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Saturday 8 April 2017

Project 17 - Water Tower

The water tower is a fairly close representation of the Swanage loco yard tower as it existed about 1958. Sometime after and before 1962 the gable end was modified or replaced and the ladder turned 90 degrees with a standing platform added at its top. The tower was demolished after the last steam engine service ran in 1967.

The tower model is made from card with decorative paper overlays. The filler hose is a paper tube, the ladder is DIY 3D printed and the LED lamp sourced from China. The hut alongside is corrugated styrene with a door reclaimed from an old Airfix signal box.

The tower is fixed to the base with 1mm wire glued into two corners. These pass through the baseboard and are bent over in an arc at the rear to hold the tower tight to the baseboard. If I need to remove the tower I just bend the wires straight again. The coaling platform and corrugated hut are glued to the baseboard.

There is quite a bit of detail added to this side of the tower, as the prototype, and I am particularly pleased with the water tap model that I made.

The end of the pipe (copper wire) was bent over to form the spout. Thinner wire was then wrapped around to make the tap body and the two ends of it bent upright and 90 degrees to form the handle. Solder was then applied to the 'body' to smooth over the thin wire wrap and bulk it up.
 

The last photo shows a night scene with the lamp lit. The starry sky is a stitched image that is not part of the model layout. There is a lot of landscape scenery to add around this installation in due course.

To Part 13.

To Part 1.

3 comments:

Mikkel said...

Hello David, just wanted to say thanks for the tip on making a tap. I'll be needing one for a stable block and remembered seeing your post.

It's all looking really good. The buildings match up very well and create a whole, I think.

I like the backscene shown in your latest post, of the real thing. Very effective, been taking more notes on that.

David Smith said...

Thanks Mikkel, You may have read in an earlier post that your micro layouts were an inspiration for me to build Swanage Loco Yard. It's taking much longer to create than I imagined.

Mikkel said...

Thanks David, I'm glad if it's been of use. Small layouts seem so much more manageable, I find. But they still take ages to build for some reason :-)

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