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INTRODUCTION
I don't anticipate running any steam on either
the B&M or SV portions of Dalton Mills Junction, but
there were plenty of water columns left standing for many years
following
steam's demise. The Tichy column will either reside in the SV yards,
next to the diesel facilities, or perhaps on the main, at the end of
the passenger station platform.
The Tichy kit has some beautiful die work, but there are a couple of
problems with it that are discernable from published photographs of the
prototype. For one, the counterweights hanging along the back of the
column are incorrect, and a handle to facilitate turning the water
column is missing from the model. These will be addressed as we come to
them.
DETAILING & MODIFICATIONS
The Concrete Pad
The Tichy kit comes with
a cast plastic concrete pad, but I much prefer concrete that's
represented by plaster whenever possible--it can be painted and aged
much more realistically. Therefore, the project began by making a
mold of
the pad so it could be reproduced in plaster. First, the styrene pad
was
MEK'd (any styrene solvent will do, however) to a base of .060"
styrene, about a 1/2" larger all around than the pad casting itself.
The entire assembly was then given a light coating of oil as a
mold release (wiping most of it off), and finally, some clear silicon
calking was squeezed carefully onto the part. This isn't the best way
to make a mold, but for something simple, I've had good luck in the
past. The
important part is to work the silicon into the grate area and around
the joint of the pad and sheet styrene base to avoid air bubbles. My
mold actually has a fair sized air bubble near the mounting point for
the column base, but it was simple enough to carve off and sand smooth.
When casting, you'll want to be certain that the resulting part remains
flat: watch the plaster until it sets to a mud-like consistancy, place
a flat surface against the bottom of the mold and flip it over to
continue setting. Finally, set a weight on top to hold the mold flat.
The finish on the pad seen in the photos at the top of the page is
actually a repaint. This was necessary when a brush with alcohol
touched the painted pad that had caught some Dullcoat overspray
intended mostly for the column itself, leaving
a distinct and unrepairable pattern in the weathered finish.
(Alcohol and Dullcoat don't mix well, even after the Dullcoat is dry.
Mike Rose uses this effect quite nicely in ageing some contemporary
freight cars, but that's another story...) This
happend after the column was alread installed, so the pad had to be
painted around the column and grate.
The original finish (shown below) was a very light tannish/gray mix of
Tamiya acrylics (a much lighter mix than it may appear in the photos,
where additional weathering has been added), weathered with a very thin
raw umber and black wash of
artist's oils applied over the acrylic base color, with some burnt
sienna (for rust). After everything had dried, it was given a wash
of black leather dye, heavily diluted with 91% alcohol. This settled in
the low spots to give some relief.
The original paint and weathering, using an
airbrushed acrylic base color, with artist's oils and a final shoe
dye/alcohol wash.
The
distressing of the concrete pad was done
mostly by digging at the edges with a
straight pin chucked into a pin vise. This replicates the way real
concrete is distressed, with small chunks getting knocked off edges.
Because the pad is probably thiry to forty or more years old, the sharp
edges were also taken off all the way around with a sanding block. This
was very subtle--you don't want to round the edges too much, just take
off the very sharpest corners.
The base was repainted solely with artist's oils, and is shown below. If you haven't yet
worked with oils for weathering but would like to try it, I'd suggest
casting an extra base for a practice piece. Oils are great to
work with because the pigments are extremely fine and therefore, a
layer of weathering is very, very thin while remaining opaque, and the
oils themselves remain workable for much longer than acrylics. The
description of how the coloration was achieved follows, but some
practice makes it all fall into place.
The repainted base, completely done with artist's oils.
Small dabs
of ivory white, lamp black and raw umber were mixed to an off-white
warm gray for the base color. Small amounts of the individual colors
(hint: white was the primary color used) were placed onto a 2-3" square
mixing surface and mixed together using
oderless turpentine to achieve a paint-like consistancy. (The mixing
was
not thorough, as a slight variation in color is desirable.) This was
painted onto the base, and more thinner added so that the entire base
was quite wet. This helped blend the edges of the incompletely mixed
colors. After the base color dried, some burnt sienna, mixed here and
there during application with some very thinned black and/or raw umber,
was added sporadically to represent rust washed down over the years
from the water
column. I was going to do the alcohol/shoe dye wash at this point, but
decided
it wasn't needed, and left it at this stage.
In order to facilitate attaching the column to the painted plaster
base, the raised circle on the pad was drilled out with a 7/64" drill.
A piece of .080" square Evergreen styrene will just fit this hole. A
piece was inserted and cut to extend above the pad by just slightly
less than the available space in the hollow column base. Some 5 min
exoxy was forced into the hole from the underside of the pad to fill
the gaps around the styrene post, and allowed to set. When time comes
to mount the column, a dab of expoxy can be applied to the top of the
post, to bond with the inside surface of the column base. The result
will be a much stronger bond than trying to glue the column to the
plaster pad.
The Column
The column casting had some relatively thick
flash in the area highlighted by yellow in the photo below. The one other water
column kit the local shop had in stock also had this same flash, so it
may be a common problem.
(The area highlighted in pink looks in the photo as if there may be
flash there, too, but it's really just a shadow.) Several passes
with a sharp #11 Xacto blade were needed to remove the flash.
This is a good place to clarify a couple of things that are not
explained in the kit instructions. While they instruct to add pieces of
.010"
wire to run from the column base up the sides of the column, they do
not explain where to terminate these wires. There is an
indentation similar to the one highlighted by the blue circle on each
side of the column, and one on the rear. Each wire terminates in one of
these. They are actually too small to fully accept
the wires, however, so carve them out to fit now before you proceed any
further with assembly. Discovering these are too small after you've
already assembled and perhaps pre-painted the column will make the
remedy more difficult.
I also drilled out the end of the spout by starting with a 1/16" pilot
hole, then enlarging it to nearly the full size of the spout end with a
larger drill.
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Use some nippers to
remove the kit parts from the sprue. Assemble the column, making sure
everything is straight and true, and that the gaps in the pipe joints
along the column are perfectly aligned, as the .010" wire pieces must
all pass through these gaps.
Pivot Handle
The prototype column pivots by way of a handle that is attached to a
collar around the column base. The handle hinges up into a horizontal
position for use. The collar is included, however the handle is not.
The handle was made from a piece of .005" x .015" styrene, .015" wide
at the top, tapering slightly to the bottom. It was then Cyanopoxied it
to the side of the collar. The hinge for the handle is made from a
small rectangle of styrene attached to the collar at the top of the
handle. (OK, true confession time: the handle in the photo is mounted
just a bit off side, and a bit high. Photographs show it centered on
the collar just below the wire that terminates in the top of the
collar.)
The scratch-built pivot
handle and hinge attached to the collar. (The handle is actually a bit
short when compared to the prototype.) The texture you see on the
base casting will be addressed in painting and weathering the column,
below.
Here's a shot of a
prototype Sheffield/FM water column base. This is a crop from a Jim
Shaughnessy photograph in his book The Rutland Road, a favorite book
in my collection. You can order The Rutland Road, a replacement dust
cover for it, or obtain a copy of his Delaware & Hudson book directly from Jim. Photograph
used with permission of the author/photographer.
Copyright, Jim Shaughnessy.
Spout Counterweights
One of the most glaring errors, but pretty simple to
rectify, is the hanging counterweight casting that rests against the
back of the column. The Tichy casting is a pair of weight stacks held
together by plates at the top and bottom of the stacks, with one cable
suspending the entire unit. All photographs I've seen have two
separate stacks of weights, each suspended by a separate cable. The
worst detail of this part is the cast-on stand-off pegs, the coarse
rendering of these being at odds with the delicacy of the rest of the
kit's detailing. This entire part was replaced with a more prototypical
set of counterweights, but more on that later.
Column paint (MM
German Silver Metallic)
Paint texture
Weathering: Pastel
Chalks, artist's oils
Counterweight
Mods
.
Ron Hildebrand
Photographs were
made with a Nikon D1x, and a Micro-Nikkor 60mm f2.8 lens, and are
Copyright Ron Hildebrand, 2004.
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