Furness Vale Station

It was never an uplifting experience waiting for a train at the village station. There was, however, a waiting room with a blazing coal fire, popping gas lamps and artistic travel posters to look at. Irene was there behind her little window, ready to sell you a return to Stockport or to report on how late the train would be. A porter might be sweeping the platform or tending the geraniums and fellow passengers sitting on the bench seats were all too ready for a gossip.

As with so many small stations, all this has been swept away and we are left with small glazed shelters which offer little respite from the weather and only a few small perches on which to rest.

In wiching to re-create the original station, I might have chosen to build a physical model. This would have been very time consuming and would have presented storage problems. Choosing a Google Sketchup model may be second best but it did allow me to  represent our local sation as it appeared in the early 1960's.

The images below are from the digital model and are followed by a link to an animated walk through.

 

 

 http://youtu.be/-hbF5t0zMow

Errwood Hall

The picturesque and remote Goyt Valley lies to the North West of Buxton and has for a long time been a popular destination for visitors.   It was here in 1840 that Errwood Hall was built for the wealthy Grimshaw family. In 1930, the last of the family to live there, Mrs Mary Gosseling, died.  The contents of the hall were sold and the property was bought by Stockport Corporation. For a short while, the house served as a youth hostel but in 1934 it was demolished.  Much of the land was to be flooded with the creation of Errwood reservoir and the house was considered unviable.

A few remains are still to be seen

A number of photographs of the hall are available and from these, in conjunction with large scale maps, I have created a reconstruction using Google Sketchup.

A short walk through of the model is available on you tube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Xc_BeXwMU8&noredirect=1

Oldham Central Masjid

The Oldham Central Masjid needed to raise funds from the local community to finance construction of the new mosque. A model was required to demonstrate the design and location.  The model was constructed at 1:200 scale and included lighting inside and at the top of the minaret.

 

I build models from polystyrene sheet of varying thicknesses. Whilst this is a great medium for this purpose it can not be painted directly to represent brickwork. I overcome this by bonding paper to the surface of the plastic. This is then scribed to represent brick courses and given washes of water colour until the right tone is achieved. I often pick out a number of individual bricks in a varied shades to break the uniformity. This is more relevant when a brick such as a multi is specified.

 

Components are assembled using a plastic solvent. This gives a clean, strong join.

 

Because of it's design, the dome had to be fashioned by hand. A cylindrical block of solid plastic was carved, scraped and sanded to achieve the correct profile. The vertical sides with windows cut out were fashioned from sheet plastic cuved to shape. 

 

The smaller domes were fashioned in a similar way. The crescents were fashioned from small pieces of thin styrene.

 

The model is illuminated by a number of tiny low voltage bulbs. A few cars and people add a finishing touch

Construction of the Mosque is now well advanced and progress can be followed on the gallery section of their website : http://oldhamcentralmasjid.org.uk/index.htm

A new home

A Blackpool businessman proposed rebuilding his bungalow home which had been extended several times. The first stage was to be construction of the coach house style, semi detached building where he would live during construction of the main house. He comissioned the construction of a 1:100 scale model, mainly to convince his wife of his proposals.
To personalise the model, I hand built a model of his car showing the correct registration number.

 

 

High Street Bollington

The scheme to build houses at the top of High Street in Bollington met with local opposition as the proposal involved building on a pub car park and on open, tree covered land.  I was commissioned to build a model and the photographs below show some of the construction stages.

 

The "context" buildings are finished in white. windows and doors shown simply as recesses. 

The new buildings are to be fully detailed and finished in colour

 

Most of bollington is stone built and the models reflect this.

 

 

Some of the topography is formed from card, particularly the roadways.

 

The remainder of the terrain is formed from material such as expanded polystyrene and covered with smooth plaster. When complete, it is finished with simulated grass.

 

The completed model includes a number of large trees which are fashioned by hand. Foliage is a commercially available product.

 

A few other details such as cars and a phone box add a splash of colour and a sense of scale.

 

Narrowboats

 

These 1:76 scale narrowboats were built as a "labour of love".  The models are entirely handbuilt and the hulls are carved from solid plastic. These boats are highly detailed and perhaps the hardest job involved hand painting the lettering and "rose and castle" decoration.

 

The boats carry fictitious names but are finished in traditional working boat style.

 

Adobe Photoshop allowed me to "launch" a boat into our local canal, the Peak Forest. In the photo below "Gazelle" approaches Bang's footbridge in Furness Vale.