How I scratch built three viaduct arches on a junction

i've been working on it all year but channel viaduct is finally finished these last three arches have presented quite a few problems but i got there in the end and i think they look fantastic here's how i made them so after working on this viaduct for seven months i thought these final three arches would be easy but they weren't they had quite a few challenges in them not only are they on a junction i also had problems with the buttresses and several problems with my varnish as well in this video i'm going to show you what's in all how i built these final three arches and completed the viaducted chandwell this is chandwell where i'm scratch building a city viaduct layout in engage if you want to follow along please subscribe so it's finally time to finish the viaduct there's just enough room here to get three more archers in but there is a slight problem because this is where the junction is the track is widening from right to left and also we have a curve at the front there which means that not only the arches getting wider they're not parallel to each other either i considered ditching the archers and just having an embankment but then i thought i'd come up with this have actually six independent archers and have them join in the middle probably by some kind of vaulted ceiling i don't know if this is prototypical but i have seen some examples for example in brixton i just don't know what it's like underneath so i'm just going to build it and see what it turns out like i build my arches in boxes so i'm going to need six boxes for these three arches so here are all the bits needed to make the six boxes let's get gluing them together when it comes to gluing together these things into a box with this on the front and this on the side there isn't much space for any kind of clamps to hold the things down straight and to get proper right angles so instead of using my normal technique of using pva with magnetic clamps what i do is i essentially get it by eye into exactly the right place on the edge and then just drip a little bit of very liquid super glue just along the edge and then you essentially hold it for one or two seconds and the glue grips and then it's done this is a very good way of rapidly constructing a lot of boxes like this so what you'll see me do is i will hold all the piece in place get it exactly straight and then just drip one two three drops of super glue on and then hold it and that's all there is to it takes about five minutes maybe a bit less so there's one done now let's go and make five more so six boxes made now let's try and get them arranged under the layout to see if this is going to work okay then so under the layout they look fine it's going to be okay but i need to put the arch underside on the actual bricks but i need to get them in the right position first and i'm not entirely sure how to do that so i've come up with this i've tightly sellotaped a piece of standard a4 paper onto the underneath of the track bed and then i'm going to individually place each arch into the correct location and super glue it up onto the paper then the idea is i'll cut the cellotape off and slide the whole thing out so i've got no idea if this is going to work or not what the plan is just to put some super glue along here and then put the whole thing up onto the top of the paper so it sticks and holds its position relative to all of the others so there we go they're all in place now what we need to do is get these out of here and you'll see i've got about five millimeters to play with so i'll cut the sellotape i'll slide them out i'll see what we're left with [Music] and there we go they're stuck together and they're in the right kind of position i think this might work so let's put the insides on so i've covered the inside of the arches in the scale scenes dark brown brick texture and you can see here that the back of the viaduct it's got larger gaps between the arches here and here but round on the front they're put up to each other because this is the narrowest part of the piers my plan is just to cover this top bit in glue and then slide it in and push it up underneath the bottom of the track bed i've got a small modification to make first which is to put a hole in the top of one of the arches so that the piano wire rod for the points can go through so to do that i've got to get the arches in exactly the right place first this is quite a precision job needed to all line up and look as good as possible for both the front and the back so i'll spend some time doing that mark the location of the arches and then make the point rod hall adjustable [Music] i'm quite happy with that so let's make a start making the hole is really easy i just put the piano wire i think it's 1.3 millimeter through the hole in the tie bar and then push this pierces the top of the arch and then i can just take it out and make it into a proper slot so there's the hole we've made all we need to do now is with the scalpel we're going to slice open the top of the arch around the hole and make it into a wider slot so there's enough space for the points to change with the rod going through the bottom so there we are a neat hole in the top and it's big enough so that the rods will work so i'm going to put it back underneath now give it a test it falls well i'll color the exposed edges in with the marker and then we can start gluing the piece into place i simply take the piano wire again push it through the point now it goes all the way through the arch all the way through the baseboard and into the void underneath where the servos will go simply then put my hand underneath and try and wiggle it from side to side and make sure that the point works and although i didn't capture it on the camera here it works [Music] now all i do is i put glue along the top push it underneath the track bed and then jack it up into the right position on little strips of card make sure it's exactly how i want it there's mistakes here can cause problems later on it looks okay we can carry on from here so i glue the front and the back into place and then fold around the flaps of the inner arch edge pieces using a pen just to cover up any exposed edges i think it's starting to look really good now onto the buttresses so we're going to have two buttresses quite close together at the front here they're made simply by gluing two pieces of two millimeter card back to back there's a bit more of a challenge on this side this iron girder bridge the girders are encased in their buttresses and the buttresses are actually rather large i built it based upon one near burley and waffedale so what i need to do is build the buttress in such a way that it can encase the girder and try and make it look like the one i built over a year ago on the other side so i started with the layers of two millimeter card what i need to do now is build out a protrusion on the top so that it can encase the girder the front of the viaduct is also back about a millimeter from the front of the girder bridge so i'm going to have to add an extra little padding piece down the left hand side just so that it fits properly so i've ended up with this it's the standard buttress the strip down the left hand side and a big protrusion sticking off the top when this is put into place it wraps and encases that girder really well and i think it's going to look good once the capping piece is on it's going to look fine it's going to look just like the original i'm basing it on and more importantly it's going to look like the one on the left so what we need to do now is wrap it in the scale scene's dark random ashlar texture to match the rest of the viaduct and then get it into place i use the exact same techniques i do for most of my other buttresses make sure that the edges are straight and flat first and then simply wrap it in the paper i obviously have to cut a little bit for the protrusion but what happens is we end up with a perfectly wrapped piece like this and this should go onto the layout and fit just nicely let's have a look yep it goes into place there are no gaps and in case it's that good or really nice yeah pleased with that now i'll do one at the back as well so now that the buttresses are in place it's time to add the inner walls of the arches instead of putting one large piece of wall through i'm chopping them in half this is just basically the scale scenes papers wrapped around a piece of cereal packet by chopping them in half and having them jointed in the middle i'm hoping that those arches that are made up of two pieces going in each direction across the junction should become obvious i'm hoping that's how it works so let's have a look they don't look too bad and the ones that are wider and therefore have more of a joint definitely looked so jointed in the middle so it's the effect i was after it's quite subtle and there's a slight bend to the card as well i think i used too thin card but it's okay once the rest of the buildings were around the viaduct it'll hardly ever be noticeable anywhere so i'm not sure if it was worth the effort that i went to but they're in place and they're looking good so all i need to do now is get the ballast down before that though i've noticed this problem i vanished the viaduct the same way as i have done the rest of it but today for some reason it's decided to leave this spludge it looks as though there was a smudge of pva that maybe hadn't dried properly or something it's never happened before but today it has i've got this distinct light circular patch that i can't get rid of i don't know what i'm going to do about it so i'm going to see if i can try and paint over it somehow i really don't want to have to cover the front of the viaduct again so i took various shades of brown paint and a little bit of black dappled it on with my paintbrush then wiped it off again with a bit of cloth and repeated the process a few times and although the camera's picked up as quite a red brown to the naked eye this is almost the same color especially from a normal viewing distance you can't tell it's there at all so the circular patch is gone and i'm really pleased with the results so thankfully i've got away with it so now i can carry on with the ballasting so i mix up some milliput and then push it into the gaps and between the wall and the wood track bed this just gives the ballast something firm to be put on top of and prevents the water dropping down onto the inside of the viaduct once i apply it to the ballast [Music] i'll let that dry for 24 hours and then it dries absolutely rock hard this stuff is hard to store and i think it's wonderful so that's sealed up the gaps quite nicely so i can carry on with the ballasting now and that's it i'm done i've just finished applying the glue to the ballast and i've got the ballast now as flat and as neat as i possibly could and got it glued down and i hate this part of the job because i'm always scared that the water that i've used on the ballast will somehow warp the card so i've vanished it well i've covered it well i've tried it off as best i can so hopefully everything will dry nicely but um i'm really pleased it looks really good and it's been a bit of a challenge this one i found these three arches quite a tough thing anything that could go wrong seem to have gone wrong but they've turned out okay and with that seven months hard work on this viaduct is complete i'm really really pleased with how it's come out there's quite a few issues and problems with the entire viaduct and i'm actually going to make a video on that and coming up in the next couple of weeks and basically the mistakes i've made and how you can avoid them but on the whole i think it's absolutely wonderful i'm really pleased with how it's turned out i hope you've enjoyed watching the development of the viaduct there's still an awful lot more to come i've got an entire inner city to make thanks for watching and if you want to carry on and follow along with me please do press that class 47 logo down there and subscribe um until then thanks for watching and i'll see you again

Channel: Chandwell

Views: 2,979

Keywords: N Gauge, Modern Image, Scratch Build, Card, Model Railway, N Scale, Layout, Viaduct

Id: iwLOlXcBIvQ

Length: 13min 27sec (807 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 15 2020