Locomotive Works

[MrBrownstone]

Great Project... Michael,

I like the Gate... It is very unique not to mention very impressive

Looking forward to seeing more as you progress... Love it!

thanks for sharing it with us.

Mike

[michael mott]

This project has been recently salvaged from a cold and damp storage situation and is undergoing extensive rebuilding.



Because of the damage the sandstone building was chopped and will be reconfigured and a new building has been inserted and a new track plan organized.



The new track has been sunk into the landscape by adding layers of card and watercolour paper, the surface was then given a light coat of commercial latex house paint, and then the scribble of Rembrandt pastels, I had some difficulty staying between the lines.



After blending with a soft rag I wend back over selected areas with pure white Conte crayon and did spot blending.



The surface need a lot more work but it is good to be playing again.



Michael

[Malachi Constant]

Glad to see you back at this!  Dig that last shot ... nice job of sinking the rails.  -- Dallas

[Ray Dunakin]

Very nice! The blended pastels over latex paint looks surprisingly good.

[finescalerr]

YES!! -- Russ

[michael mott]

Dallas, thanks, there are those here that will be giving me some schick for not filling in the spaces between the ties, and I must admit that it does need to be done.

Ray thanks yes pastels work fairly well, I need to do more experiments with fixatives.

Russ thanks, The buildings are pretty much all paper and card, a bit if wood and glass thrown in for good measure.

I am still sorting out the new building and its connections to the old sandstone one, which still needs a lot of work, and the bridge to the shortened asbestos corrugated one. we wont even discuss the brickwork at this time.... way too much work to do on on those facades! I did not like the rather flat surface of the new arched building so an toying with the idea of setting back the left hand side set of windows, to break up the surface a little.

I had a problem with the spray adhesive lifting at the rail edge, so I cut out the offending section with a number 11 and replaced them after spreading some carpenters glue over the  card and underside of the watercolour paper. I cut the paper to represent some fractured concrete, still more work there as well.





Plonking the buildings back down to get a better feel for all the coming work needed on the ground.



I took this opportunity to also move the tree off the upper level and thought that it would be better growing along side the paving. and changed the stone wall as well. I can see that there will be a ton of work there to bring it up to the standards that are required to pass muster on this site.

Michael

[Hydrostat]

Hi Michael,

very nice work! The sandstone you've done looks very realistic. The street has a nice texture too and I like the standard gauge track disappearing in grass and dirt. If I may criticize one point at your latest work: the tracks should either represent grooved rails or if not the street's surface should be sloped towards the rails at the flangeways - with a lot of chipped nooks. For my opinion the narrow gauge trackwork looks anyway far to evenly and neat for industrial trackage because of the standard model tracks you used.

Regards
Volker

[michael mott]

represent grooved rails or if not the street's surface should be sloped towards the rails at the flangeways

Volker thanks for your observations, yes I agree with you about the look of the being too clean and toy like. Can you point me to some images of what you describe about the sloping toward the flangeways.

Michael

[michael mott]

Volker no need now that I have visited your work on the "test Module" I think I made as much noise as Andi falling over. you have not made my life any easier, Now I have to take up knitting, again.

I'm going to go sit in the corner now and suck my thumb.

All that said, brilliant work on your street Volker, That is a very high bar, I'm going to need a 20 foot ladder to reach that high.

Michael

[Hydrostat]

Thank you very much, Michael - but please don't hide your light under a bushel. Unfortunately I can't change the "not to scale" brass rails anymore ... But you can improve your trackage a bit. I thought of something like that:



Those rails are mounted in concrete. Any sharp edges at the flangeways would breake when trafficked with heavy equipment so they sloped it towards the rail. You can see how worn wheels even affected the concrete at the rail's outside. The flanges of worn wheels scratch on the flangeway part of the concrete, esp. in curves.

By the way - I didn't get exactly how you made your brickwork. Did you glue the complete printed sheet or just one horizontal strip of bricks and then cut out the vertical joints? How did you avoid glue to blur into the joints area?

Volker 

[michael mott]

Volker, Thank you for your thoughts and for the picture, your observation re the concrete is one that I thing I might be able to address. I will revisit the material between the rails with some dampened watercolour paper to shape it I will do some tests when I get back from the town I have to go and collect some water for our cistern, 250 gallons, we do not have a well here where we live and there is no water supply locally.

michael   

[michael mott]

Got back from the water expedition, wow a balmy 9 degrees Celsius... its a heatwave!

first step of the test was to rip out the centre section of the bit of track through the gate. Straight and easy.

then to glue down with 5 minute epoxy a new strip of scrap card 1.2mm thick. the 140lb watercolour paper is .5mm thick The rail is code 75 Peco fine scale 16.5mm gauge to represent 15 inch gauge approximately



I soaked the watercolour paper for a few minutes in cold water.



Then domed the paper to be sprung between the rails and squashed down the centre by running my finger up and down.



Now I will wait for it to dry , I was tempted to use the hot air gun but decided to let it dray naturally.
So we will see how this pans out.

Michael 

[Hydrostat]

This is the right direction, but now looks a bit like a hill between the rails. Not sure if it's just because of the picture. Please try it with a wider strip glued between the rails to get the flangeway as narrow as possible. Maybe it can extend to the rail shoes depending on the wheelsets you use. The small remaining slant should then have some 45 angular degree.

Hope not to be offending ...

Volker

[Andi Little]

Teaching my Grandmother to suck eggs here I know! - but of course you could give your new paper strip a coat of thinned PVA to make it a far tougher piece of engineering.
More importantly though I do happen to agree with Volker - it does look contrived, or will when you've done the whole shebang!
For what it's worth I think you might for expediency's sake be as well to run around those edges with a bloody sharp chisel and just trim them to 45°. And I think the roughness and inconsistency of the cut when back filled with a bit of plop will render the hewn and damaged edges pretty well?
- Dang sight quicker too.

[michael mott]

Volker, thanks for your feedback. Yes I agree it is the right direction and that the hill needs to be flattened.

Andi, being a stubborn old fart I will do more experiments before resorting to the squidgy filling of any of the wide range of fillers from plaster to auto body putty.

So I pulled the strip out and tossed it back into the water and cut a new wider strip of the 1.2mm card 12 mm wide and placed it between the rails without gluing it down then put the strip of watercolour back and used one of my sculpy forming tools to seat the edges into the small gap either side of the card underneath. I placed a strip of styrene plastic on top and weighted it down with some heavy blocks of metal.

And waited for it to dry, I was impressed with how well the first placement held in, so thought that after the next test dries it ought to be quite well fixed



even these rather coarse OO wheels roll well enough.



So now to play with the chalks again and a few spots painted with some isopropol Alcohol it is looking better but still a way to go yet.





The next test will have to be on a curve.

Michael