Getting started and the first of 10 structures - the signal cabin

Lynton Station building in 1967, my first visit to the location

This Blog is going to be a record of the creation of a working model of Lynton station and its immediate environs, the northern terminus on the old Lynton & Barnstaple narrow gauge railway, in North Devon, England, in 4mm scale. There is plenty written on the history of this railway, so I direct anyone interested in more detail to research all the materials available. The Lynton & Barnstaple Railway Trust with it's headquarters currently at Woody Bay, North Devon, has a wealth of information available. www.lynton-rail.co.uk. 
I have been interested in this railway since the early 1960s having seen pictures of P.D Hancock's Craig & Mertonford Railway and it's L&BR loco "Alistair", and it is only recently that I have the time to actually start creating. This started when one of my daughters bought me the "bible" for the L&BR for my 70th birthday, Stephen Phillips' The Lynton & Barnstaple Railway, Measured and Drawn". It is a magnificent book with scale drawings of just about everything, which Stephen & Mike Bishop drew from their researches over many decades. If you want to model with any accuracy, this book is a must. The details of how to purchase, are at the L&BR Trust's website, http://www.lynton-rail.co.uk/shop/lynton-barnstaple-railway-measured-and-drawn

So how did I start? Many scribbles and a "statement" of what I wanted to produce; "The most accurate 4mm scale model of Lynton station that has so far been built". Sounds great Mike! If you've never tackled something like this, be aware that it will take a huge amount of time. Even with Steve's magnificent drawings there are still details that need to be researched. 
I had just built an 8' x 20" baseboard for my Swiss H0m RhB layout and I wondered if I could get the whole of Lynton station on it?

I laid out some old PECO crazy 009 and BEMO H0e track which I had in my stock and bought the 6 points using the new PECO mainline 18" radius ones. Having measured Steve's drawing of the whole station environs I realised I would need at least another 4ft if I was going to have a scale model. Also Tony Peart, who has built a number of the L&BR stations, challenged me to ensure I have all the land contours (and I accepted his challenge), so a "flat" board was out of the question. something else new for me.

Making a start on buildings

I determined that I would construct all the buildings to an accuracy of 0.25mm and I have so far been mostly able to achieve this. That might seem a very fine tolerance, but unless you work to that, parts won't fit accurately. We'll see this when I get to the station building itself. Just on one side of the station building, I counted 207 separate pieces of plastic for the windows, doors and lintels. I find I can only work about an hour at a time because of the level of concentration needed and a VERY steady hand.

Let me start with the first building, the signal cabin. I made a scanned copy of Steve's drawing (only for my own use, I am very strict about respecting copyright laws) and ensured it was to the exact 4mm scale. I do this as I didn't want to write in the book itself. I would need to do lots of measuring of the drawing and writing the mm dimensions on the drawing to use when measuring the styrene. I then determined the different types of plastic from the Evergreen and Plastruct ranges for each element and bought those (a few at a time as I never knew what I was going to need until I got to that part - my local model shops got to know me well). I had decided that I would work in styrene as I'm very comfortable with that medium and I could achieve the desired accuracy relatively easily.

I measured and cut and laid the pieces out on the drawings. The signs are created in MS PowerPoint and then printed at best quality on my inkjet photo printer. A couple of the signs need to be etched (for the lamp hut - see another posting) and they will be created in due course. The main box of the 4 sides and the corner pieces are then glued together ensuring everything is absolutely square and level in all planes. I use liquid styrene glue and a very fine paint brush to apply it accurately.

Now come the details.

 The Nameboard was made in the same way as the enamel signs and it was glued to the mounting board made from a styrene backing piece and the 4 sides.

Once all the windows were complete and sprayed white on the outsides, glazing was next, using clear 0.13mm styrene. Before fitting all the windows the building had to be painted. Now all you lucky guys in the UK can get the exact colours. Here in the USA and with the restrictions on mailing paints now, I had to do intense research to be able to create the closest colours from available paints here. The SR green was OK as Humbrol do one that is an exact match but I had to mix the yellow/cream from a Vallejo yellow and white. It was brush painted and needed a couple of coats taking 2 days to dry between each coat. Vallejo paint is really nice to work with and flows well with a paint brush, not leaving brush strokes. 

Now I turned to the interior. C'mon Mike, this is about 1.5" cube. Who is going to look through those windows - which will be on the backside from the viewing side anyway? Well if you go and research on the yahoo groups L&B Modelling page you will see many posts about which way it was considered the floorboards ran! Duh!! I added a clock, track diagram and a lever frame, which, after it was all painted and glued in place, I was politely told it was the wrong type. Maybe one day I'll change it - or not! 

Nearly there. Just the roof!!! Now this took 4 tries to get it to just reasonable. It is slate and I used Wills' slate roofing. The trouble with that is it is very thick and it would look totally wrong, So I had to experiment (this is how 100 hours goes!). I used a Dremel router (held between my knees!) to shave down the insides of the four sides so that it only showed a very thin edge and would then sit within the top sides and would be held there without gluing it down (I could then take off the roof if I wanted to prove to someone about the interior. Wills' sheets are very soft and it was very easy to take off a fraction too much and that part of the roof ripped off. Hence the 4 tries. But I did learn a valuable new skill with the router. I then added the final parts, the gutter and downpipe. I still need to paint the interior of the gutter black.

Not part of the cabin as such but an important part of it is the wooden walkway over all the point and signal rods and cables that exit from the cabin. This was made from basswood strip.

Anyway, this was my first building in almost 50 years and I am pretty pleased with it as I didn't know if I could pull off all this detail in 4mm scale. It took about 100 hours.

Sign up and look out for my next posting describing the lamp hut.