- This topic has 13 replies, 5 voices, and was last updated 1 year ago by
Nick Ridgway.
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Nick Ridgway
…is coming together.
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This topic was modified 1 year ago by Nick Ridgway.
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This topic was modified 1 year ago by
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Nick Ridgway
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Nick Ridgway
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Nigel Burbidge
Coming together well Nick. When is it going to make its debut entrance?
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Nick Ridgway
That would be telling…
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Stuart Firth
Presentation looks amazing.
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Nick Ridgway
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Nick Ridgway
The layout is an exercise on cheating! Cheating means only modelling stuff that can be seen, and cheating on the rest. For example:
- One of the internal user wagons arrived as an incomplete kit that was missing one of its sides. So the missing side is just plain plastic card painted black. One only sees one side of the wagon, after all, so it stays that way round. CHEAT!
- The rest of the world, a fiddle yard, as it is, is about 4.5in long, which is enough for an 0-6-0ST, or an 0-4-0ST and one wagon – just enough space to get stuff on-stage and off-stage. Its extension is dependent on other things in the railway room once they get designed and constructed. CHEAT!
- The rear of the stone walls is just plain card, and not modelled. They are only seen from one side, anyway. CHEAT!
- There is nothing in the yard behind the smithy, as it isn’t viewable from the front. CHEAT!
- The winding rope is black cotton, knotted into a loop. It tumbles a multi-diameter-washer assembly inside the cage shaft, as a way of keeping the rope taut. There is no cage, and no shaft. CHEAT!
- The east side of the engine house is missing, so as not to get in the way of the winding rope, which is turned by a junk 12Vdc motor through a load of plastic card shapes to maintain rope alignment on the way to and from the frame wheels. The front window is blacked-out so it can’t be seen. CHEAT!
- The corrugated roof on the workshop is too steep, as there isn’t space to do anything else as the backscene is in the way. CHEAT!
- The 3D world meets the 2D world at a backscene, with compatible colours in both these worlds. The backscene is my first attempt at Art since giving up the subject at the end of my first year at secondary school, in 1970. I’ve had a go. It ain’t difficult and the only thing that was missing was the courage to have a go. I’m no artist. I’m a CHEAT!
- I might have a go at using finely-divided cotton wool as a way of simulating smoke and steam in future photographs – more realistic in time exposures where it can be waggled about, of course. CHEAT!
- Make the photos monochrome or even sepia tone, because we are used to seeing historical subjects that way. It also cuts out a load of painting and colouring problems that become evident in colour photos. CHEAT!
The cheats allow something to be built that would otherwise take a bit longer. Excluding:
- Shopping and procurement time
- Locomotive construction
- Wagon construction
- Two buildings, the coal stage and a coach body that were built when purchased
- Design time
only about 115 modelling-hours have gone in from cutting the first piece of wood to its being presentable for photograhy.
See? It’s all about CHEATING – sorry – creating the illusion in the minimum of modelling time!
If I can do it, then you can too.
🙂
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This reply was modified 1 year ago by Nick Ridgway.
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This reply was modified 1 year ago by Nick Ridgway.
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This reply was modified 1 year ago by Nick Ridgway.
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Alan Durham
Was it Ray Earl that only used to model what could be seen from the front by the public at shows, as would be the case in the theatre. I seem to recall seeing beautifully finished coaches on one side whilst the reverse side was unpainted and not detailed.
I love the look of your layout and modelling. Although I am largely a BR modeller I do like industrial stuff, I built both the 0 and 00 versions of the DJH Andrew Barclay, the 0 gauge was sold on some time ago to fund some EM gauge stock, however I still have the 00 version and I keep thinking about converting to EM using some spare axles I have. I have recently converted the Hornby DS48 using the same method that Andrew Avis developed.
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Nick Ridgway
In my OO days, I had 3 SR green coaches, 3 blood-and-custard coaches, three maroon coaches and three blue/grey coaches – a brake, a buffet and a composite in each. By swapping the sides I could make four six-coach rakes provided no more than 12 vehicles were on view at once! That’s cheating, and that’s the principle involved in creating the illusions that our models convey.
In theatre, one suspends disbelief; that is the principle at work on models.
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Nigel Burbidge
Hi Nick
Possibly somewhat harsh to call it cheating. The fact our models are propelled by electric motors and remotely operated rather than controlled by someone standing in the cab is all accepted as the norm, not cheating. As you rightly point out, it is a question of creating a theatrical illusion, which can be created using a mixture of techniques, some of which you have pointed to in your posts. So long as disbelief is sufficiently suspended through these artifices everyone is happy!
cheers
Nigel
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Stuart Firth
Some great images. I always think turning down the colour is the key to realistic model photos, something the mainstream magazines seldom get right.
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John Cutler
It is not “cheating”, just theatre! Iain Rice would have approved; he helped out as a stage hand.
Ray and Cida Earl used to regularly exhibit an EM layout called Brookfield which had many of the attributes of Nick’s cameo. Read MRJ 142 if you can. The blind side of wagons were marked with white axleboxes so the operator could align them with blind-side markers for the uncoupling magnets (the layout was operated from the rear). You do not need to have a creative bent for theatre although it probably helps; Ray was a Chartered Engineer.
Well Done, Nick. You are continuing an EM tradition! Will you exhibit this?
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Nick Ridgway
Oh, all right, then. 🙂
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