Edwinstowe Station... LNER 1930's (ex-LD&ECR, ex-GCR)

[t-b-g]

13 hours ago, gingerangles said:

Been at the track again this afto...

Repainted this stretch with sleeper grime then washed the chairs with rust before running down the middle and edges of the sleepers with a lighter mix (sleeper grime, natural wood and white).

I think I might be missing the black wash, still feels a little too monotone?

 

 

 

 

 

 

I would agree that I would be happy with that sort of look for a running lines. The contrast between the sleeper colour and the ballast colour looks really good to my eyes. For sidings and yards, you probably have rather too much texture. There was usually almost no actual ballast as such, just dirt and muck and the surface texture should be almost smooth. In the photos on the historical society website, you can't see any change from the surface of the yard to the surface where the track is. It is all pretty much smooth with no ballast texture visible. 

[gingerangles]

Thanks for the feedback @St Enodoc & @t-b-g

 

As I said I think I'll try a very weak black wash just adjacent the tracks and see what that looks like but either with or without that I'm probably in a reasonable place with that setup.

All further affects need to take place post ballasting then right?  Oil stains where the locos would have stood etc.  

 

I had been giving the goods areas some thought @t-b-g actually, not quite sure how I am going to achieve that look yet - a lot of research and layout-gazing required (other examples that is).  I had also wondered whether they bothered with buffer stops in the goods areas? [Fully prepared for that to absolutely be a horrendously stupid question 😂]

 

I'm on the hunt for examples of what the track bed might have looked like in the Dock - imagining that it would have been a concrete surface with drainage given the location.

[Andy_C]

I think the comments about ballast in yards and sheds may be suggesting this kind of thing? I’ve used dried sand for my steam shed ballast, and I’ll do the same for the goods yard ballasting. I’ll then paint it dirty.

Edited Monday at 09:19 by Andy_C

[WFPettigrew]

I am not sure when sidings and yards stopped being ballasted with ash (they were in my chosen pre-grouping modelling era..) but it might be worth considering infilling the stone ballast here to get the sort of ash ballast effect as suggested by @t-b-g, if that sort of thing was still common in the 30s on the former LDECR?  It is such a characteristic of older sidings.

 

All the best

 

Neil 

[t-b-g]

I have been digging out some of my references as I could recall seeing a bit of an LD&ECR cattle pen at Tuxford in a photo. Sadly, you can't see the track. It is in "Nottinghamshire's Lost Railways" by Neil Burgess. It has a nice close up shot of the buildings at Edwinstowe, which I used when making my model.

 

Many cattle pens just had plain track with no special base or drainage arrangements but there are also those that do have a special trackbed too, so I don't know which is correct for Edwinstowe.

 

It has made me rethink my ideas about the ballasting. On the LD&ECR, even when new, the ballast on running lines was very fine and I think the example shown above might have too coarse a texture. 

 

When we were adding the surface to a loco shed yard on one layout, we sprayed the surface with a fine mist of water and applied a mix of black, with small amounts of added white and brown, powder paint. This was sieved onto the wet surface using a fine tea strainer. Just the texture of the paint granules was enough. It put a thin layer over the tops of the sleepers too, which looked OK in a loco shed environment.

 

Edit to add photo. I may have posted it before, or one very similar. This is a mix of ground garden soil, ground up ash from a real fire, plus a tiny amount of Woodland scenics fine ash ballast. This is on my EM gauge LDECR layout.

 

 

Edited Monday at 10:03 by t-b-g
To add content

[gingerangles]

1 hour ago, Andy_C said:

I think the comments about ballast in yards and sheds may be suggesting this kind of thing? I’ve used dried sand for my steam shed ballast, and I’ll do the same for the goods yard ballasting. I’ll then paint it dirty.

 

That's a good reference pic mate thanks... kind of what you'd imagine in certain circumstances - looks possibly a little too 'coal / ash-y' maybe for a yard, its a very industrial looking scene? 

 

In my imagination the yard at Edwinstowe and similar would have been surfaced with something from the area or imported, the stuff good enough to hold up sleepers isn't necessarily good for a yard so perhaps something more sandstone in nature given the area? 

 

I know it's not a great image but this shot hear is of the yard:

 

 

TO me the surface looks lighter than if it were the same ash type used on the running lines?

[gingerangles]

57 minutes ago, t-b-g said:

I have been digging out some of my references as I could recall seeing a bit of an LD&ECR cattle pen at Tuxford in a photo. Sadly, you can't see the track. It is in "Nottinghamshire's Lost Railways" by Neil Burgess. It has a nice close up shot of the buildings at Edwinstowe, which I used when making my model.

 

Many cattle pens just had plain track with no special base or drainage arrangements but there are also those that do have a special trackbed too, so I don't know which is correct for Edwinstowe.

 

It has made me rethink my ideas about the ballasting. On the LD&ECR, even when new, the ballast on running lines was very fine and I think the example shown above might have too coarse a texture. 

 

When we were adding the surface to a loco shed yard on one layout, we sprayed the surface with a fine mist of water and applied a mix of black, with small amounts of added white and brown, powder paint. This was sieved onto the wet surface using a fine tea strainer. Just the texture of the paint granules was enough. It put a thin layer over the tops of the sleepers too, which looked OK in a loco shed environment.

 

Edit to add photo. I may have posted it before, or one very similar. This is a mix of ground garden soil, ground up ash from a real fire, plus a tiny amount of Woodland scenics fine ash ballast. This is on my EM gauge LDECR layout.

 

 

 

 

I'd agree @t-b-g - I think I have ballast which is too coarse.  The images I've seen show a much ashier and finer surface than that in my pics.  I was toying with the idea of adding sand to it, either black (fish tank type) sand or possibly trying to dye some 🤷‍♂️

 

 

At 4mm it literally would be powder.

Edited Monday at 10:57 by gingerangles

[PMP]

This sort of texture is relatively easy to do, I can show you next time you’re over. It’s a derivative of this:-

http://nevardmedia.blogspot.com/2011/08/creating-effect-of-ash-ballast.html?m=1

[gingerangles]

4 hours ago, PMP said:

This sort of texture is relatively easy to do, I can show you next time you’re over. It’s a derivative of this:-

http://nevardmedia.blogspot.com/2011/08/creating-effect-of-ash-ballast.html?m=1

 

Sounds good to me mate... I'll bring the baseboards 🤣

We can do the backscenes at the same time 😜

[gingerangles]

Got the camera out tonight for a little play...

 

[gingerangles]

SB Plan Rev... errr... 3(?)

 

Drafted last night, printed this morn and will pin it up later to see how it looks... reduced line with, toned down the aging background, altered the 'yellow' track colour slightly and increase text and symbol sizes.

 

 

Appreciate what you said about the linework @5BarVT but the tracks are 'lines' in themselves and it's a job too far, certainly for now, to trace round them with another narrow line.  It may come to that but I'd certainly need to be happy with everything else before committing to that task!

[St Enodoc]

1 hour ago, gingerangles said:

SB Plan Rev... errr... 3(?)

 

Drafted last night, printed this morn and will pin it up later to see how it looks... reduced line with, toned down the aging background, altered the 'yellow' track colour slightly and increase text and symbol sizes.

 

 

Appreciate what you said about the linework @5BarVT but the tracks are 'lines' in themselves and it's a job too far, certainly for now, to trace round them with another narrow line.  It may come to that but I'd certainly need to be happy with everything else before committing to that task!

In that case, I'd change the background to white to give more contrast.

[5BarVT]

5 hours ago, gingerangles said:

SB Plan Rev... errr... 3(?)

 

Drafted last night, printed this morn and will pin it up later to see how it looks... reduced line with, toned down the aging background, altered the 'yellow' track colour slightly and increase text and symbol sizes.

 

 

Appreciate what you said about the linework @5BarVT but the tracks are 'lines' in themselves and it's a job too far, certainly for now, to trace round them with another narrow line.  It may come to that but I'd certainly need to be happy with everything else before committing to that task!

That looks a lot better.   Appreciate the difficulty in making the tracks a solid so that it can have edges and fill - I have done it on mine, but only for straight track so I could use a box. How to make them curve is on my to do list. 
Sadly, I think that is where the next step in realism for you will come from. 
 

What you have is fine for now - just make sure you can replace it later if you want. 

[gingerangles]

12 hours ago, St Enodoc said:

In that case, I'd change the background to white to give more contrast.

 

I'll give that a go and see how it looks. 👍

[gingerangles]

7 hours ago, 5BarVT said:

That looks a lot better.   Appreciate the difficulty in making the tracks a solid so that it can have edges and fill - I have done it on mine, but only for straight track so I could use a box. How to make them curve is on my to do list. 
Sadly, I think that is where the next step in realism for you will come from. 
 

What you have is fine for now - just make sure you can replace it later if you want. 

 

Cheers 👍

I might be able to copy the existing lines for the shape, slim them down and add them to each edge maybe.

[gingerangles]

In place...

Definately an improvement.

 

Need to tone down the aging as suggested.

 

Been experimenting with trying to line the lines as well 🤦‍♂️