Workshop

Moving on form this the next building to tackle was the workshop itself, this is used to hide the exit off the layout and act as a view blocker on one end, the first item to be built was a lathe, this was based on contemporary designs from the 1950’s as it fitted the general ideas I had.

This was made out of once again Lego covered in plasticard and shaped accordingly, the tail stock and cross slide both move on the bed, the bed itself is made from two sections of Lego railway inverted and clad in plasticard to form a smooth sliding surface, the cross slide has a deep apron too which the hand wheels are mounted. – The Headstock has a micro motor fitted to turn the chuck.

The splash tray under the bed is a cut down Ferrero Rocher box lid cut down and joined back up,

This lathe was named after my Grandfather E.P. Hindley who was and engineer at Stothert and Pitt in Bath before WW2 where he served his apprenticeship

The workshop itself was fabricated up from 18mm plywood covered in plaster filler and scribed for brickwork, the ‘plaster’ render inside is degraded to represent old crumbling plaster, the window came from a large Georgian picture window from a dolls house and cut down to form a typical steel frame window

A wagon turntable was built and cut into the base board with the feed wires for the track run through the hollow centre pivot, the turntable is designed to only turn through a 90⁰ arc to mate up with the track running out through the workshop past the lathe and workbench.

The brickwork was then painted a dark brick colour and the dry brushed with lighter shades to tone it down – individual bricks where picked out in contrasting shades, a wagon turntable was made up and track laid through, this building is designed as a cut away to show the interior detail

The roof was designed to be removable so a jig was assembled to make up all the roof trusses and then built up as one unit; this was covered in thin 4mm ply and covered in plasticard the roof itself was built up with trim strips to give the effect of a galvanised sheet steel roof.

The whole roof was painted in a subtle wash of light greys and weathered with streaks of rust – each roof panel was treated separately for the right effect

As part of the interior detail a gantry hoist was fabricated from a section of old brass curtain rail with a chain hoist carriage made up using some spare 009 wagon wheels.

Lights were made up using our brass lampshade casting and dolls house fittings modified, these were supported on a section of spare 16mm brass track with a length of brass tube soldered in for the conduit

The work light for the lathe has a grain of wheat bulb fitted this in turn is mounted on a wall bracket with the cable going out through a dummy plug socket and a 13amp plug

The rear exit door was built up and fitted with a dummy Briton T series door closer along with period bronze lever latch handle, this in turn had a Fire Door Keep Shut sign added that was created form a photo I took and edited.

The exit box has an LED bulb feeding into it with a voltage resister to drop this power output down; the bulb itself has a wash of light brown to tone it down to represent a faded and old filament bulb as fitted in the 50-60’s , the EXIT wording was cut out on a silhouette cutter as self-adhesive lettering

Attention turns now to the workbench; this was fabricated up from strip wood (salvaged Nov 5th rocket sticks amongst others) coffee stirrers and plywood, the handles for the cupboard are copper wire and the hinges are plasticard.

The pillar drill from the box van was relocated to the workshop and clutter added around

A set of drawings was found for a 7.1/4" Bulleid light pacific and printed off once I'd adjusted them in photoshop, along with a print out of the cover from a Model Railway News from July 1951, a model of a SR route indicator disc was fabricated and deposited behind the bench along with other mixed junk including a spare number plate from my traction engine 'Yer Tiz' TT2759

Guttering was added from our castings to finish of this phase of the project

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