Which colour for where ?

As we all know, Scalescenes produce some very lovely kits. Most kits (buildings, bridges, canals, boiler houses etc) come in a variety of 'brick texture/colours' to choose from.

What I would like to know, is the brick colour/texture particular to certain areas of the UK, or are they simply, generic ?

Cheers. Gary.

most of the time local, then the big boys moved in after the war and colour became generic,hope this helps
:thumbs;-):cool:

Remember the distinctive yellow brick (which weathers to black with yellow patches) found across much of London and often coming from the pits immediately west of the Capital.  Many locals referred to it as "Yiewsley Brick".  The vast water-filled pits still exist, nowadays often as water-sports venues, not far from West Drayton & Yiewsley.

Southern counties often used rather brighter red brick from pits in the Weald of Sussex such as Southwater near Horsham.

It's worth remembering that you can always weather and darken the redder prints from Scalescenes (a 3B pencil is handy for this) but you can't reverse the process if you start with dark / weathered brick.

Anywhere which had industry will have soot-stained / weathered brickwork no matter what colour the bricks started out.

And also worth remembering is that many northern towns, also those in the south-west, Wales and parts of Scotland, used stone rather than brick for building as it was in plentiful local supply.

My brother lives in Yiewsley, a suburb of Uxbridge.  Just thought you would like to know that!

Terry

I fished there in the early 60's, granny lived on Horton Road Yiewsley, small world!!

Cheers
Ron

Remember that a major cost in building material is transport. Given that the railways  were in the business, they were not shy of moving stuff about. For example, the GWR built the Swindon works from stone blasted out of various locations in their expansion.

As new stations were opened in rural areas, vernacular building styles and materials would have taken too long to build for the accountants so brick was trained in and brick waiting rooms popped up in stone areas after local quarries had closed.

Regarding  colours in the Scalescenes papers, remember too that the old brick papers with 'black' bricks in the mix represent either  (IMHO) bricks baked locally in 'batches' by the inclusion of wood/charcoal in carefully stacked bricks surrounded by earth OR recycled bricks, they having been part of a former chimney. Variable in hardness and quality they would be unlikely to be used in prestigious buildings or railway structures because of concerns of longetivity.

I wish I could remember where I read this as it would be a useful reference here….

Doug

[user=1775]g0ibi[/user] wrote:

I fished there in the early 60's, granny lived on Horton Road Yiewsley, small world!!

Cheers
Ron

My late maternal grandparents lived on Falling Lane which meant that the young Gwiwer was escorted (and later allowed unescorted) to Horton Bridge Road to watch trains.  Horton Bridge, one of those built in Yiewsely brick with two small side arches and one main span, has recently been replaced by an ugly metal footbridge.  Another piece of my personal history gone.

Used to wonder if those we saw fishing in the canal ever caught anything more than a cold!

Photos Gary… if you are modelling a particular area or region I would be having a look at the photos available on the web or in books of that area and then trying to match the colours shown.
On advantage of modelling a prototype location (or at least trying to be reasonably faithful to it) is that the colours are in photos. Having said that, I have only just last week come across some colour photos of Henllan signal box, everything I'd had in the previous 6 or 7 years before then were black and white.
Now I wished that I hadn't found it because the brickwork is Flemish bond with the stretcher red and the header engineers blue… it's going to be an absolute @#8$%%@!!! to paint.

Many years ago I was working on a new block of maisonettes in London. We chose a nice mottled dark brown brick from the samples put forward by the supplier. The first 10,000 arrived, brick laying started and it looked great.  

The next batch of bricks arrived and they were a light pinky brown. The later batch was according to the supplier the same brick. Turned out the first bricks had been sitting in their yard for a couple of years and had been weathered by a nearby carbon black factory. 

In the end the supplier paid to have a couple of labourers crawling up and down the scaffold applying a watery solution of carbon black to the bricks. It wasn't just applying dirt. It had some form of reaction with the clay. In the end it was hard to tell the first load of bricks from all the others.

Marty, could this be a job for Excel or similar?

Doug

Yes, thanks Doug, probably…
While I do prefer the 3D look of plasticard brick/stone work over that of the printed kind I'm not averse to using printed brick paper and in this case creating the flemish bond on screen and printing sounds like an easier option…. especially for this CAD monkey.
With the risk of hijacking the thread, apologies Gary, has anybody tried printing brick papers onto textured card/paper and was it worth the effort?

Marty

No problem regarding the possibility of hi-jacking the thread Marty. It is all related to 'bricks' ! ;-) As for photos in books, most are black & white ! :roll:

Thanks to those who have replied, much appreciated with the info.

I had been contemplating brick texture (colour) for my new plank, as I have noticed a few of the 'card kit' manufacturers (Metcalfe for one) only seem to do two brick colours. Now, I prefer Scalescenes kits, better range of kits, better range of brick textures. I was unsure whether different areas of Britain were associated with a particular brick texture, as Rick has pointed out in regards to the 'yellow brick' of London.

I see quite a few layouts where only one brick texture has been chosen to represent railway infrastructure, whether that be bridges, tunnel mouths, platforms or buildings. Not only that, but a lot of their other non railway related buildings seem to be that of the similar texture. Is it for ease of the kit building or for continuity ?/

Cheers, Gary.

 

Apolgies too…

Marty, see here using 140lb NOT watercolour paper for texture.

I'm sure I posted a model with tile paper printed onto textured paper, almost certainly one of JW's but can't think when/which. I'll try to find it.

There are also lightly textured paper in A4 and letter sizes to be found in art and craft shops.

Doug


http://yourmodelrailway.net/view_topic.php?id=12111&forum_id=14&highlight=Renovated+dooferdog

Gary,

Re the 'one size fits all' approach to textured papers, it's my bete noir. I deliberately mix papers, adjust my printer settings (saturation, intensity and hue) when I build a larger building.

I'm certain that the same hands didn't bake, supply and lay the bricks for the gent's urinal, the station frontage, 23 Acacia Avenue and the Town Hall , and on the same day!

Doug

The software for some printers can change printed colour balance; (intended for photo purists to adjust what gets printed to match what is seen on screen) so why not use it to make the print different to what is on screen; the modified setting(s) can be saved so you can still have your original correct balance as default, just select the alternative when needed.

Photo editing software also has colour and tone balance tools but with Scalescenes using protected PDFs this is not available, if there is a source of free, non copyright textures then that method could be used.

Maybe I'll try photographing some brick and stone walls and try scaling them for N, problem with that will be finding a large enough area of wall with no doors, windows or drainpipes etc and fairly evenly lit.

Doug said, "I'm certain that the same hands didn't bake, supply and lay the bricks for the gent's urinal, the station frontage, 23 Acacia Avenue and the Town Hall , and on the same day!"

Actually, they did Doug.  My brother was on that job!

Terry

A thing I do remember regarding brick colours and stone faced buildings in many city area,s pre smokeless zones 1950,s and earlier,Bricks and stonework unless brand new tended to be darker.The old yellow brick was nearly black in many area,s,Similar with say Lancashire towns which seem to use a yellow tinged gritted stone,Might have been sandstone that tended to darken very quickly.Regarding railway structures,Different shades of brick including hard blue engineering brick were used often seen on retaining walls were stone was not used.Another part of the country Durham also used a red sandstone on many of its buildings.
Regards,
Derek.

[user=1397]Dorsetmike[/user] wrote:

The software for some printers can change printed colour balance; (intended for photo purists to adjust what gets printed to match what is seen on screen) so why not use it to make the print different to what is on screen; the modified setting(s) can be saved so you can still have your original correct balance as default, just select the alternative when needed.

Photo editing software also has colour and tone balance tools but with Scalescenes using protected PDFs this is not available, if there is a source of free, non copyright textures then that method could be used.

Maybe I'll try photographing some brick and stone walls and try scaling them for N, problem with that will be finding a large enough area of wall with no doors, windows or drainpipes etc and fairly evenly lit.

Scalescenes can be modified to suit the colour variation, print the page out, scan it  in a very high definition DPI & save it as a JPG & then photo editing can be used. Of course this is only for you, not to give away to others.

You could always send such a file to John Wiffen of Scalescenes to see if he can use it.

It may pay to contact Scalescenes to see if they already have a variation in brick colour before attempting to modify a printed page. Contact John to see if it is OK to modify a page to give a colour that he does not provide.

Hi Gary

I've been looking at platform kits this morning and having decided to probably go with Scalescenes I then was then also considering brick colour.

Wanting a mainly GER theme I assumed red brick or dark red brick, as all the coloured pictures I can find of various stations in Essex and Suffolk are (or were before being covered in dirt) that type of colour.

However, having then looked at some colour photographs it appears that Takeley station which is only five miles up the line from Bishops Stortford was built in white brick, although to the same GER 1865 style.

(Scroll down for coloured pictures)

Disused Stations: Takeley Station

I think it's really a case of who got the contract for the building work, be it railway related or not, and what colour the current main brick supplier of the area had at the time.

Therefore if all the buildings were built around the same time, they're likely to have the same or very similar brick colour, but it wouldn't be unrealistic to have an odd building with a totally different brick.

Hope I haven't confused even more, as I'm now a bit undecided about my station brick colour.



Ed