Designing a shadowbox diorama

[EZnKY]

You're right Russ - it has been years.  I follow the happenings here every day, but my time in the modeling shop has been very limited for some time.  I'm caring for both of my parents - one with Alzheimer's and the other following a really bad stroke - and my day job is really demanding.  (My business partner is getting ready to retire and I'm going to have 19 other architects to keep busy.)

My most recent projects have all been little tests to try out new painting and weathering techniques.  My finishing skills lag far behind my fabrication skills...

[Peter_T1958]

The floor color seems to be rather dark and the round edged cracks right side from the track to me look a bit like like tar or mastic asphalt?
Cheers, Volker

I do not know anything about the subject matter. But I took a glimpse at Barking Bills flickr « British Railways Engine Sheds 1948 to 1994 group ».
I know, te subject is a very British one, but nevertheless there are interesting pictures.

Here it seems that concrete floors were common, but rather in the Diesel age. Earlier there seems to be a cobblestone floor with some sort of asphalt over it (and a lot of dirt and soot of course).

I found a similar shed picture from the narrow-gauge railway in my hometown. Interestingly, here too it seems the same arrangement.

[Lawton Maner]

     Back when I was a child, the USPS central sorting center in Richmond, Va replaced a floor which was made from end grain maple wood blocks with one made from concrete.  For years the floor endured fork lift trucks and metal wheeled trailers moving over it 7 days a week and in most places didn't show much wear. 

     My Father and I moved a number of loads of the old floor to our house to be use as firewood.  The end grain of wood is one of the toughest and most forgiving wood floor I know of.  In the later parts of the 19th century wooden floors of this type were quite common because they were tough, long wearing, and easier on the feet then brick or concrete.   

[finescalerr]

Lawton, was the floor made up of blocks then? -- Russ

[Hauk]

The floor color seems to be rather dark and the round edged cracks right side from the track to me look a bit like like tar or mastic asphalt?
Cheers, Volker

I do not know anything about the subject matter. But I took a glimpse at Barking Bills flickr « British Railways Engine Sheds 1948 to 1994 group ».
I know, te subject is a very British one, but nevertheless there are interesting pictures.

Here it seems that concrete floors were common, but rather in the Diesel age. Earlier there seems to be a cobblestone floor with some sort of asphalt over it (and a lot of dirt and soot of course).

Thanks for an interesting link! Lots of inspirational photos.

[Lawton Maner]

Russ:
The blocks were end grain maple about 3"x4" and 5" thick.  They were joined together in long rows by wood strapping on one side which interlocked into a dado on the matching edge of the next row.  Bottom was set in tar and as I remember the blocks burned quite well in the fireplace over several winters.

[Hauk]

For the moment I have tired of the floor. The material I chose for the floor is turning out to be a bad choice. For some reason it does not harden properly, and I fear I have to chisel it away and start over. But I will wait a couple of days more to see if it might be OK after all.

Meanwhile I have turned my attention to the big wheel lathe. A while back drawings turned up on my favourite research resource, Digital Museum. Here is a detail from the blueprint:



So now there is no excuse for making a detailed model of the thing! Work has just begun on the drawings for the 3D prints.

Digital Museum also have a Swedish site that might be even better than the Norwegian one, as far more of the picturers are free to use under the CC licensing. So a lot of the pictures are available in high resolution versions.  The machine shop pictures on page 4 of this thread is taken from DM Sweden. If you are looking for som exotic prototypes check it out. Here is a random sample:

[WP Rayner]

The Digital Museum site is a great resource... thanks for the link Hauk. Would love to see a lot more sites of that quality online. The US Library of Congress has an online version of the HABS/HAER https://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/hh/ archive (Historic American Buildings Survey/Historic American Engineering Record) which can provide a lot of excellent photographs, documentation, and drawings.

[Bernhard]

Very interesting site Hauk, thanks for the link. I am already curious about the model of the lathe.

Bernhard

[Hauk]

For better of worse, the concrete has now been poured, and this is what it looks like before weathering:





It is by no means perfect, but it will have to do.

As for the prototype really having a concrete floor, I decided to allow for some artistic licence. I think most people will accept a concrete floor without second thought, but a stamped earth or asphalt one would rise questions and need a lot of explaining. And as the color would be speculation, I decided not to go that route.

Time to move on!

[Ray Dunakin]

Looks good to me.

[WP Rayner]

As for the prototype really having a concrete floor, I decided to allow for some artistic licence. I think most people will accept a concrete floor without second thought, but a stamped earth or asphalt one would rise questions and need a lot of explaining. And as the color would be speculation, I decided not to go that route.

That makes sense Hauk and I think it looks better than the original test, perhaps it was just the angle of the lighting in the earlier shot. Once the equipment is in place and the floor is weathered, cluttered up a bit, it will look totally believable.

[Hauk]

That makes sense Hauk and I think it looks better than the original test, perhaps it was just the angle of the lighting in the earlier shot. Once the equipment is in place and the floor is weathered, cluttered up a bit, it will look totally believable.

Thats excactly what I am hoping for!

This exercise taught me an important lesson, by the way:
When testing techniques, make sure that the test is scalable. I made a lot of tests for the floor that I was very happy with, only to discover that it was impossible to use the methods for the entire floor. For example, the first test I made (Shown earlier in the thread) was casting a small section upside down against a glass plate. But with the trrack, lower area between the rails  and the service pit, I should have  understood that this was a dead end.

[finescalerr]

To maintain the intent of Håvard's thread, I moved the discussion about posting links and upgrading our software to the Blue Note Room. I moved Barney's post about using webresizer.com to General Forums > How To Include Images In Posts. -- Russ

[Hauk]

No actual modelling progress this weekend as me and the missus took a trip out of town to visit family. But fortunately I did a find this weekend as well. Peering through the window of a local industrial museum (closed due to you know what) I was able to get this shot of a boiler room with a wonderfully old floor complete with inlaid tracks!