R. Dwan & Co

The second version of the factory for R. Dwan & Co is coming along nicely.

R. Dwan New Factory

I came to the conclusion that my buildings were not taking full advantage of N Gauge so I decided to give R. Dwan & Co a better building 180'-0" long i.e. 360mm. I stumbled across a drawing of a North Light as produced by The Standard Patent Glazing Co and used this to produce a simple outline for one section which was read up into Model Builder as a gif and then replicated. Once the roof is sheeted and glazed it should look OK

R. Dwan & Co. Ltd.

There was a problem with the building as the upper floor not only has very small windows but a low ceiling height. For this reason it was decided to modify the roof to a North Light saw tooth design which will address both of these problems plus make it possible to add a very large extractor fan above the dye testing lab. This should all help to improve the working conditions on the upper floor

R. Dwan & Co. Ltd.

Unfortunately, construction work on the factory for R. Dwan has suffered a delay, the blame for which can be laid firmly at the feet of Jackie, my wife of forty years

for it was she who handed me a cardboard tube and said "this might make a gasometer". The result of this is that I have been researching gas works. I'm sure we all know the basic process and can remember in general what a gas works looks like but when it comes to the specifics of buildings and cooling towers then that is another matter all together. I'd very much like to take the Bury St. Edmunds plant as my prototype if I can get enough details of the buildings. In any event I think I will hang fire on everything except the gasometer until I have visited the museum in Fakenham where I may get all the info I need. Meanwhile if you have anything which might help, please contact me - Eric@EricYoung.biz

Scratch Building

I'm familiarising myself with a great piece of software called Model Builder which allows you to produce the same kind of thing as a ScaleScenes kit but working from your own design e.g. a station building of your choice. Initial impressions are very good and I hope to have my first building ready soon.

Factory Building 3

Young-Corker Engineering have grown so strongly since 1913 that they have had a new factory/office block built. Naturally, given the period, it is in the Art Deco style

I was on ScaleScenes website and I saw that they were selling a plug-in of all their brick papers for Evans Designs Model Builder Software. I watched a few demos and decided that at $39 (£24) it was worth a punt. I also got the plug-in, which is a tenner, because being American software it only has American bricks. My first attempt is the low relief building shown above. The clock and the doors were lifted off the Internet as Jpegs which the package readily imports. I put the 50p for the benefit of people who are not familiar with N Gauge

Factory Building 2

This is the same kit but I've reversed it, reduced the height of the doors and added sign writing. I reversed it (a) to test the idea and (b) because I want the Works Office to be more central. I used the printer's Mirror Image facility plus a bit of PhotoShop. You can't open the file because it's password protected so I grabbed the front of the building using Print Screen and took the image into PhotoShop where I lowered the lintels and added the sign writing. I now have to decide how I'm going to link the buildings.