The other Scalescenes Christmas Card

Back to Scalescenes. The other Scalescenes Christmas card was made for my Mum. She is very creative and makes a lot of her own cards, employing all sorts of skills and techniques. So no pressure then.


I decided to use the Garage Kit T017 and essentially built it as per the instructions. The same snowy glitter effect was used as that on the Cinema card but with the addition of icicles. These were made from clear plastic packing material cut into thin triangles of varying sizes and lengths, then coated with a glittery version of the snow effect. When dry they were glued to appropriate edges and gutters for effect.

I used the garage as I had the idea to put Santa's sleigh on the forecourt. The only problem of course was that I had to build the sleigh from scratch and quickly. The side of the sleigh was drawn out on plastic card and then two thicknesses cut out at the same time producing two blanks. Straight spacers between the sides were added and allowed to dry before adding the outer body. This was gently curved by hand and then one end glued in place. Once dry it was gradually curved and glued in place a little at a time and then excess material trimmed back. Pipes, handles and fittings from the scrap box were then used to make the lights, gauges and rocket engines.

Finally the figures were added. Santa was a business man with his coat extended, waist line increased and a pointy hat added, all tiny amounts of green modelling putty. The elf was a European station guard with paddle, which became a lollipop. He was cut off at the knees and glued back on his boots to reduce his height and a pointy hat added, again with green modelling putty. Finally I had some ground crew brought second hand at a show and employed a couple of them as mechanics trying to fix the sleigh. There was no time to add interior detail to the garage but fortunately the viewers focus is on the sleigh outside. I am pleased to say that Mum was delighted with the results.

Scalescenes Christmas Cards

No Scalescenes don't do Christmas cards but with the festive season upon me I decided to turn two of their kits into cards with a difference. It was also nice to be able to build a couple of the Scalescenes kits that normally wouldn't have a need for on my layout. 

The first Christmas card utilised the Low Relief Cinema kit T006. I regularly go to the cinema with a friend of mine and thought this would be an ideal theme, as long as I could make it look Christmasy enough.

As usual it was a great kit to build and the options are excellent. It's almost two kits in one as you can build it as a cinema or shop, with a brick or block faced building. The centre aperture in the upper section becomes the stairwell and lifts for the shop and it comes with a variety of popular high street names for the entrance. The cinema also comes with several period names and styles, from pre-war to modern day. There is also a selection of film posters to suit the various decades since the war. The clever bit is that while the Scalescene's Pdf's are protected from editing, the designer John Whiffen has enabled a clever little facility to allow the reader to add their own text above the entrance. While this is meant to be for the film of choice it was an ideal opportunity to add a Christmas greeting.

 

As usual the kit went together very well and the instructions were very clear. The only glitch I had was the opening in the stone block frontage that goes around the entrance. Although I made it to the correct size, once wrapped around the building there was a large gap between the walls and the doors. After some head scratching and double checking it became apparent that it was the material I was using and not the kit that was at fault. Scalescenes recommend 2mm greyboard and the link to a supplier listed theirs as 2300 microns, which I presume is 2.3mm. I was using regular mount board from the art shop which was only around 1.7mm. It was the slimness of this mount board of up to half a millimetre that was causing the problem. However, all was not lost as I simply printed the required pages again and created a new building front with a slightly narrower aperture for the doors. It's worth noting that the wall coverings in these kits wrap around the edges of  the windows and doors, so the fact that I made the opening a little smaller didn't mean I had bare card exposed down each side.

As a personal touch I didn't use the film posters supplied with the kit but went to Flixter and downloaded the film posters of what we had seen over the last year. I then scaled these to size in Word, printed them off and cut them out. Colouring the edges of course as all the borders were black.

Next came the snow. I wanted the snow to have volume, look realistic but to also have that Christmas sparkle. Fortunately my mother is an avid card maker and gave me three different samples of snow and sparkle effects. One was like very fine scenic scatter, one tiny sparkly snow and one more like a glitter. I sampled them all and none of them gave the effect I was looking for. The answer was to mix all three together, so it had volume, whiteness and sparkle. I avidly applied PVA to all the top surfaces and edges and carefully added the scatter before turning in for the night. I though it look great, however I didn't know it at the time but I had made a newbie mistake. The snow was applied to the white PVA which acted like a primer base but by the morning the PVA had dried and was now translucence, so the nice white snow on the pavement was now a dirty grey! It was very disappointing and I prevaricated for some time as to what course of action to take. It was too horrible to leave as it was and too delicate scrape off, so I decided to paint all the snow white and then re-flock everything. To my surprise this turned out for the best, the snow was now very white and the second layer gave it added volume.

The final touches were to add two people, a bus stop and a greeting on the back in the form of two Christmas themed cinema tickets. Interestingly these are original Airfix figures and not the Dapol figures. Although they are fundamentally the same their size and the detail is slightly different. The Dapol figures still have detail, so I don't think it's the original mould that has just started to wear, it is more like the originals have been copied and new tooling used.

What was the other card? It was the garage, again covered in snow but this time with icicles and Santa's sleigh broken down outside. I hope to cover this in my next article, so watch this space.

Scalescenes Tunnel

Blog 2

 

The second Scalescenes project attempted was the tunnel mouth. I downloaded the red brick version, being typical of the Southern Region I am modelling. What's nice about the Scalescene kits is that they are produced in different finishes, which not only includes different colours of bricks but various stone finishes as well. There are also four different curves for the aperture, plain arch and oval, for single or double track layouts.

The kit went together very well except the tunnel section which I found a bit fiddly. As you can see from the photos first you cut out the tunnel aperture, then the tunnel section, scoring slots in the back so it will curve (the dashed red lines) and then gluing the brick paper to what will be the inside.

The problem I had with this was the tunnel section is made of thick card an wants to spring open or twist. The only way to avoid this is to make the scores very deep but then it can become flimsy or you can end up cutting right trough the card. The second problem was the brick liner. The instructions advise you to glue on the brick paper and work in a curve pushing out bubbles and creases from the centre. Having used Prit Stick this grabbed very quickly, preventing movement and resulting in horrible creases on the inside of the tunnel.

My solution, after printing the appropriate page again, was to produce the tunnel section in plain card and then tape in the tunnel mouth cut out as a former. This helped to keep the tunnel section curved and straight. The tunnel face was then glued on and again temporarily taped with Tamiya masking tape to hold it in place.

Once dry the tape was removed and it was then far easier to glue in the brick paper with the correct curve already in place. The photo below shows the tunnel edging bricks being glued down on the tunnel face neatly hiding any join. You can see the excess tunnel liner at the bottom, which is still to be trimmed off. Why so long? Well it has to fit double track tunnels as well the single track version I was building.

The rest of the kit was very straight forward and went together beautifully. One big tip I would give anyone thinking of making cardboard kits though is to colour in the edges. The Metcalfe kits are very nice but time and again I see pictures in magazines where all the edges and corners of the red brick walls are clearly grey card. If the edge is white paper then effect is even worse. It's a very simple process to colour them in and only takes a few minutes to complete. I use watered down acrylics, as I paint a lot of models and I can get a good colour match. However coloured pencils, water colours and felt tip pens can be just as effective. My only word of caution is that card can be very absorbent and can draw the ink out of felt tip pens very quickly, so try them on a piece of scrap first. The wet colour can also look too dark, so give it time to dry out.

A First Look at Scalescenes

A First Look at Scalescenes

My railway club is building a 00 layout with a long stretch of terraced houses lining the back scene. The intention was to detail Metcalfe kits with gutters, slate roofs, panelled doors, letterboxes, lintels and soil pipes. However, once I had drawn up a template of the road and worked out how many kits were needed I was rather stunned. It turned out it was going to take in excess of thirty! Detailing that many kits was ok but the cost to the club was going to be prohibitive. On top of that the road is on a slight curve so the shops and houses will need to be tapered to form a continual terrace, even with the prudent inclusion of alleyways and the occasional detached building. Adapting a pre-cut kit in this way is not necessarily an easy thing and mistakes can costly if you get it wrong. This led me to look at the Scalescene kits, which often feature in the Hornby Model Railway magazine.

There is a full range of both railway and domestic buildings including terraced houses and shops to suit our layout. For those of you who do not know about these kits, you purchase and download the PDF file and can then print the kit or parts of the kit as many times as you like. The drawbacks are the cost of printer ink and that you have to glue the printouts to card and cut out the parts, while the Metcalfe kits are all pre cut. However, it also means you can print individual pages for parts, so should I make a mistake tapering a house I can possibly get away with just remaking one or two walls. I can also print them fairly inexpensively in black and white on a laser printer to mock up the shops and houses and see how they will look on the actual layout. Whether I stick to this or not has to be seen, as building around 60 properties twice over may prove too much.

At this point you are probably asking why, if you are talking about terraced houses, have you got pictures of a low relief warehouse on the blog? Well before I jumped in and started buying things I wanted to try out a kit to see how easy they are to build. Fortunately Scalescenes provides a couple of kits on their web site that are free to download and try out, the low relief warehouse being one of them.

I followed the guidance on the site that gives you hints and tips on materials and was very surprised how enjoyable and easy it was to put together. The instructions are very clear and have plenty of graphic illustrations and although the kit is free it comes with a number of different company and warning signs to suit different uses and eras. I printed the kit on photo matt paper as this is a little thicker than standard letter paper, takes the glue better and is very white, so the colours are strong and vivid (you should see the new recycled paper we have at work it’s a like a used dishcloth). It’s more expensive of course but you can find it for around £7.00 for 100 sheets.

I have since bought and built some of the other kits and they will feature in later articles but I have to say that I am very impressed with the kits and would thoroughly recommend them to anyone thinking of trying them out. After all, the warehouse, small goods store and inspection pit are free, so what have you got to loose?