Perhaps you may recall, fellow Westerners, that the object of the exercise in my recent meandering posts, was to chronicle some of the influences for Cheapside and its setting.
In the absence of any photographs/paintings/illustrations to the contrary, I resorted to another Merseyside located GWR station for inspiration:
Disused Stations: Birkenhead Monks Ferry Station
If you go into the link, you will see a photo of the train shed roof approximately halfway down the page, which probably shows the internal structure best. Thankfully I have in my possession a better photo of the structure which gave a clearer portrayal to work from. I deviated from the original slightly, in a time-saving effort at the time, by replacing the angled bottom beam with a horizontal one. In hindsight, with all the cuts I had to make in the rails that form the beams, I doubt it would have taken much longer; it certainly wouldn’t have hindered the final part of construction when all the beams were mated to the cross beams holding them in the vertical plain, as it would have had absolutely no bearing at all on the jig employed in the process. C’est la vie.
One major absence, is the presence of angled plates at the joints in the beams as per the original. I still haven’t summoned the courage to face the task and frankly I’m not sure I ever will. It would certainly have masked one or two of those erroneous cuts which came up short - a consequence of trial and error construction I’m afraid as I’m no engineer- and be damned the scrutiny of the photographic image:
Perhaps then, it will remain just a ‘representation’ of a GWR station roof.
As you can see, the roof covering of the original was of slate, however, as I prefer to cut out and lay 4mm scale slates individually:
and bearing in mind the area to be covered, I went easy on myself and adopted plan B which involved resorting to other methods of roof covering found on many industrial buildings in Liverpool of yore. Now, as far as I can tell, bitumen roofing only started to appear during the construction of make-shift buildings in the Klondike years. Therefore, my (rather lame) excuse is that it was re-roofed in something more appropriate some years later by an owner resigned to the questionable future of his venture. Incidentally, as far as I can tell, Goods Warehousing such as that of the LNWR in the vicinity sported something similar
Disused Stations: Waterloo Goods Station
And while we’re on the subject of atmosphere, perhaps one or two of my fellow Westerners might also be interested in this
Disused Stations: Liverpool Riverside Station
May I just add, that as an exponent of ‘sloppy modelling’, those dodgey looking gaps and lifting edges - as per the first photo in my recent posts - are for once reminiscent of those sported by such buildings that I recall from my early years, before the whole lot eventually came a-tumbling down (cue the Jam).
With reference to some of the pictures in my last posts, it’s interesting to note the different styles and textures of the bricks in the built environment. I’ve a number of methods in mind for attempting to achieve the different looks, which I shaln’t bore you with here, however, I feel it’s an ideal opportunity to implement a favourable method (I believe), if not for all, but for the lion’s share of the desired effect. It involves the use of tile grout, although any old Polyfilla mix would do the same job. As most of my stuff quickly ends up in the bin, I’ve only the following to try and demonstrate the effect, albeit, N. American:
Okay, I agree the mortar joints in the Wills brick sheet are a little over generous - even more so at 1:87 scale - but it’s ideal for this method of representing mortar which I believe gives it a little more texture than the traditional wash on and wipe off paint method - not a criticism, just what appeals to me. It also looks the part, or at least I reckon so, for the stucco (those runs were yet to be tidied up) at the base and the stone/concrete lintels which I copied as precisely as I could from the Google Streetview of the single-storey building it represented in downtown L.A. Incidentally, the odd looking door section in the second photo, which is the trap door inside a larger door type - can’t quite think of the correct term for it at present - involved cutting sections of plastic card and the long thin sections of the same stuff (memory fading again for the correct term) then melting them in parts with copious amounts of adhesive to achieve the industrial look of the original, which when painted, would have seen different hues of the same colour, adorned in flaking paint, especially over the rickety wooden internal panels in the lower section, that still required a lot more toning down of the worn look that would have been poking through underneath (it’s still too ‘cartoon-ey’ looking in the photograph).
The grout is also ideal, I find - although takes a fairly long time to achieve - for representing the build up of mortar or whatever on the surface of the brick, characteristic of old Georgian/Regency style buildings and soot/steam soiled platform brick faces.
So there we are for now, my friends.
I hope it further served to demonstrate what I’m hoping to achieve with Cheapside, but I don’t blame you for thinking that it’s just another blag for me to show the same old images over and over...ad infinitum.
Jonte