A few musings on what has been occupying some of my time recently – in fact quite a lot more of it than I realise. I’ve slowly been putting together the structure for the goods shed at Parkstone. The basic structure has been done and the walls clad in brickwork (the various bits lying behind the shed structure!). I now need to turn to the roof.
However what has taken some time to do is firstly the windows. The openings are fine and moderately square but creating the glazed part with the glazing bars has proved somewhat time consuming and fiddly. I sincerely hope that the arched window in the end of the building is the last arched window I ever build! I did look a York modelmaking and Slaters to see if any of their windows would fit but sadly they aren’t the right dimensions or spacing of the glazing bars. I have even considered learning how to design an etch so I could get the windows etched rather than having to fiddle around with ever smaller bits of microstrip. Anyhow they’re done and are shown in the photo below together with the second time consuming project – the crane.
There are no photos available of the interior of Parkstone but any goods shed of that size would have had at least one crane. So I felt it necessary to have a crane particularly as some of the doors will be open so that you can see inside. I’ve managed to find a picture or two of LSWR type cranes and having started on it I wondered if I could actually make the thing work? But for having to make every bit by hand from plasticard or brass it nearly does. There are two reasons why it doesn’t work – one is that I wasn’t concentrating and glued the shaft at the bottom to its housing – and I am not making them again, and the second is that the gears – which are all hand carved and toothed – are not perfectly circular and don’t mesh terribly well. Perhaps I do need to learn to etch design and then I could have added these to the etch! I still think it is possible to make a working crane, the only other issue to solve is creating enough friction between the bottom winding set and the rope which turns the top wheel.
Obviously it’s not finished yet as it needs the various wires and a hook but it’s ready to be painted – I just hope someone actually notices it once it’s in the shed – however I know it’s there and it wouldn’t be right without it.
ChrisH