Coalbridge Street: Progress on Clark’s Mill…

Whilst the Paddington period of a layouts development is charming, translating the cereal packet structures to plastic is an important milestone and one that feels like real progress…

On Coalbridge Street lies Clark’s Mill. Expansion over the decades has brought their latest rail served warehouse right up to the street and railroad. Served by a kick back from Langton’s yard the mill sees service throughout the week, sometimes two cars a day.

 

The road surface added before Christmas was deliberately formed with cut outs to allow the plastic permanent structures to be embedded without a gap around their base. I began with the office as a way to get my eye back into HO after a few weeks in N. The core was fabricated in 40thou (1mm) styrene. Slaters ship-lap planking was cut and fitted to the upper sides once recesses had been planned for the doors and windows, laminated on with superglue to avoid later warping.

 

60 thou (1.5mm) was selected for the main structure to add a little extra rigidity. This was overlaid with Slaters vertical planking. The same 60 thou material was used to add the roof to each part, and an internal wall inside the warehouse itself. This will need detailing up before I paint it, but I ran out of time. A selection of Evergreen extrusions were used to add the soffits and corners (seen in white in the first image) and a step for the office door.

Close clearance indeed - with the roof in place a quick running session followed to check there were no problems. Whilst the East Sussex 40ft car didn’t rub it was insanely close so a little extra wriggle room was added by shaving the corner of the roof slightly! I wanted it close though - for both a feeling of intimacy in the scene as well as hiding the exit to the fiddle yard.

Structure building is not my favourite part of layout creation but once started it’s easy to get into a groove with it and I might use that feeling to push on with the same basic carcass for the Langton’s builders merchants office on the other end of the layout - before painting and detailing Clark’s… perhaps then the last few structures could be a project for Denton Road… With that though, wherever you are and whatever you’ve been up to I hope you had a good weekend. Until next time, more soon…

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