Thornycroft Building #3 - Island Building

Have you ever seen anything as weird as this?

Island Building

This building only appears as a distant view in photographs. It is difficult to see the details but upon scrutinising the roof it seemed to have a central chimney, until we saw a pole coming out of it! But, it was not until we zoomed into this photograph that we saw a swan neck on top of the pole with a blob on the end. Clearly a lamp post!

In the photo below the Island Building is on the left of the factory just below and to the right of the white ended building.

The Thornycroft Motor Works, Basingstoke, 1928 - Britain from Above

Function 

This was a building of two halves. The eastern half was the works fire station and contained fire appliances. The western half was a pump room. It contained 11 pumps and meters for the underground oil and petrol tanks alongside. A dispensing stand for filling vehicles existed outside the doors.

(Between 1928 and 1939 a paint mixing shop, built of corrugated iron, was positioned in line at the western end. Architectural details of this have not yet materialised for accurate modelling of it).

Time Line

The island building was a later addition to the factory, built sometime between 1914 and 1919. It did not last until the end, probably demolished shortly after manufacture ceased in 1969 when the site was taken over by a variety of small firms.

Construction

Difficult to determine from photographs but probably brick with slate roof. The roof had hips at both ends with vents at the apex. The long roof sides extended below the hip roof level. A lamp post with swan neck projected from the centre of the roof and rose above the height of surrounding buildings.

The Model

The next photo shows the model in situ on our full sized layout plan in a similar orientation to the real building shown above.

The building design and general construction is the same as the Wood Store.

Without a colour photograph the decor is guess work. Red doors are provided at the fire station end and blue for the pump room. A mistake was made in the roof design in that the long sides do not extend below the hip ends. One day we may remake the model to correct it.

We intend to provide working lights for some of the buildings on the layout and this one is the first to be fitted - not the inside (this model has opaque dummy windows) but the tall lamp post on the roof. The post is held in a cube of hardwood at its base, which is glued to the roof. Drain pipes on the real buildings were blue so it is assumed lamp posts were painted similarly.

The LED Lamp Post

This will be explained in full detail. Manufactured models can be bought quite cheaply from China on eBay but the swan neck models I saw are even more oversize than the scratch built model created.

The starting point was to find a small enough LED. 3mm (18 inches in N gauge) was the smallest found that was readily available.

The post was made from scraps of wire. At least one of the two power wires needed to be solid so that it holds the swan neck shape when curved. The gauge is not too critical as the circuit is low power. Had I thinner wire to hand I could have made the post more to scale but as it is the post is 12 inches diameter in N gauge.

The sheath from a thicker wire was stripped and slid over the solid insulated power feed wire and two very thin bare twisted wires for the return. The swan neck end was thinned down a little by scrapping the plastic sheath.

The wires were then soldered to the tails of the LED very close to its body and the excess tails cut off.

The lamp shade was made by sliding a metal washer over the LED and glue to its body. To this a thin strip of sticky paper was wrapped around the circumference to give more depth. A circle of paper was then cross cut and slid up the post and over the solder connections. Next, a piece of wire sheath from a thicker wire was slid up the post to the lamp assembly. Epoxy resin glue was dribbled into the assembly to form the convex lamp shade. The swan neck was quite easily bent to shape.





Below is the wiring diagram for one LED with parts identified.

And with that it is good night from me!

 

David