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

[Bill Gill]

Terrific work, Volker. Everything is most realistic.

The slate sidewalk in front of the Main Street buildings on my layout is 0.01 inch styrene .
To create the look of the very thin layers of slate I pressed a single edge razorblade perpendicular to the face of the styrene and gently twisted it so that it 'chattered' leaving very thin lines. Some squares were broken and the separate pieces either slightly raised or lowered.

[Hydrostat]

Bill,

your slate sidewalk is absolutely spot on! I like the decent layering and the color a lot. Slate for me is the most fascinating kind of stone with a huge variety in color and overall appearance.
I'm from a neighbouring former slate mining area (called 'Hunsrück') and spent a lot of time exploring abandoned mines in my youth. There were a few good deposits but mostly there were rather small mines producing for the very local market, often delivering slate of poor quality. Slate was mostly used for roofing and walls and a lot of the Hunsrück roofs show decaying slate, which is rather bright grey with a variety of iron oxide stains.

I even wrote my art diploma about concepts for converting a back then closing down slate mine in Lehesten, which is situated in Thuringia. It was the biggest slate mine on the European Mainland with ecceptional quality material. And compared to the Welsh mines it still wasn't that huge!

Howsoever I don't remember seeing slate used for walks in public areas, this seems to have been rather seldom. Unfortunately here in Germany a lot of streets and sidewalks made from natural materials have been tared over or replaced with concrete plates, which was the case at the Lohmann building, too: Early pictures show a small stone cobbling.

I cut the Forex/Sintra at plate dimensios on my Kaleas saw, sand the edges a bit and then press the plates within the vice against some coarse sandpaper to give texture to the surface. Only very few plates have some cracks due to they've been in place there for not too long time. Next step is colouring with a somewhat concretish grey tone. When dry i let neavily diluted black/brown/ochre and opaque white layers of color spread on the surface. The pigments tend to fill dents or accumulate in some areas which brings an individual appearance to each plate. Filling the joints with stone dust and wiping it a bit over the plates' surface unifies overall appearence.

The corner of the building at Wilhelmstrasse (or Maiplatz) / Umlauf was protected with a massive stone wheel guard.



I milled and sanded this from glued together Forex/Sintra scraps; that should be self-explanatory.









The this way preforme item received a multi-layer coating of stone powder and latex binder, which then was sanded and colored to petrify it. I'm lacking snakes on my head so this detour was indispensable.



I had to cut something out of the building so that I could place and plaster it in place in the same way as the original. For that I covered it with a layer of adhesive tape so that I could remove it again to sand it flush with the facade. You can't see that in the following photo, though.



There we go.



For me it was a great moment to install the walkway, because only now - after ten years - did the building receive the actual ground level and suddenly looked much more like its original and, for me, familiar and "right" in view of the many original photos.

Cheers
Volker

[Bill Gill]

Volker, Your wheel guard is a nice detail. It's shape reminds me of a Keystone Kop's helmet (1912-1917 slapstick movie comedy).


The narrow walkway, is that because the street is also very narrow?

[Bernhard]

You show incredible perseverance to realize all these details. Do you actually count the hours you work on your projects?

Bernhard

[Hydrostat]

Volker, Your wheel guard is a nice detail. It's shape reminds me of a Keystone Kop's helmet (1912-1917 slapstick movie comedy).

Yessss, it does 

The narrow walkway, is that because the street is also very narrow?

The building wasn't parallel with the street. At the wider end it has 1 m (39.4'') and at the narrow one 60 cm (23.6''). I guess in the beginning about 1880 there wasn't a sidewalk at all.

You show incredible perseverance to realize all these details. Do you actually count the hours you work on your projects?

Bernhard

No, I don't. It doesn't have any reference value for me.

Cheers,
Volker

[finescalerr]

Acceptable. Please continue to make progress. -- Russ

[Ray Dunakin]

Magnificent! I especially love the detail in the sign brackets. By the way, what is the meaning of the red and white sign?

[Hydrostat]

Ray, thank you.

By the way, what is the meaning of the red and white sign?

This was the former german sign for priority roads until 1971.

Cheers,
Volker

[Hydrostat]

Hello everyone,

I have recently been dealing with the not very popular topic of electricity. The house has four floors, including the basement and attic, which, with a few exceptions, have separately switchable light sources in the individual rooms. Since the first floor (floor and walls) and the attic can be removed for maintenance purposes, a solution that is easy to disconnect electrically but protected against reverse polarity was also needed.

Since I want to control the lighting digitally later via an OC32, I installed the required number of D-Sub connectors under the basement plate, which are assigned according to the circuit diagram. In addition to numerous 0603 LEDs, there are also micro bulbs with 1.5 volts, LED light bars with 12 volts, light bars with 3 volts and a motor for the garage door drive with 6 volts. No good idea to get them mixed up.




The cables for the ceiling lights on the ground floor are laid in the ceiling (= floor plate on the 1st floor), and there are pin strip sockets in both chimneys into which the cables are plugged. In order to get a separable power supply in the ceiling plate on the 1st floor (= floor plate on the roof structure), I soldered a pluggable conductor track, which in turn supplies the pin strip sockets for the ceiling lights on the 1st floor.






As the building was already on its side, I paid some attention to the basement, which had only been rudimentarily painted so far. In addition to plastered walls, it was given basement lighting, which is faintly visible through the two basement windows or the open coal chute hatch.






The plug-in cellar lamps are made from some Plexiglas, a piece of aluminum tube that was later painted white, an LED and a printed light bulb. The LED and the socket of the "bulb" were colored to make them light-tight.




With the base plate closed, it now looks like this:




And what's the point of all this?




Cheers,
Volker

[Lawrence@NZFinescale]

Fantastic as always.

Based on my recent experience I would have looked at using an Arduino and the I2C bus to reduce the wiring. Hardware control and  wiring easily sorted but software control and user interface might be more work.

[finescalerr]

Too much trouble. I'd have used a flashlight .... -- ssuR

[Krusty]

That last photo is beautifully atmospheric.

[1-32]

Hi Volker .
It is always a plesure to see your creations, now that the lighting system is bring installed it is even more startling.
cheers Kim

[Bill Gill]

Volker, I like the effect.

[nk]

That is a great photo of the coal hole. I didn't see the black cat, but I bet you are working on it.