It had to happen...

Not good 3D printing...that was obvious.  But my ready acceptance of it when I finally saw good stuff, done by a hobbyist, affordably.

I went to the Christmas bash of KLOGGIES, the King's Lynn O Gauge Group people, only to collect an old book from Bob Pearman, who was selling a lot of books for the widow of an ex member.  The list had been published and I spotted Miniature Landscape Construction by John H. Aherne.  I have his other two minimum opii, Building and Locomotive, but had missed out on the third all these years.

So I get to the Social Club at Runcton Holme and the place is jumping. I got the last space in the car park.  I knew they were having a dinner later, but I didn't expect a mini exhibition!  There were dealers, shops, various emporia and displays.   One display had a couple of Wisbech & Upwell tram engine bodies on the table.  I looked at the 7mm, guessing this would be 3D printing and sure enough, though the detailing was excellent and very complete, the finish was the usual spotty, dotty powdery rubbish demanding so much clean up you could scratchbuild it from nickel silver just as quick.  Shame, it really was nicely modelled.  But then the friendly young chap showed me the 4mm version.
To say I was blown clean away is an understatement.  It was done by the original system of resin, laser hardened, layer by layer.  This technique was demonstrated to me years ago, decades in fact, on the very machine that the BBC used on their programme, Tommorrow's World.  Stereo Lithography they called it.  Before 3D printing was even dreamed of and here it was, (isn't justice wonderful?), being used to superb effect in a rigid Acrylic material with every rivet on every hinge of every inspection hatch on the side skirts. In 4mm scale, smooth as a baby's bum showing up conventional 3D printing for the messy con that it still is uness you re-mortgage your house.

"Of course", said I to the chap, "you were trained by your company in CAD".  No, he said, got it off Youtube.  What!!  I can't bear to listen to all the boring turds telling the world how it works on that channel, but he learned how to use something called Blender to the extent that here were models missing absolutely nothing, better than any I've ever seen AND needing no more clean up than you could do in 5 minutes with a thumb of wet'n'dry, in a lovely hard, smooth material.  Clearly this was not a young man who would consider for one moment paying more than necessary for his hobby, so here was the confirmation that time was short for conventional modelmaking.  If the 7mm had been done by the same method as the 4mm, I'd have bought it from him straight away.

I might have a few customers left, but if just one young blade like this one decides to do cars, I am finished and so is every other modelmaker.

It had to happen...

Fancy Tools?....come on, guys...

A recent post on a blog I look at was going on about sanding sticks.  Now, I have seen these mentioned so often on forums, especially those where plastic kits are the main subject matter.  People sanding back new shapes from gouts of fillers, usually entirely unsuitable fillers, too.
Now come on chaps, man up a bit, eh?  Use files!  For Heaven's sake that's what they're for. Removing stuff you don't want. And the main thing is that being hard and generally flat they are completely controllable.  THEN, if you've cocked up a bit and who doesn't, sand the scratches off with a bit of wet'n'dry held in your thumb and forefinger (very controllable) or if you must be a bit finicky, stick some to a bit of styrene, cut to a shape to suit you.  It costs nothing, rather than a Fiver a pack from Albion Alloys!  If you don't want to invest in files, get some of those file shaped things with diamond dust all over them from Lidl's for a few quid a pack. They're very good on plastic as there's no pattern of toothing for the plastic to steer where you don't want it, which can happen to files, even fine ones if you're not concentrating like you should be.

And if you need to fill anything, get some Milliput in there if it's a biggish gaff.  Otherwise use a filler in a tube which is similar to cellulose putty. Perfect for all scratches.  I nicked some from Volkswagen's when I worked there in 1997 and I still use it. And please, don't use that ghastly white stuff. Yellow-Green Milli is all you'll ever need. It polishes to a glass-like finish for vac-form patterns so why do you want to pay more for the stuff that never goes off properly and chalks in your fingers?

And for plastic kits, guys, that is all you'll ever need. No fancy, pricey, trendy, forum led tosh, just good honest stuff you can either get for pennies or make yourself. The only other thing you need is a bit of acquired skill, experience (always helps) and common sense.  Not even patience. I have none whatsoever, which is why I don't torture myself with kits.

Caravanserai...

I can't remember who it was had the album of that name but it always rolled nicely off the tongue.
I also was and still am a huge fan of the band Caravan AND I've lived in three over the years, so I have a bit of a soft spot for them.
So when the idea of using a caravan as an extension to the rather small cafe I've made for Lantern Yard I was keen. I started to have a look online at suitable styles, then recalled making a really old fashioned style job for a "critter" in O9.  Never finished it though, but I liked it. It had an Austin 7 Ruby grille on the front and a verticle exhaust.

  Easily pried off, the auto bits are now elsewhere and the marks repaired and repainted, although I liked the buff shade of nothing muchness that it was before and the matt finish. Caravans do that if you don't polish them.  Especially old ones which were probably painted in early cellulose.  I liked the clerestory I'd worked into the thing originally, too.  Faded elegance everywhere.

I cleared a space for it at right angles to the caff and made a rectangle of Foamex to represent a new concrete pad on which the 'van, sans its wheels which were shot to hell anyway will sit.

Apparently an old showman had originally given the 'van to a friend who was told that he could use it on a preserved Colonel Stevens Heritage line, what was to be one of the first, following on from L.T.C. Rolt's efforts on the Talyllyn.  Work had begun using matey's old Austin 7 Ruby, but then he was informed that it wouldn't "do" for the railway to have such a thing   This was one of many duff choices on the part of the committee of old farts who ran the thing and it soon folded for ever.  Tom Rolt heard of its fate and offered storage for it, which seems to have saved it, for, a few years later when it came up for sale, the blacksmith bought it as a project.  His wife was not best amused at news of its imminent arrival, but took one look and just knew what she had to do.  The Austin bits were knackered and partly robbed anyway, so the blacksmith took them all off, re-skinned the front, ripped the insides out and fitted it with simple bench seats.  The concrete pad was cast and wide of the mark to allow a small sitting area.  The addition to Lantern Yard's vernacular collection was an immediate success with all concerned, although the Saturday morning meet-ups with the local biker boys proved an especially popular event.  They had nowhere much to go and here was a pleasant ride out, no Police, good grub and and endless tea and coffee.  Now there was no squeezing into the hot, steaming caff space.  You got your grub and your mugs of tea and carried them off to the 'Van for a peaceful session of chat with the lads or a corner with the new bird.  You could leave your bike outside with no fear of anyone messing with it.  If they tried it they'd go for a swim in very short order!

Realising the caff was a bit too close to the railway, they permanently closed the side door and instead opened up a new door in the end.

CANAL

The lock gates have been shortened, although they will be sitting on top of a 3mm sheet of Perspex.  Here you can see that I've laminated sheets of Foamex to the tops of the lock sides as I needed it to be firmer and carvable without the filler falling to bits.  This is a big improvement.

I went to town to buy a micro-pot of Humbrol's worst matt black for the roof of the workshop and the lock gates and whilst there, noticed they had weathering powders.  I laughed at the silliness of having pots of stuff you can make yourself for pennies and said as much to the woman.  She informed me that the pots of powders were no less than £4-40!!!  Yet across the shop was a packet of chalk pastels for 45p!  She had no idea that any of those and a spare bit of old sandpaper was all you need to make the stuff in the hugely overpriced tubs of weathering powders.  

I have a pack of oil pastels bought in error thinking they were chalk, so I wondered if they would respond to white spirit.  They did, very subtly and so I lightly weathered the caravan by drawing a few lines of pastel on a spare bit of styrene, then softening it with a very fine brush dipped into a very small amount of white spirit.  I am well pleased with the results.  Weathering can be very overdone and usually is in my view.

Lock gates and other wonders...

I came to an awful conclusion this morning.  I had made my lovely lock gates too narrow all those years ago!  How, I can't imagine, but they wouldn't do as they were, so I had to extend them.  Not so easy as I had built them exactly like real ones, i.e. morticed and tennoned.  Not easy to take apart. But I wiggled them all free eventually and made new cross-pieces and added a few millimetres to the cross/balance beam on each gate.  By using superglue I was able to file the beams down to one size and engrave dummy shakes in the timber across the joint which will make spotting the mod. very difficult.
I also cut the walls of the lock to take the gates and then found they were too long, so that was an easy cut down job.  They now fit a treat and will benefit from the lock walls being built up around them.

The lock gates, too long.

Still too long, but cut in so the pivot side is in position.

On the other side is one of the locos I made the masters for, for N-Drive, a Ruston ZDH  in O9.  I'd made the angle iron, corrugated and wooden engine shelter a little too high so resoldered the cross bar about 10mm lower.  It has four small pins soldered into the lower parts of the angle which fit in holes in the wharf side walling.  I've also made the corrugated iron roofing from pie dish in my little plastic press and this will go on tomorrow, before the post lady brings more serious stuff (I think).

Also seen and newly made is the little cafe. I made the Lantern Cafe first and it's just too big so will be used on the Southwold set-piece and this much smaller, kind of part-timer will be used. It's made entirely in Foamex, including the brickwork being impressed.  The correct bond for a building like this wasn't available as I wanted it in common bond.  That's a course of headers and four courses of stretchers, so queen closers and three-quarter butts are required and shown.  I'm thinking that the door leaves too little room between caff and engine shelter, so will open up a new door in the end wall and make the side door look a bit more permanently closed.  I like this kind of fake history to a piece.  The caff is run by the blacksmith's wife and is also where the railway and wharf workers go for their orders, or used to be.  She used to run that, too.  These days they mostly know what's to do for a week or so in advance, so the caff just sort of grew, out of a need more for sustenance than direction.  At the weekend it has become something of a meeting place for the local "grease".  A term that refers to the local lovers of all thing motorbike and the few who actually have one.  It'll never become the Ace Cafe because it's too small, but the installation of a small caravan might cater for any expansion plans, if it can be hauled across the railway into the yard to be "lost" against the rock wall.

I only went out for a paper!...

But, as things do, the fact was, I had my camera and I was in a mood to run around a bit and give the car a few miles, so it naturally happened that I took a few pics of local places of interest.  Not the sort of interest that gets a place in the Batsford Guides, you understand, but my kind of interest. Vernacular architecture mainly.  Take this, for instance.  The Church Hall.  It's closest to the church, of Emneth's three halls, but could, I suppose be the Central Hall.  As to where the Jubilee Hall is, I have no idea!

There is rarely an occasion that I pass by here and the lights aren't on and cars are in the car park.  I used to take my sons to SlotStox racing here when old Cyril ran it all.  He sadly died recently so I don't know if Monday nights are still race nights.  Keeping an all wooden building like this in good order must be a pretty full time job for somebody.  And who'd want the job of painting all those windows?

Very nearby is the place where Emneth's famous son lived and wrote Thomas the Tank engine, Rev. W. Audry.

The Old Vicarage

Locally are a lot of wonderfully simple bungalows, built between the Wars.  A fifth of an acre, 4 rooms, grow your own, buy on an agricultural wage or in some cases rent from the council.

Of course, many have been extended forwards, backwards and sideways or had hideous plastic windows added, but these two at one end of a well known row are pretty much original and this old, old garage is almost a thing of the past now.  Big enough only for an Austin 7, Morris 8 or Ford Y, this one is a little longer than most, but no wider.  I asked the dear old lady in the bungalow if I might photograph her garage and she told me that she was 92 and had been at the place for 60 years and the garage was there when she arrived!  In which case it's done amazingly well, apart from the bow in one side.  I doubt that it's seen a car for a long time, if ever.

I sneaked a pic from inside the car of the bungalow next door so you can see what they're like if not messed about.

Probably an original pattern door, if not the actual door, tiny panes in the fanlights, still wooden frames, concrete (pseudo stone) lintel, zinc flats over the bays, original 

chimney stacks, one each end...lovely stuff.

Another whole row of them, but showing how some pitiless souls have transmogrified the poor little places.

A view soon to be lost as the land on the left has sold in no time for development, a euphemism for the crowded building of typically unimaginative new-builds squashed in at about 15 per hectare instead of the Essex Design Guide's more sensible 8-12.

Further down the village is an example of what was built centuries ago before bungalows were invented...VERY low rise 2 story cottages.  This really is a tiny house.  Very unfortunately extended to the side and rear behind that hideous flank wall, but its essential character is still there, just.  Following the local regional fashion for not using front doors, this one has actually been blocked from use.

The chimney stack has been removed, probably in preference for central heating or a wood burner with a flue at the rear.  This is at least 4 feet shorter than the already small cottage next door.

And so we purchase our paper at the local stores cum Post Office and return home.  I never use the big Spar shop as it is run by an unpleasant, shorts-wearing, wheezing South African.  Few things could put me off a person more than those dubious four qualifications.  He overcharges too.

Moments grabbed...

In these odd moments when I'm not expected or able to do much else thanks to weather, other demands on my time, etc. I have been carrying on with Lantern Yard.  Now with a little matt emulsion added to pathways and yesterday some green to the lint grass.  I also found a source of Perspex for the long lock section and some for the wharf section.

The hole in the baseboard is to take the full hull model of Heather Bell, an historic wooden ex-working boat that we used to own and live on.
Here are the beginnings of it with its bottom boards below "water" level.  Especially at the stern end where the weight of the big old Lister JP2 engine overbalances the empty hold.

The workshop has had some initial paint and I sign wrote Ray's Motors on the end.

The vertical  corrugated sheets that top off the end wall were made from Turkey foil, 2 layers glued together and then pressed in my little plastic press tool I made a while back..  Also made the window frames and fitted the windows.  Found an old sheet of adverts so I cut them out and glued them to brass shim for a bit of bulk and then glued some others inside for a bit of atmosphere.