I’ve now got just the door frames and internal doors to do and then roof slates/tiles. I have no idea if the inside of the toilet was painted the same. Peter has asked me to draw a lever frame and block shelf to finish it off, but I’m not planning on going any further. and there is literally one instrument on the block shelf.. which has been drawn already for Leek box… so see what we can progress on the night shift meal breaks.
A few bits of progress, some without photos.. The supports under the porch have been changed to wooden arches. A night time photo. And some internal doors added.
The last photo sadly highlighted two errors.. one I had the window wrong along side the door and had also missed some trim, now updated.. and that the porch was too high. The door height and window have been dropped by 6 inches, a photo will follow. Although drawings I’d been supplied (for another similar box) showed it as it has been modelled, photos showed that the one at Kilmacolm differed. The top of the door was more in line with the window horizontal..
Change of direction last night. I’d been in conversation with Peter who had sent me a number of photos and measurements of a Steven’s Lever. Last night 2 hrs were spent drawing up a new lever to add to the as yet undrawn frame. There were 24 levers in Kilmacolm, and this is the arrangement. (Number 1 is on the right here as we’re looking from behind) and from the front. there is a 4 1/2 inch spacing, which in 7mm scale is 2.62mm between levers. in situe on the drawing model. and installed. I’ll finish off with a picture showing the revised porch. and from the side, where you can see also the internal door.
Impressive, but knowing when to stop detailing and commit to printing can be the most difficult part Jim
My apologies for the lateness in replying, slipped the radar! many thanks! We’re getting there. Soon be ready to start setting up to print.
Hi Jim, Yes.. although Leek box had a great deal of detail that ended up on the render images that didn’t make the print.. I still have the roof to tile and then maybe some guttering.. and a block shelf.. and then we are ready to start making it in to sections to print.. I have a cunning plan.. just hope I can pull it off.. I’d say we’re at 75-80% of completion.
After sending the lever frame photos to Peter last night he replied with his apologies that I had been supplied by him with some duff info. He neglected to tell me that the photos he had sent of his lever was that it had a plastic cover fitted over the handle at the top changing its profile and they needed to be changed back to the style I had for the McKenzie and Holland levers I’d had fitted previously. kind of makes sense now. Also he wanted the old style number discs on the front rather than the Trafolite ones fitted by BR in the black and white.. No problem.. 20 mins later this aft.. Spot the mistake I’ve made though! One of the walls seems to be painted in the wrong colour. Next up the block shelf. as can be seen, it was a rather elaborate cast support design for the actual shelf.. but shouldn’t be too hard.. except at the moment, I have no measurement. I don’t have it recorded which box this actually is/was, but it has a wealth of info on layouts.
Thats not actually from the box we are modelling.. we haven’t found an internal picture yet. But an interesting idea..
2 steps forward.. and a step back. Block shelf positioned, but.. it appears I have made the phones double size.. and sadly, it looks like this extends back to when I designed Leek box. No idea how this has come about.. but hey. Scale down to .5 and we’re away. Alas this error was found after I had produced the renders which also include the track diagram. We have also dropped in a signal lamp oil reservoir so it can be changed, this may be for a nearby ground signal?? And another external shot.. Now As I had said, the block instruments were similar to my NSR model shown, but also very different . The mahogany case is the same shape but front descriptive “dial” at the bottom is very different being a 3 way switch of sorts, and the main display showing a double sided signal. Thankfully I have a drawing I can reference, but it’s not known which kind of bell or gong was fitted. (It’s suspected it’s one of each depending on if it was for the up or down line.) and again if it was a separate box or mounted in the top as shown below.
And so began the very slow and detailed conversion from NSR to GNoSR Tyers absolute block. here are a few progress pictures.. I’ve used renders for now as it just looks the little bit better first pass- reduced size phones, incorrect track diagram size. (Oops!) and a start made on the faces of the blocks. This also shows the old block instrument I drew up some 7-8 years ago. I opted yesterday to do a swap.. as you may recall from another thread I had drawn the wood in full size for remaking my own Tyers AB instrument. I took the decision to use this art work and scale down to 1:43.5 and swap it to the drawing for Peter. Here we can see the old on the left and the new on the right. Not bad to say the old was drawn off the below 8 years ago. Not far off! (And it was drawn in 7mm not full size and rescaled) no alteration has been made to the bell box at this time. They were sizes provided by Nick (Allsop) a signalman who still has one in his collection to take the drawings from. so now after starting and completing the totally different main display, we started to build on it. I took some photos and dimensions off of mine to redraw the front knob. the one part I’ve not worked out how to do is the Knurled area, but in 7mm I doubt it would be visible. anyways, back to the drawing. here we have added in the name plates also for the signal repeaters and made the block shelf deeper, it’s now at 6inches. the Tyers AB instruments are almost done, we just need to add a separate tapper box, but we need to confirm some positioning as they would be under the respective block on the shelf. But as can be seen, there will be repeaters in the way, so it may be the phone and block swap places. just to show from another angle. I’ve managed to correct an issue with the Track diagram so it now shows correct. It appears the glass was too far away from the “paper” surface. And just to prove it… the owner/photographer even appears in his own model box!! If you look very carefully, you can see Peter’s reflection.
Had to do some moving of bricks at the toilet ends as a) I needed to make the toilet separate for printing and b) turns out it’s not flush at the end but is inset. so some of the bricks on the toilet were moved on to the main wall and required. That was a half hour job, I then did some cuts to recess parts of the toilet to give it somewhere to plug in to. Here follows a few updated renders of the external bits. Toilet moved, boarding removed of the porch roof- we thought it had gone missing in the photos, but turns out that was how it was built! The walk way hand rails were raised as I had placed them 6 inches too low - this was where the new drawings were coming in useful! The name board has been scaled down to a more correct size. and finally, we have “pulled” some levers. ! Although I have been told I also need to pull 21 and 22 (reds) to make the rest possible due to interlocking
I have finally moved on to the roof.. this is V1… I’m now on V2 as after completing it, I realised I had orientated the tiles the wrong way! anyway, the principle is still there same. Here’s how it’s done. I first placed a tile on each section. Moved them to the bottom of each edge, then a lot of copy and pasting left and right. Move that line up 4mm and shift it over by 3.5mm. Gives the staggered effect then. Originally we had 2 rows on the bottom, but on V2 we could fit a third in which was given an angle between the two main surfaces to replicate the bell curve of the roof. once the side it done there needs to be some trimming, so a new square is dropped in at 90 degrees to the surface to cut away the excess.. and then you end up with this. more copy, paste and rotate.. and move to the edge. just waiting trimming.. I’ll get some shots of V2 later.
The roof has been temp sidelined to complete it and I’ve gone back to working on the lever frame work. Peter has been on a site visit to Kinely and bowness railway? And has managed to acquire one of the Steven’s and sons block shelf supports (not sure if begged, stolen or borrowed or purchased) to measure up so we can make a good model of it. In fact, Peter is even going to have a go at 3D scanning it with one of the apps. He has also been able to do a site visit to a similar box and gleaned a few photos. This shows me details of the back of the frame, and the wooden box to the rear. The shelf does differ on this version though. Starting to redraw the frame here the box to the rear has been detailed with some planking. Doesn’t stand out too well so may need to tweak a little. And finally I have added the plant to the fore that the signalman stands on. It’s even been given some wear indents which was a first.. I did this by cutting away a section then adding a fillet.
Hi Andy, in the second photo there are a pair of lever arms on the wall to the right with cables attached going through the floor, what are they for? Jim
I am lead to believe they are line tensioners for signals. Obviously in warmer weather the wires stretch so you need to be able to adjust your pull so the arm goes up the right amount some signal levers had a ratchet in the front..