A snapshot in time. A glimpse of the Plettenberger Kleinbahn in 1/22.5 scale.

[Hydrostat]

I'm going to have shot my bolt for the present.

After a lot of unsuccessful attempts with different materials l found that quick cement was the best material to cast the curbs for the base. And to represent concrete.



I made a master form from multiple layers of cardstock, which was drenched with CA and then filed/sanded to shape.



Some dentist's impression material served to make a mold.



With the quick cement the amount of bubbles remains in a tolerable size and magnitude. Lacking a vacuum system this works by far better than plaster.



The cobbled areas were made from Molto Holz Fein Spachtel mixed with some melaphyre grain and dust for the white area and additional reddish/brownish pigments for the red ones. Stones are embossed with a small screwdriver. This results in a rounded stone surface, which I didn't want. To achieve the look of small, mostly edgy stones at cobbled sidewalks I sanded down the surface with a disk sander. The material is quite firm after it has dried completely. More melaphyre dust served to fill the gaps, which then were treated with several washes of white, black, brown and green gouache. There's some greenery to come ...



Cheers,
Volker

[finescalerr]

The depth of your knowledge, skill, and ability to work with every possible material never ceases to impress me. -- Russ

[Ray Dunakin]

Great job, really looks good!

[Peter_T1958]

A brief comparison with some original cobblestone: It matches perfect!



, Peter

[Hydrostat]

Well, nearly. I rather thought of that size



and color.




Volker

[Bill Gill]

Your curb and cobbles look very good. What is the Molto Holz Fein Spachtel composed of? You must have done some additional sanding or something after using the disc sander because the top surfaces of the cobbles are realistically canted at slightly different angles and depths. Very nice.

[Hydrostat]

Bill, I don't know about the ingredients, but I'd love to. For sure there's some water soluble acrylic binder involved, but I don't know about the filler material. It is thought to be used for small, fine repairs of scratches at even wooden surfaces. I didn't do use anything else but the Dremel disk sander, changing it's position a bit during the process. The visible steps result from first making the white and then the reddish parts.

Volker

[Hydrostat]

Added some grass. It is sisal rope. I'm not to sure about the result. Fibres may be a bit coarse? The second hassock from left needs some touchup to bend down the fibres abit more at the sides.



Cheers,
Volker

[Bill Gill]

The grass looks really good to me, in fact it looks like some of the few green areas in my yard.

[Ray Dunakin]

Looks great to me, very authentic!

[finescalerr]

It depends on what you have in mind. The foliage you created looks excellent but maybe you were thinking about something with a finer texture. If you were, forget about it and stick with what you built! -- Russ

[Hydrostat]

There was a building nearby the railway bridge over Oester brook: 'Haus Lohmann'. The building has long gone, even the railway lasted a few years longer than this. Fortunately there are some meaningful pictures and even some plans from a conversion dating back to 1909 preserved, when it was changed to a watchmaker and jewelry shop.



(Picture: Albert Middelmann 10/1941; W. D. Groote collection)


Please note the lower part of the lamp visible left hand; it's the one I'd shown before. During some kind of modeling lockout a CAD drawing was the first approach to the building, which is quite interesting for it's annex and the sloped wall alongside the brook.














Let's talk about transition from virtual reality to, um, real reality. A good item for that is a door. There ares some of them in such a masonry.











The doors are made from lasered paper, cardboard and MDF. Dark brown parts are 0.5 mm cardboard, bright brown ones 1.5 mm MDF and the yellowish ones 0.15 mm (180g/m²) paper. Those are all parts required for one door and I need some 20 of them.





The layers differ a whiff (some 0.5 mm) to create the door leafs' elevation; this is for a partially paned door. The longitudinal cutout is going to be filled with 0.5 mm steel rods.





Note the tiny cutout in the middle layer which later on serves to position the hinges.





Some aluminum parts served to align and fix the parts for glueing with very thin ca. I found out that it doesn't matter if there's some ca running into the gap between paper and metal; it doesn't really stick to aluminum and so paper is removable without destruction, if that happens. The point is to have the paper layers' edges protruding from the aluminum material while compressing it the same time.














Door handles, hinges and lock bolts are 3D printed (the latter missing in the following picture). The hinges do work by inserting some 0.3 mm steel wire. I designed them with two holes, one for the hinge bolt and one to fix it to the above mentioned cutouts in the door blades and doorframes sides.  Most doors won't be in working order, of course, but doors, being closed forever, are a sad thing, aren't they?





The door and shop windows had some ornament. I'll have some smaller parts 3D printed, but for the entrance door I used ps panel and cutter quartered tubing of different diameter to create the profiles, all from the junk box.










Cheers,
Volker

[Hauk]

Great work as usual!
Those doors look perfect. And the windows are coming along nicely. But I guess you already knew that! A pleasure to follow your work.

[finescalerr]

Disgustingly perfect. Nobody could do better. -- Russ

[Ray Dunakin]

Fantastic work! Really love the amount of detail in those doors.