Project 16 - Station Car Park

At Crewkerne the car park slopes slightly from the station building to the siding, or maybe the siding is on a rise that eases the car park gradient(?) On the model however, the siding is flat and the car park gradient is more severe, falling about 16mm from top to bottom. I was concerned that the severity would look unrealistic but having completed the job it is not too bad at all and is really only noticeable when a car is placed on the slope.

There is a goods yard entrance gate to make and fit to this end (photo right) of the car park and being on the gradient I wonder how that will look.

The next concern was how difficult it would be to form the gradient, which is not uniform over its length. The groundwork is polystyrene foam packaging. Anyone who has tried to sculpt polystyrene foam with a hot wire cutter will know its not easy to keep a straight line but by using strips of wood as packing guides either side of the foam and running the wire along them a straight cut is easily made including changes in gradient. (Pity I did not take a photo to explain this technique better).

With the foam laid I needed to cover the joins and surface overall. Perusing the shelves at Wickes for a suitable filler I came across their own brand of Wood Filler in a handy size pot. Never used this before but it worked a treat. A nice smooth paste that fills to 5mm (deeper and you need to layer it letting it dry between layers). I laid it on and smoothed it over with an old kitchen carving knife. It drys to a hard shell and is quite tough to sandpaper smooth (can be done with effort but best to get the surface as smooth as possible when applying it.) When dry it was painted with Wickes Urban Nights grey emulsion.

The fence is composed of concrete posts and six wires. Posts are matchsticks 0.6mm drilled for the wires and painted a concrete colour. The wires are copper tinsel from a 7/0.2 cable.









 

Postscript

Subsequently I made the goods yard gate. It took me ages to find a photo of the real gate. After lengthy web searches I found a photograph of it in one of my railway books! 






To Part 24.

To Part 1.