view the longitudinal scene.  The overall width was also reduced to give better access to trackwork and the car ferry has been eliminated.  The trackwork has also been simplified.  I really do feel that this reduction of several square feet of real estate made the layout appear much bigger.

More soon, cheers, Mark.

[Mark Dalrymple]

Hi guys.

Thanks John and Curt.

OK - today I finished off picking out all the details and then went back around cleaning up and slips with the brown mix.  I then started on the grouting with white soft pastel chalk.

Photo's 1&2 - show he side and back gable walls of the structure with the trim painted and the walls grouted.

More soon, cheers, Mark.

[postalkarl]

Hey Mark:

I love that top photo. What A beautiful scene. The structures are just gorgeous.

Karl

[restocarp]

Hey Mark:

I love that top photo. What A beautiful scene. The structures are just gorgeous.

Karl

Mark,

I agree with Karl. This scene is both wonderful and inspirational. Thanks for sharing!

Matt

[Oldguy]

Good looking building.

[Keep It Rusty]

Excellent work Mark. The paint job on that Magnuson is inspiring.

[Mark Dalrymple]

Hi guys.

I love that top photo. What A beautiful scene. The structures are just gorgeous.

Thanks so much for your lovely compliment, Karl!

Thanks you also to Matt, Bob and Rusty, I'm pleased you like the walls of the Magnuson kit.  The larger brick takes the chalk very nicely, and, as hoped, blended everything together.

I got the last of the mortar on this morning.

Photo 1 - shows one of the gable walls as I apply the chalk.  I scrape the chalk straight on to the wall (bottom half) and work it in with a soft round brush (top half).  I then use the oils on my fingers to further work it in and use a small brush to remove excess.  I then spray lightly with a pastel fixative.  I sometimes go over certain areas repeating this process.

Photos 2&3 - show a front and angled view.

As an aside, I noticed that the bottom far right window on the central front wall had no window frame on the left side.  I cut a piece of strip styrene and glued into position before adding the mullion.  I'm guessing this was an error in the master and I wonder just how many models there are on peoples layouts with this window frame missing!

More soon, cheers, Mark.

[PRR Modeler]

Looks awesome Mark.

[postalkarl]

Hey Mark:

Looks just great so far.

Karl

[Jerry]

You sure knowhow to put a scene together.  Beautiful work.


Jerry

[Mark Dalrymple]

Hi guys.

Thanks very much, Curt, Karl and Jerry!

Jerry - I get a lot of satisfaction from designing my scenes.  I do also always put a lot of work into this stage.

As I've been working on my design for my Tickner's watchworks (hopefully in the mail from the states) I wanted to get the structure next to this a bit more firmed in.  It had been my intention to scratch-build something out of timber.  I'd gone as far as to cut out some basic shapes in extruded polystyrene and pin them together with nails.  I liked the shapes I had created and wanted to keep the design fairly close to this.

Photo 1 - shows the site shape.  There is a rail line in front of the pencil outline, a road to the back starting at 4 3/4" to the left and rising to 6 1/2" to the right.  Another road crosses the railway track at left and rises from rail height to 1/2" at the left end of the pencil outline.  This road then goes under the other road, curves around past my City Classics/ M T Arms kitbash, passes back under the other road, and then passes the side of the building site going off shot on my drawing in the top right corner on about a 45degree angle from left to right (passed the '90' - my metric measurement).  At this point that road is approximately 3 1/2" in height.

Photo 2 - shows the extruded polystyrene mock-up in all its white glory.

I was having trouble with window placement, trying a few sketches (like the one on the plan), when I suddenly had a thought to try one of the brewery walls against the poly mock-up.  Both my Scale Structures and Magnuson boxes were sitting on the table next to me.  I held a gable wall in place and found it to be the right height, the right pitch and only slightly narrower.  Further consideration led me to the realization that because I had indevoured to keep a 'likeness' to the front walls of my last kit-bash with this kit, I had left myself mainly with the square topped windows, which have a very different feel to the arch topped windows I used in the previous bash.

So - I collected together the walls, headed upstairs to the scanner, scanned them off and then printed off a couple of copies of each.  Next I went on a scrap cardboard search and then sat down for the morning designing using the kit walls and building a new 3-D mock-up.

Photo 3 shows an aerial view of the new cardboard mock-up coming together.  I did get a question from my wife in the kitchen at this stage "what happened to your cereal box?"

As I worked through this process I wondered about incorporating in my design the top right section on the plan facing the street that has curved past the City Classics/ M T Arms hotel kit-bash.  I had mocked up a City Classsic's iron front for this position, but thought if I could make it look right, an addition to this kit-bash would be more logical.  I tried a version with and without the walkover between the two protruding sections of the wall.  In the end I decided I liked it better in, as it helped change up the look of the structure from my previous kit-bash, and it helped disguise that the two walls were identical.

Photo 4 - shows the mock-up without the walk over.  You can see my angled addition in the top right corner.  I might look at cutting a section out between the bottom windows and the freight door to get road access for loading here.  This should also give you an idea of the lay of the land I envisage.

Photo 5 - shows the mock-up with the walkover.

More soon, cheers, Mark.