LSWR Water Tower - Finishing Touches

Having shuffled the station building along to join its garden the water tower was located in the allocated space between the bridge embankment and station building.

The finishing landscape touches are to fill a small embankment void left by the station building and to make and fit walls and doors each end of the alley way.

My eye is drawn to the windows in the water tower. Regrettably, ink jet printing of the glass frames has not worked very well. I'll need to review that method to see if I can bolden them as they are far too insignificant. They are BR(S) building cream in colour embossed with black to give depth and show up best if looking head on to the windows or with a white background behind.

The embankment void is filled with polystyrene carved to fit, painted green and covered with some long grass (jute carpet underlay) that was salvaged from the wasteland rework.

Great fun ensued making the walls and doors for the alley way in the same manner as the water tower (cardboard modelling). Using photographs of real, weathered doors and walls and manipulating them in graphic editing software produces a much more realistic finish than emulating them artistically, simply because they are the real thing reduced in size. Flat finishes are to be avoided. The trick is to use layers of paper and card to give relief. The only thing missing is relief of the brickwork itself to represent the mortar layers. However, even this can be emulated if you are willing to lay individual paper bricks. For an easier life, embossed styrene has the edge over cardboard modelling in this respect. You can see the difference in the photo as the bridge is made with embossed styrene sheet.

I'm not in favour of one technology over the other. Each has their merits and some of my models have been created with a mix of wood, styrene and card. The pleasure comes from making out of something plain and flat a pretty, 3 dimensional object that is based on reality.

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