{"id":4094,"date":"2012-04-07T18:09:31","date_gmt":"2012-04-07T23:09:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bronx-terminal.com\/?p=4094"},"modified":"2012-04-08T12:33:55","modified_gmt":"2012-04-08T17:33:55","slug":"a-few-hundred-thousand-cobblestones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bronx-terminal.com\/?p=4094","title":{"rendered":"A few hundred thousand cobblestones."},"content":{"rendered":"

Preparing to pave<\/strong><\/p>\n

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I still have not settled on a ballasting technique to use.\u00a0 The grout method has some drawbacks I am not happy with, mainly it looks more like mud than dirt.\u00a0 I will continue experimenting with methods until I find one that will work.<\/p>\n

Its just as well, as I can’t apply the ballast until I install a whole lot of cobblestone.\u00a0 A lot of it!\u00a0 Most of the yard was covered in pavers.\u00a0 They extended from the road at the end of the yard tracks, pretty much all the way up to the freight house.<\/p>\n

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Technique experiments<\/strong><\/p>\n

I have considered a variety of approaches to adding all this cobblestone.\u00a0 Briefly, I thought of carving it into a layer of plaster poured onto the layout.\u00a0 I imagine this would be quite delicate and would likely end up damaged.\u00a0 Plus, I didn’t relish the idea of being slumped over the layout for 11 years carving several square feet of cobblestone.\u00a0 So that idea was shelved.<\/p>\n

Enter the laser<\/strong><\/p>\n

About an hour after I unpacked the laser cutter I purchased for Fast Tracks, way back in 2004, I was using it to engrave brick and stone as the sales guy had shown us samples they had made on their laser and I couldn’t wait to give it a try!\u00a0 These things work great at doing this!\u00a0 Initially I drew the brickwork, which works well and allows a lot of flexibility in the detail and shape of the wall, but it is very time consuming.<\/p>\n

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Yuck.\u00a0 This won’t do.\u00a0 I did give drawing the bricks a shot first for use on the layout as it is nice to be able to make a large single piece of material at once with no noticeable join lines or patterns.\u00a0 The results are less than spectacular, producing stonework that is way to perfect, so this is a no go.<\/p>\n

Another method that works great is to simply convert a photograph of a brick wall or stone in to a B&W image, and inverse the tones.\u00a0 Since lasers engrave deeper with darker colours, the B&W image needs to have the light tones made dark, and the dark tones made light, which can be accomplished with most photo editing packages.\u00a0 The results are quite impressive, and I tucked that idea away for a project like this.<\/p>\n

We briefly considered adding this as a product to our Fast Tracks line, but decided not to as we make track, and that was to remain our focus.\u00a0 Plus, the laser we have isn’t fast enough to make the product as a reasonable cost.\u00a0 It looks like this is now available commercially<\/a>, which is great.\u00a0 I just wonder what took so long for someone to market it….<\/p>\n

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I am quite happy with the results!\u00a0 It will take quite a while to pave the terminal though, the engraving process is a bit slow, plus I will be producing this from small sections that will need to be installed one at a time.<\/p>\n

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A very nice texture is produced this way, and since it comes from an image of the real thing (well, so of, this is an image of a brick wall I am using for cobblestone) it reproduces almost perfectly.<\/p>\n

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One little piece complete, a whole lot more to add.<\/p>\n

This sample section was engraved onto a sheet of basswood and simply painted with a quick blast of primer I bought at the hardware store.\u00a0 No additional work was done to it, but I suspect I will work it more when I install it for good.<\/p>\n

I will make the sheets a bit narrower and frame with timbers as I can see that in one of the images of the terminal I have.<\/p>\n

-T.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Preparing to pave I still have not settled on a ballasting technique to use.\u00a0 The grout method has some drawbacks I am not happy with, mainly it looks more like mud than dirt.\u00a0 I will continue experimenting with methods until I find one that will work. Its just as well, as I can’t apply the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4094","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-front-page"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bronx-terminal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bronx-terminal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bronx-terminal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bronx-terminal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bronx-terminal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4094"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/www.bronx-terminal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4094\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4112,"href":"https:\/\/www.bronx-terminal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4094\/revisions\/4112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bronx-terminal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bronx-terminal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bronx-terminal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}