paint | Models

Galactic Tramp: Kitbashing Andre Norton’s Solar Queen from the Luna Rocket ship

Andre Norton’s Free Trader series was one of the favourites for science fiction readers for decades beginning with Sargasso in Space beginning back in 1955.

When I began reading science fiction as a kid, the classic rocket ship on book and magazine covers and in TV and movies was a sharply pointed, aerodynamic, finned and winged beauty, roughly based on the German V-2 Vergeltungswaffe 2 and earlier fictional and engineering concepts.

Apart from UFOs, Martians and flying saucers, the rocket ship pointing into the heavens was iconic.

To an earlier generation, the finned, tapered rocket ship meant space travel.
I’ve always wanted to model the Solar Queen.

A few years ago, I kitbashed the spherical Baldy ships from Norton’s Time Trader series. When I posted the photos on social media a couple of commenters asked for a Solar Queen.

The best model to kitbash was the Pegasus 1/144 Luna rocket ship. The blurb on the box says “The classic rocket designs of the 50’s set the standard for sci-fi rockets to come. The rocket ship “Luna” is a perfect example of that classic design aesthetic that influenced movie rocket designs ever since.”

Finding an approximate scale

I checked online on the scales of various model starships compared to the “prototype” of ships like the various Enterprises, Voyager, Excelsior and Rocinante.

The Solar Queen had a crew of 12 and carried cargo across the galaxy. In addition, in the various Free Trader novels the Solar Queen had one or two lifeboats, also capable of planetary operations, a flying atmospheric “flitter,” a ground crawler and scooter. The ship would require cargo space, living quarters, bridge and other control areas, hangars for the equipment and, of course, engines. Fuel was presumed to be nuclear of some kind. That meant the ship kept growing in size.

The saucer section of the Enterprise D with ten decks, was 100 metres at its thickest point, 25 metres at the rim and 500 metres in diameter. The Enterprise D saucer section had everything needed by the Solar Queen, from the bridge and impulse engineering, residential quarter, labs, computer cores and a small docking bay.

Norton described the Solar Queen as a “smooth running, tight held vessel” (Sargasso in Space 18) with cramped but adequate cabins for the crew.

Imagining the Solar Queen

I imagined if the Solar Queen was a pointy cross section of the Enterprise D saucer at its thickest point, with a bridge, hangar and cargo decks, crew cabins, computer core, engineering and the warp engines.

Decks could have been imagined as
Bow: sensors
Deck One: Bridge
Deck Two: Astrogation and planetary navigation and computer core
Deck Three: Crew cabins
Deck Four: Galley and Lounge, Lifeboat, escape pod bay with hidden hatch, additional cabins and storage
Deck Five: Cargo Bay
Deck Six: Cargo bay and second lifeboat bay.
Deck Seven: Hangar and Crawler/ flitter deck, large hatch
Deck Eight: Engineering. Small hatch and Crane Control with hidden hatch.

The Luna is 1/144 scale and 12 inches high. Based on the movie Destination Moon it had a crew of four and was overweight with fuel and equipment. The ship was 150 Feet or 45.72 Meters high or about the size of a ten story building.

If the Solar Queen was the height of 86 metres or a 20 story building, a 12 inch model the scale would be 1/275. If it was the height of 107 metres, a 25 story building, the scale would 1/350.

Norton wrote.

Compared to the big super ships of the Companies, the Solar Queen was a negligible midget… Here were the Company ships in their private docks, their needle points lifted to the sky, cargoes being loaded, activity webbing them…. The scooter steered to the left and made for the other line of berths, not to well filled, where the half dozen smaller Free Trade ships stood waiting blast off. And somehow, he was not surprised when they drew up at the foot of the ramp leading to the most battered one.

I decided to be rough about the scale, but let’s say it was approximately 1/350.

For those decks I used scraps, actually parts from dental floss.

The portholes are contemporary ship portholes from Shapeways. I tested until I found a drill bit that would create a hole for the port holes. The original port hole from Luna and the new ones do have “glass” windows, scrap clear plastic from food containers.

The hatches are model railroad warehouse doors.

I began with a traditional coat of metallic paint, just to see how it looked, before deciding to take another approach.

Looking at the book covers in my collection; I saw that concept artists all had different interpretations of how a V2 derived spaceship would look far into the future. So, I decided to add a couple of aerodynamic “bulges” one for the cargo bay and a second for astrogation and planetary navigation.

The pylon on the Luna model presented a bit of problem. Looking over the design of both the Luna model and the cover illustrations, there was a problem in those artist’s concepts, how do you get your cargo in and out of the ship with the narrow stern and its engines?

I live in an all weather seaport and modern freighters and bulk carriers have huge cranes on their decks. The old tramp freighters of the twentieth century also had cranes on their decks.

So, the pylon was not only a support for the ship planetside became a crane system. I glued a piece of scrap food container plastic to the pylon to suggest a retractable crane and hatch system to load and unload cargo and other material. The crane system would have operated independently on more undeveloped planets while working with ramps on more developed worlds.

The engine for the Luna model was much too small, so again I used scraps, another part from dental floss and the opener from a liquid egg container to produce a larger and more warp capable engine.

The paint scheme.

I had primed the hull and other parts and then a first, as noted, did a coat of shiny metallic paint, just as the covers suggested.

Creating the retractable crane had already given me the idea. Other science fiction novels like those by A. Bertram Chandler, who was actually the captain of an Australian coastal freighter, always based their Free Trader novels on the ubiquitous tramp freighters that plied the oceans of planet Earth prior to the invention of container ships.

So instead of a shiny silver needle pointing to the stars, the Solar Queen is painted like the battered tramp steamer of the 1950s that inspired the novels. (Wikipedia notes that the Millennium Falcon is also in the tradition of literary and Hollywood tramp steamers)

I deliberately used an older somewhat erratic airbrush to create the dirty white exterior of the hull.

The yellow ochre auxiliary jets pay tribute to the often yellow orchre painted funnels and equipment of old freighters.

The bright yellow strips of styrene I added to the hull are more modern, where key infrastructure on both the ships I have seen or visited or in modern industrial plants are painted a bright yellow. I assumed that practice would continue into the future.

Decals

I created the Sunburst for the Solar Queen using the Photoshop plugin Solar Cell from Flaming Pair, which allows the user to create various images of suns.

The registration number FT-6631 is the pre IBSN number for Norton’s second Free Trader novel Plague Ship.

A battered base for a battered ship.

The display base/landing field for the Solar Queen is designed to be alien. The Solar Queen lands on an alien world that actually has a space port and as on Earth has to choose the cheapest docking berth available. It doesn’t exactly fit since the landing field is designed and built for that planet’s ships.

The base was originally a container for breakfast sausages, cleaned in the dishwasher. I grey primed underneath only, so that the clear plastic would create some shine and look a little alien. I dry brushed first chrome and then aluminum on the raised areas. The blast zone at the centre is a mixture of black and grey chalks, which I stabilized with hair spray rather than matt or gloss spray which would have changed the overall look.

The entrance to the terminal building is again a part of dental floss dispenser painted in Vallejo concrete. The two landing pads (inspired by helicopter pads) for the lifeboats,(seen above painted red and metallic before installation) crawler-flitter combination and scooter (all from Shapeways) are the inside of prescription pill containers.

The landing lights and beacons are clear plastic cocktail forks, which reflect light very nicely without the hassle of installing LEDs.

NOTES

Star Trek, 2001 A Space Odyssey. Star Wars and lately the amazing Expanse changed the concept of space ships and 99 per cent of models available on the market today are based on what we’ve seen on the silver screen over the past 40 odd years, built in orbit for space and seldom if every landing on a planet. (Star Trek’s budget saving idea of beaming so there wouldn’t have to be too many shuttles, also likely influenced future designs)

The novels of the 1950s generally envisioned giant vertical, fin based ships that carried complete clans (Robert Heinlein’s Citizen of the Galaxy for example) or large space naval crews (many different novels), although the more scientifically inclined authors of the Golden Age were already pointing out that it would be hard for those vessels to escape the gravity well of a planet and the ships would actually be built in orbit.

The original series Enterprise was 289 metres long, which would be about 67 stories vertically (about the height of the Four Seasons Hotel in New York.)

The Enterprise D had families on board, and the saucer section with ten decks, and as noted, it was 100 metres at its thickest point, 25 metres at the rim and 500 metres in diameter, not to mention the pylon section and the secondary hull with the warp nacelles.

That leads to a disillusioning conclusion of old romantic notions.
To stuff the families and clans into a needle nose ship as in Citizen of the Galaxy or a space navy ship with a large crew would mean squeezing the TOS Enterprise or the Enterprise D into the iconic needle nosed tower.

A Nimitz class aircraft carrier is 333 metres or about 77 stories. If there was an equivalent vertical spaceship, that would be the height of the Chrysler Building in New York (318.8 metres plus a 55 metre spire.)

Chrysler Building by David Shankebone via Wikipedia

That means given the weight of one of one of those spaceships, with hull, engines, fuel(s), cargo, living quarters, bridge, life support, and in the case of war ships, weapons systems, unless there was some sort of breakthrough in power systems, they would have never gotten off the ground. Imagine a row of spaceships each the size of the Chrysler Building (which does have a faint resemblance to a 1950s spaceship )
It was a great idea while it lasted.

The Solar Queen lands to trade on a newly discovered alien world.

And brings its cargo to trade on another alien world.

The GT-1350 Smuggler Interceptor

(Star Wars non-canon; non-Legends)

A Star Guard “smuggler interceptor” using the military version of the Corellian Engineering YT 1300 light freighter which I call the GT-1350 chasing a smuggler in an original YT-1300. (is it the Millennium Falcon or another smuggler using the YT-1300? Who knows.) Have you ever noticed that the Millennium Falcon always out flies and out maneuvers a Tie-fighter?

PREMIS

About thirty odd years ago I co-wrote two books, King of the Mob and Undercover, about Prohibition in Canada and how Canada smuggled illicit alcohol into the United States from 1919 to 1933.

One of the things I found out during my research was that in the early days of Prohibition the United States Coast Guard was ill prepared to intercept many of the faster boats that opportunists and later gangsters used to smuggle alcohol either from Canada or the French islands of St. Pierre et Miquelon (off the coast of Newfoundland). But if the US Coast Guard was able to seize one of the smugglers and the specifications were acceptable the seized vessel was turned into a Coast Guard smuggler catcher. The Coast Guard also purchased fast boats that were the same as or similar to those that were used by the smugglers. The Royal Navy used a similar policy in converting fast sloops to pirate catchers during the pirates of the Caribbean era.

So one day I had the idea of turning my Star Wars Command Millennium Falcon into a “smuggler catcher.”

The Star Guard GT-1350 at a landing pad on a planetary base (Robin Rowland)

Since the Star Wars Command Millennium Falcon is marketed as a child’s toy, it runs on wheels and there are three gaps on the underbelly. Also while detailed, the Star Wars Command Falcon is crude compared to the higher quality models on the market.

So it sat on the shelf for a couple of years until I had the idea of making it a “coast guard” interceptor.

Scenario

Time: The late “Old”Republic at the time Lando Calrissian and Han Solo were flying the Millennium Falcon. The time was becoming more lawless after the Sith Wars. Smugglers were found working all sections of the galaxy.

Remember in all the now forty years of Star Wars, according to both Star Wars canon and Star Wars Legends, the Corellian Y-1300 light freighter was a standard production model, so there must have been lots of them around, even though Star Wars, so far, has had only one Millennium Falcon (and I am pretty sure the fans would want only one Falcon)

Place: An alliance of several star systems under the banner of the Republic. Since all these systems are quasi-independent, while they are overall affiliated with the Republic military, like 21st Century nations on Old Earth, they have their own police forces and system patrols commonly known as “Star Guards.” With the rise of the Empire all local forces were Imperialized.

That system is cracking down on smuggling of all kinds, from arms to drugs to luxury goods. They find that their regular patrol ships are too slow to intercept the Corellian Engineering Corporation’s classic, respected and souped up YT-1300 light freighter.

The local government then decides it needs to “set a thief to catch a thief” and it obtains (and here the reader can choose one of two options)

1)the government buys a YT-1300 light freighter (or managers to capture a YT-1300, probably on the planetary surface) and modifies it to Star Guard requirements and specifications.

2)the government orders a military version of the YT-1300 the GT-1350 from Corellian Engineering, modified to Guard requirements and specifications, including, of course, fast and powerful sublight and lightspeed engines.

The Star Guard interceptor at its landing field at night.

The Mission

The Star Guard interceptor has three missions

Smuggler chaser
Routine policing and system star guard duties including maintenance of navigation beacons and other vital sensor systems.
Search and Rescue

(just like 21st century coast guards on Old Earth)

The GT-1350 Smuggler Interceptor

A modified version of the popular YT1300fp version popular in the late Republic.

Normal complement is a crew of five to seven. That would include a pilot and co-pilot, who doubles as a shuttle pilot. The third regular crew member is a sensor and navigation specialist and when necessary, gunner. Depending on the mission the GT-1350 can carry Search and Rescue Technicians, Navigation aids engineers and technicians or Special Weapons and Tactics Teams who are trained in boarding and capturing intercepted space ships. The GT-1350 can also normally carry up to seven or eight passengers or if required up to fifteen passengers/intelligent beings on a rescue mission (although that would mean the vessel would be crowded until it could rendezvous with relief vessels.)

Special bays

The GT-1350 has replaced the cargo bays with

1)a shuttle bay for a one person/intelligent being shuttle craft

2)drone bays that can carry a number of sensor drones with different missions such as sensor probes and search and rescue probes. Or it can carry navigation and other in-system beacons, just like coast guards today act as buoy tenders and maintain other aids to navigation.

3)The third bay carries a high powered sensor dome that can be extended from the underbelly and used to focus on target areas of the mission

(These bays cover the wheel wells on the Star Wars Command toy Falcon)

Colour scheme and livery

Until the Empire “Imperialized” the galactic police and military, Star Guards continued the tradition from Coast Guards on Old Earth where each nation often had their own colour scheme based on a mixture of mostly white and red ( usually not including some specialist vessels) US Coast Guard, largely white with some red except for icebreakers which are mostly red, Canadian Coast Guard with red hulls and white superstructure, Russian Coast Guard all red, China Coast Guard mostly white, UK Coast Guards white hulls and buff superstructure etc.

For painting this GT-1350, I used a slightly modified Canadian Coast Guard colour scheme, making most of the hull red with major parts white and equipment areas in buff or black.

For the livery I wanted something that would seem both futuristic and familiar. As with earlier projects I created the planet in the Solar Cell Photoshop plugin as a symbol for the star system where the ship is based. The stars and other symbols came from various dingbats to create a more alien look. I decided to use the English “Star Guard” since I found the terms System Guard, System Patrol and other variations awkward and I wanted something that suggest a galactic version of a coast guard. (But it’s also a tribute to Andre Norton’s Star Guard which, of course has nothing to do with the Star Wars universe and is a completely different story).

The underbelly of the Star Wars Command ship showing the colour schemes, livery and shuttle/sensor bays. The majority of the hull is painted red while the “superstructure” is painted white with some areas, including the landing gear in buff or black.

The toy becomes a sort of model

The Star Wars Command toy Millennium Falcon disassembled with the wheels removed.

The disassembled model was primed. I then inserted the shuttle (forward bay) and the drones (upper bay in this picture) port side on the model. The shuttle and the drones are 1/2500 Star Trek 3D printed shuttles I bought from Shapeways for another project but decided they would be of better use for this project.

The underbelly of the GT-1350 before decals were added. You can see the sensor dome on the bottom left.

A view of the front. Note the star decal.

The port or left side after decals were added. One question I thought about was whether to weather? In the end I decided to weather the ship. As a military vessel under most circumstances, it would be better maintained than the Millennium Falcon’s often jury rigged repairs. On the other hand the George Lucas vision of the Star Wars universe calls for a certain dirty, aged, weathered look.

The aft/rear view of the GT-1350. The toy blue of the engines was washed in a couple of shades of blue. The other ship is the Star Wars MicroMachines Millennium Falcon. (normally used on my earlier project based loosely on The Empire Strikes Back and borrowed for the photo shoot.)

The landing gear are from N Scale model railway telephone poles, which were just the right size to fit into the screw holes on the toy Millennium Falcon.

The photo

The completed GT-1350 Smuggler Interceptor chasing a YT-1300 smuggler. Taken on the black stands you’ve seen above and a black sheet of poster board.

LED light to the right to produce star light.

Taken with a Sony Alpha 6000 at various focal lengths on aperture priority to produce greater depth of field mounted on a heavy duty tripod.

Starfield photoshopped Hubble image from NASA.

Turning router packing into a ruined alien temple

Original router packaging and the resulting model photoshopped into a jungle setting. (Robin Rowland)

Just before Christmas, I purchased a new router. Opened the box and the router was packaged in papier-mâché, a more environmentally friendly to all that plastic. I took one look at it and it reminded me of all those photos of jungle ruins.

Finely carved corridors from the ruins of the Buddhist temple of Angkor Ta Prohm in Siem Reap, Cambodia. It dates to the 12th and 13th century and was built by king Jayavarman VII who is considered to be one of the greatest rulers of the ancient Khmer Empire. Allie Caulfield/ Wikimedia Commons

Ruins on a hill behind the better excavated ruins at Palenque. Alastair Rae / Wikimedia Commons

So I imagined that once on an alien world (of course it could just as well be Earth) that once there was an impressive building, the Emerald Temple, that was for some reason lost to history abandoned and thus the jungle took over. But this temple was so well built that most of it has survived the ages.

So I put my several ongoing kitbashing ship model projects aside to create the temple. It took about five hours work over three days.

Close up view of the packaging. It certainly looks as if it’s a web of vines . (Robin Rowland)

I am calling this the Emerald Temple. There was once cladding or covering or paint that when the temple was new and active would have been a bright emerald green. That has now decayed so I began with a very light spray of emerald green spray paint plus a little camouflage olive green spray paint.

The Emerald Temple begins to take shape. (Robin Rowland)

A closer view of the emerald paint on one of the towers (Robin Rowland)

Top view of the unpainted packing (Robin Rowland)

I began with the top of the temple, adding a mix of commercial autumn leaves ground cover with dried tea from old tea bags to create the old leaves and other forest detritus that has built up over the years.

Ground cover and tea leaves create the detritus that has built over the years and decades. (Robin Rowland)

Front view with the old leaves and other forest detritus. (Robin Rowland)

I then added several layers of different coloured ground cover and foam bushes.

Ground cover added to all sections of the Emerald Temple (Robin Rowland)

A closer view of one of the towers. (Robin Rowland)

Additional plant life were twigs from my garden and a tomato stem, dipped in dilute white glue and then with some ground cover added.

An even closer view of the tower. (Robin Rowland)

And here is the final product

The Emerald Temple model. (Robin Rowland)

A slightly different angle. All the final product photos were shot in direct sunlight through a window. (Robin Rowland)

Close shot of the tower with modelling complete. (Robin Rowland)

Finally I photoshopped the completed model into an old screen grab of the jungle in Thailand from a documentary I shot back in 1997, worked so that the temple appears to be part of the older, lower resolution video. It’s up to the viewer to decide whether or not the temple is part of a lost civilization on Earth or on an alien world.

A pirate starship chase, scratch built from toothbrush packages

An alien pirate ship in pursuit of an another starship . (Robin Rowland)

So here are the results of my latest project, scratch building a couple of alien starships and then applying my photographic and Photoshop skills to put them in some star systems not too far away.

Scratch building the Golden Starliner

You start by going to the dentist for a teeth cleaning and scaling. 🙂 And then take the clear plastic packaging for the tooth brushes that the dentist gives you at the end of the ordeal.

Add modellers’ masking tape to mark windows for the bridge and viewing ports. The exterior tape is the exact size of the windows I want, the interior is much wider.

Spray paint inside and out. I use a heavy duty plastic compatible automobile primer.

Detail the starship with appropriate scrap that will add to the appearance of the starship. Remove the inner masking tape and replace it with images (in my case I reduced stock photos to a few millimetres in Photoshop).

Then decide what the basic “look” of the starship should be. After the two halves were glued together, it came to be that although this is designed to be a starship, it had a sort of steampunk look. (The projection in the stern is not a smoke stack. The bit of scrap plastic was there to fill a gap in the original toothbrush package). So I used a gold spray paint and decided it was a luxury liner for that alien species The Golden Starliner. Remove the outer masking tape to reveal the windows.

Later I added detailing paints, varying the gold in areas with brass and copper paints and adding colours including reds, greens and blues where appropriate.

The pirate ship

Once the Golden Starliner was complete, I decided the neat thing to do would be to have it pursued by a pirate ship. For that I already had one look in mind, that the ship would be black. Although sensors in that star system not too far away might detect the ship, it would be black to make visual spotting and identification difficult. The vessels are not the same scale.

The main body is a shampoo bottle. The upper deck is another bit of clear plastic packaging, enhanced with one of my favourite candies, Cadbury Cream Egg packaging.

The upper deck was glued to the shampoo bottle and secured with push pins for drying. I originally had planned to remove the pins after the glue was set but decided to keep them. I used the same grey auto primer. The nacelles, as you can see, are from used highlighters.

The bow is the top of a bottle of mouthwash, another cream egg package plus a bit of scrap from a juice container as the sensor unit. (Thinking that the forward sensor unit could mean the pirate ship could be part of the Star Trek universe)

The pirate ship was spray painted flat black, with the engine end of the nacelles (the highlighters) masked by tape. Some parts were painted in a metallic blue, which was also used to dry brush “space rust” with some other parts also painted in different metallic colours to enhance the model. Here it is seen as I am setting up to take the photographs.

Here I am setting up the chase scene for the camera, showing the completed scratch built models.

The photographs

The photographs have three elements. The models are photographed in low light with a black background on black cardboard. The planets are created in the Photoshop filter plugin LunarCell by Flaming Pear Software. The sun was created in Flaming Pear’s Solarcell filter.

Backgrounds were public domain downloads from NASA’s Hubble website.

Lighting with a LED TV news lamp was adjusted to fit with the illumination of the planet or the star.

The Golden Starliner

The pirate ship

The pirate ship orbits its base, a marginal planet where normally no one would live.

The pirate ship is an ambush predator, orbiting as close as possible to a red dwarf star so it won’t be seen.

The Golden Starliner follows its usual course from planet to planet, oblivious to what awaits it at the next star.

And the ambush predator begins the chase.

Camera Sony Alpha 77, Minolta 28-75 lens, Iso Auto, F32 apperture priority.

Emperor Palpatine and his guards

Emperor Palpatine and his Star Wars Command guards. (Robin Rowland)

So here is my first project for miniatures and photography, Emperor Palpatine and his guards.

The miniatures are painted Star Wars Command 54mm/ 1/32 scale figures.

Technical photo details for first and second images. Sony Alpha 77, with Tamron 70 to 300 lens, tripod, ISO 1000, manual settings f25 at 13 seconds.

A wider view of Emperor Palpatine and his guards. (Robin Rowland)

Sony Alpha 55,Sony 55 to 200 SAM lens, ISO 3200, program mode, popup flash fired, 160 at f10.

Now for the fun part. George Lucas was inspired by the old movie serials from the 30s to 60s in creating Star Wars.

So here’s how my miniatures look using filters to emulate old movies.

Emperor and his guards in a vintage movie (Robin Rowland)

The Silver Efex Pro filter captures the idea of the old black and white (or semi sepia movies) Sony Alpha 77, Sony 100mm prime macro, ISO 1600, Aperatre priority f32 at 25 seconds (on tripod)

The Emperor and his guards in an old colour film. (Robin Rowland)

This vintage film image was created in Analog Efex Pro using an old film setting. Sony Alpha 55, ,Sony 55 to 200 SAM lens, ISO 3200, aperture priority, popup flash fired, 160 at f16.

A little later style of black and white film. (Robin Rowland)

And if the director was still using black and white. SilverEfex Pro, Alpha 77, Tamron 70 t0 300 in macro mode, manual settings, ISO 1600, 32 seconds at f8.

Another old film look at the Emperor and his guards. (Robin Rowland)

Finally, how I created the set:

The set for the Emperor Palpatine shoot (Robin Rowland)

So here’s the “set” for the Emperor Palpatine shoot. The round base originally supported WalMart’s delicious chocolate fudge cake. I had kept the base several months ago as I was hoarding possible scratch building material. The base is set on a piece of black poster board. The background is a cardboard box spray painted black. The two wall panels are also from chocolate cake bought from my local supermarket.

Lighting: Three lights on most of the images. An LED flashlight as you see to the right of the setup. On top of the box was a small LED light (designed for use with mobile phones, pointed at the offwhite ceiling. The third LED was to the left and about two metres away pointing just to the left edge of the box.

Once I had finished the tripod time exposure shoot, I wanted to get this shot of the set so I used the Alpha 55 with just the popup flash at -2 without changing the lighting set up otherwise. I used the same settings when shooting wider shots above with the Alpha 55.

Weathering the Apalon Bridge

I have completed the basic layout for the Wampo, Nieke and Sonkrai railway. Before I glue down the track, the bridges have to be built. The first bridge is the simplest, a two-span deck plate bridge on three concrete piers.

The
prototype

The prototype is the Apalon Bridge, about 25 kilometres inside Burma, beyond Three Pagoda Pass, at the 335 kilometre mark from the railhead in Thailand. John Stewart described it in his book To the River Kwai Two Journeys 1943, 1979, when he visited the bridge on his return journey. At the time it had been abandoned for 35 years, and at that time, appeared to be intact, but appeared to be
freshly painted a dirty shade of red, like coagulated blood. From close up, it is revealed to be nothing but deep rust which Stewart says contrasted sharply with the pervasive greenness of the
jungle. Aphotograph shows thick jungle right up to the edge of the pylons on either bank.

Alternate world

This project is more of an alternative world, the term taken from speculative fiction than the pure model railroading freelance. In this alternative world, the railway was not abandoned; instead it becomes a mainline route from China and Southeast Asia, as well as traffic between Thailand and Burma as well as the local runs. However, in the post-war world, there is a minimal budget, and so far, in the period 1946-1947, the maintenance on the hastily built railway is concentrated near the railheads and high traffic areas in Thailand and Burma. The border region that I am modeling is on the list but at the bottom. So the bridge can be described as neglected, and I have weathered it, as it would have been in either world in 1946 or 1947.

A note on construction

In the construction of the Burma Thailand Railway, the wooden bridges, ties (sleepers) and telegraph poles were made from local insect resistant tropical hardwoods, mainly teak. At least during the
period of the Second World War, creosote was not available and not used. That means the traditional methods of staining or painting both the wooden trestle and the ties do not apply on this railway. Teak and other hardwoods were used, usually untreated, for many years after the Second World War across Southeast Asia. Later various forms of anti-insect treatments were used. Today it is more common to use metal and/or concrete for bridges and poles.

The model

The original model is made from two Kato N Scale deck plate bridges with Kato pylons. There is a close resemblance to the original Apalon bridge

The pylons

I came upon a method of creating neglected or decaying concrete purely by accident. I was testing
Krylon All Purpose White Primer #41315 on some scrap styrene. The result was a powdery cracked white, not all suitable a primer, but perfect for crumbling or neglected concrete.

First I sprayed the three pylons with Krylon primer. Once it was dry, I applied a wash of Polyscale Concrete, allowed it to dry and then applied two more washes.

The level of the Kwai Noi varies from day to day and sometimes from hour to hour. Flooding is frequent during the rainy season. So how to create flood/mud stains on the pylons? So I tried an experiment, I created a bath of artists acrylics (raw umber and raw sienna), and mixed it so it actually had a consistency of mud. I left the three pylons outside in the sun, which reduced the bath and left a stain, then transferred the pylons to my work bench, where the remainder of the paint bath evaporated over three days, leaving an authentic looking stain.

After the mud stains were dry, I applied artists pastel chalks, first some raw umber followed, in the tropical environment with a bright Phthalo Green, an Olive Green and then a mixture of the two. The
final chalks were Black, Mouse Grey and a mixture of both. The final step was a Krylon matte spray to fix the chalks and remove any sheen.

The track I have already run experiments with spare Kato Unitrack and Atlas Snaptrack. Both have ties that are too dark to match tropical hardwoods. As is widely recommended, I coated the
rails with oil before each painting step.

What worked best was Krylon Satin Almond spray #42327, which creates a dull grey-brown finish. The second step was also an experiment. I had successfully tested Home Hardware Teak wood stain on bass and balsa wood prior to building the trestle bridges.

So I brushed the ties with the teak wood stain”and that worked, bringing out the details of the ties and adding a teak-brown tone to the grey from the spray.

However, this technique works best on track without a built-in roadbed, since the stain tends to bleed into roadbed. (I am working on a couple of other techniques with the Unitrack) I then painted individual ties with a variety of washes from Polyscale D&RGW Building Brown, Depot Buff and Mud, adding a smidgen of Box Car Red now and again. The guardrail and the sides of
the rails were painted with Polyscale Rust.

I added a wash of rust on the central walkway. It was chalk pastels that made all the difference. First was for rust, Caput Mortuum Red, Indian Red, Permanent Red Deep and Raw Umber (and mixtures of those shades). There were several different shades of Raw Umber in Curry’s Artists Supplies in Toronto, so I used those to add a general aged appearance. As with the pylons, I used my selection of green to add some hint of the jungle, followed by greys and blacks.

Kato calls the colour of the deck plate grey. But it was actually a grey green that was perfect for my needs since it closely resembled camouflage paints, likely the only paint available in the
region at the time anyway. I used a small sculpturer’s pick to distress parts of the bridge, weakening some of the side rails and poking some small holes, which could have come either from allied
strafing or just general wear and tear. Again I started with wash of Polyscale Rust, followed by a mixture of Rust and Building Brown, but largely left well enough alone.

The main step was a heavy application of pastel chalks, several of mixtures of a rusty orange, followed again by greens and finally by blacks.

Finishing

All the elements were sprayed with Krylon matte finish, to seal the chalks and to remove any remaining plastic shine. I gave the Kato unijoiners a thin wash of concrete, and added
a black gantry support in the middle, that I may use for a telegraph pole or just leave as is.

Next step The next step is
the first trestle bridge.