More trial (and error)

Having visited Bridgnorth again, I felt that I had enough information to attempt a trial build of the top station.

Sorry, no drawing with this blog, my computer with the Autocad program has died!

I was not happy with the foam-board used for the trial build of the lower station, so started with cardboard. I did try Corn-flake packet card as used by Chubber, but I thought the texture a little coarse, so I used a Supermarket Chinese, Meal for Two, take-away package case, which seemed a little more rigid and dense than the cereal pack. The card had a semi-matt coating inside and out. The inside is a uniform mid-brown colour, I needed more card for the large pitched roof and used an A4 Manila document folder.

I thought the building would be best treated as two buildings butted up to each other, one with a footprint at the pedestrian footway level, the other part’s footprint at the patio level. These are the original building and the 2002/3 extensions. This was to lead to some height alignment difficulties later.

Being on a learning curve in scratch building, I soon found that what I thought was the best approach to gluing one side to the next by using a folded tab could cause dimensional variations and that allowance for the fold had to be made and the depth of cut needed to be consistent to get uniform joints.

In the building of the top half, the rear wall was in one piece with one inwards fold, and one outwards fold. Accurately locating the fold cut on the reverse side I found difficult.

The front wall with Seven pieces and five folds finished about 6mm longer than the other one. Result – much un-gluing trimming and re-gluing.

The lower half benefited from the earlier difficulties and assembled rather easier, being a sort of low-relief to be butted up to the top half, Here a couple of discrepancies in my drawings led to the roof line of the little stairway down to the patio being incorrect.

A lesson learned was that to make a flat roof to the structure, make and cut it before gluing the side walls! It is difficult to measure a cardboard cavity with 8 sides, a couple of towers impinging and no interior access!

Also that meticulous attention needs to be paid to vertical and horizontal alignments. The trial does not sit happily on its “perch” above the incline and needed temporary fixing to hide gaps and enable the photographs

In general, the finished trial is I think, a good representation of the shape of the prototype and an eventual second attempt in plastic should look better, Hopefully!!

The first two showing the building on its "perch", the difference in footprint height shown in the second

And a couple more back on the cutting board:-

The Model was shown at Weston-on-Trent last week-end, as work-in progress alongside a Scenery Demonstration, and there was a fair amount of interest shown,

I was surprised that so many people did not know of The Cliff Railway's existence, even by people who claimed to be regular visitors to the SVR. Several older men commented that they did their National Service “Square-Bashing” at RAF Bridgnorth but were banned from going into the town, so did not know of it!

Most FAQ was “Why did you choose to model this”…….Stock answer -”It seemed a Good Idea at the time!”