A diorama with a nostalgic touch

[Svedberg]

I want to show how I earlier this year built my first diorama, once I realized I had in some sense lost intereset in model railroading (at least for the time being) and wanted to do something else. The displayed scene has a nostalgic touch, in the sense that includes elements from my childhood and youth - typical Swedish street artifacts from the 1950's and 1960's:

- A telephone booth, model 1961. The standard booth installed nationwide by the Swedish state telephone company ("Televerket"), in its standard orange "Televerksorange" paint scheme.
- An electrical box as used by the Stockholm Electrical Works ("Elverket").
- A typical Swedish rain water well (storm drain).
- A lamp post from those times.

And yes, I almost forgot. The diorama is in the 1:35 scale.

When I started out I had a mental picture of what the final scene would look like, but let's do this one step at the time. So we will start with the telephone booth. A real Swedish telephone booth model 1961 (m/61) looks like this:

 

 

The telephone booth was scratch built using styrene plastic. Here it is in an early stage of the build.

 

 

In parallel with the booth I also modelled the actual pay phone, which you can see through the door in the photo above. Here is the phone and the receiver, along a match for a size comparison.

 

 

Next, the receiver attached to the phone, which in turn has been glued to what will become the back wall of the telephone booth. To the right of the phone is a rack with telephone directories, typical of this type of booth and time period. The directories mostly hung there unharmed! Those were the days.

 

 

A near complete booth and phone. More to come.

 

 

Lennart

[Badder]

Nice work. How are you bending the styrene sheet into shape ? Hot water and a form?

 

Will there be a hint of eau de urine?

 

Rearguards,

Badder

[Svedberg]

Thanks. The styrene is not bent at all. I used 8 mm styrene tubing for the corners, cut lengthwise in 4 pieces . 

 

No, no urine this time. Perhaps when I have figured out how to model the smell 😃, without using the real thing.

[Svedberg]

The next step was to add the floor planking and the window glazing, including the boards with the text "Telefon". To get the window glazing attached to the walls was the toughest part of this complete build. The real booth uses some kine of plastic or rubber profiles for this. I tried to use shrink tubing (the kind you use for electrical cable insulation), but I could not make it work out. In the end I glued the glazing to the walls and covered the seams with brass wire which I simply painted black. I'm not totally satisfied with the result, but in the end I declared it good enough (at least from a distance) and moved on.

 

 

I wanted to be able to display the diorama as a night scene, and not only as a daylight scene, so I added lighting to the telephone booth. A small SMD LED is sitting in the ceiling. It is driven by two AAA batteries which I eventually hid in the base of the diorama, reachable from the underside. 

 

 

A person actually doing something in a scene, tends to make the scene in question more interesting. Since the main feature of my diorama would be the telephone booth, a person making a phone call seemed to me to be the most logical choice.

In order to get a few figures to choose from I ordered a bunch of unpainted Preiser figures, namely their #63000 set. 

 

 

On the Preiser web page this set is listed under the scale 1:32-35, which is is just what I wanted. However, once I had the set in my hands I soon discovered that the figures are more towards the 1:32 scale than 1:35. Compared to my 1:35 telephone booth the gentlemen all looked like 2 meter giants! So the choice of which figure to put in the booth was made easier. It had to be the one of the smaller ladies.

I selected the young woman who stands as the 5:th person from the right in the picture above.

Since I wanted her to actually use the phone I started by doing some surgery on her. I cut and bent her left arm so that she would hold the telephone receiver in a natural way. Next I painted her, as shown below. I think she can pass as a young woman from the 1960's.

 

 

You have to excuse her starring eyes. My fault 😄

 

Eventually the telephone booth was brought to the finish line, with some last paint touch up and the non-stop talking young lady inside.

 

 

 

Lennart

[Svedberg]

As I mentioned in the first post, the diorama was to contain an electrical box as then used by the Stockholm Electrical Works ("Elverket"). These boxes, cast in iron (I think), came in various sizes depending on the needs in the location in question. This is a picture of such a box:

 

 

And this is a more recent picture of another such box.

 

 

The box itself would not be that hard to model. It should be fairly easy to shape from a piece of wood or plastic. The tricky part would be the relief lettering, especially considering that in the 1:35 scale the letters would only be a couple of millimeters tall. And I wanted the lettering to be in relief since that was a key characteristic of these boxes. I could not come up with any good solution until it struck me that this could be a golden opportunity to try some 3D-printing!

I happened to know that Shapeways (at shapeways.com) offers a 3D-printing services. After having looked at some tutorial videos on their site I downloaded the TinkerCAD tool and managed to create a 3D model of something that in my eyes looked very much like the actual box. I uploaded the 3D model file to Shapeways and ordered a print. I choose it to be printed in a plastic material they call Frosted Extreme Detail (FXD). The delivered print looked like this:

 

 

It is not a perfect replica of the real box, but good enough. Some painting, weathering and what-not, and it ought to do the trick.

 

Since the 3D-print was not made to the full depth of the box I attached a few layers of styrene at the back of each box. The boxes where then painted gray and a warning stick attached. Actually, I am not sure such sticks were really used when I was young, or if they were, if they had the yellow and black striping. But this looks kind of cool.

 

Lennart

[Corsairfoxfouruncle]

Beautiful work Lennart, such attention to detail. 

[Svedberg]

Thanks @Corsairfoxfouruncle Identifying the small  discriminating details and doing my best to replicate them is what I enjoy most in this hobby.

[Derek A]

Very good!

 

[Svedberg]

Thank you Derek!

 

The story continues. Somewhere along the way I did a mock up and tested the placement of the different parts of the diorama.

 

 

Later, I considered moving the telephone booth a little forward, not letting it sit that close to the wall. 

 

Also, I had so far been thinking about the scene as showing a part of a town square or similar, but now thought that maybe it should be a wide sidewalk instead, with the gutter and part of the street visible along the front. That might help break it all up some, adding additional visual interest.

 

Next thing to build - a storm drain. Based on photos of real drains I put the model together from various pieces of styrene. First a picture of the unpainted parts, and then of the final drain.

 

 

 

 

[Svedberg]

In urban settings there is almost always some kind of grating around trees. This helps air and water getting down through the soil. In the place and time I'm was modeling in this diorama the tree grates were made of concrete. I had a fairly good mental picture of what they looked like, but did not manage to find any left in real life. The only thing I found at first was this picture of a grate in bad shape. Poor tree!

 

(Photo: Örjan Stål)

I found the above photo in a publication from the Stockholm traffic and park administration (Trafikontoret). That in turn led me to a helpful person who told me that the above were the standard grates in the city of Stockholm up to the 1990:s. He also was kind enough to supply me with a plan of such a grate.

 

 

Since I did not want to manually cut all those tiny holes, and get them all straight and tidy at the same time, I decided to instead do a 3D print of a grate. Here is what the 3D model look like. It consists of four different parts, that would be cut apart  and fitted into a frame I would build from styrene.

 

 

A few weeks later the tree grate arrived from the 3D printing service. The print looked like this.

 

 

 

The grate is printed in a plastic material at that time called Frosted Extreme Detail (FXD). I really did not need the fine detailing possible with that material. I could have used the Frosted Ultra Detail (FUD) instead, but the FXD also gives a smoother surface which I wanted.

As you can see my printing included the concrete parts of the grate only. To make the 3D model simpler I decided to not include the metal framing but to add that later using styrene dimensional strips. The next photo shows just that.

 

 

And the completed assembly painted with a grey spay primer.

 

 

Lennart

 

[Svedberg]

Next up was to make the tree that would be growing to the right of the telephone booth. I made it as a wire armature tree, i.e. making the branches using twisted wires. I used a wood skewer for the core of the stem, creating a straight and fairly well pruned tree. This since the tree shall sit in an urban setting, and not grow freely in the wilderness.

Here is a picture of the progress after the first step.

 

 

I built up the stem using some modelling clay. The branches got some modelling paste to make the wires less obvious. Then I spray painted (rattle cans) the whole thing. First gray and then with some black. Last both the stem and the branches got a brownish wash.

 

 

Before adding the leaves the tree needed some finer branches. So I sprinkled on some static grass fibres. First 6 mm fibres and then 3 mm fibres. I used ordinary hairspray to make the fibres stick. The picture below shows the tree after this step. The stem is covered with a piece of paper to avoid any hairspray or fibres to end up on it.

 

 

The next and last step was to add the leaves. I used Noch Leaves, Light Green (#07142). Once again, hairspray was used to "glue" the leaves to the tree. Here is the final result.

 

[Svedberg]

The last item to build for the diorama is a lamp post. And as all other things on the diorama, this one was to be as I remember it from my childhood in a Stockholm suburb. I scouted that neighbourhood for posts remaining from that period, but they have all been replaced. I did however manage to find some photos on the web, like this one (from the early 1950s).

 

 

Note the distinct shape of the lower part of the post. It is that part I was most eager to get right. But with only pictures like this it was hard to get the dimensions correct. But then one day I happened to, by pure chance, stumble upon two lamp posts closer to the city centre, where only the upper parts had been replaced, and the lower parts remained in the original form. Like this.

 

 

Not in a very good shape, and not in the color I remember, but now I could get decent measurements.

The next picture shows how I modelled the lower part of the post, using brass tubes of different dimensions, and styrene strips wrapped around the tubes.

 

 

The reflector of the lamp post had quite a peculiar shape, as seen in the top photo of this post. Like this, since I am not sure you remember 🙂 

 

 

I could not figure out how to convincingly, and manually, create that form from plastic, metal or any other material. From brass using a lathe perhaps, but I do not have a lathe and would not know how to properly handle one, so I decided to once more pursue the path of 3D printing. After some struggling with the Web based 3D modelling tool I am using (Tinkercad) I managed to create a model that looks like this when uploaded to the 3D printing service (Shapeways):

 

My intention was to place a SMD LED inside it, and make the post actually work.

 

Eventually the print arrived, and the first thing to do was to check that it would fit with the rest of the assembly as intended. To the right in the picture below is a reflector as delivered. To the left is a reflector where I have drilled a hole through it for the electrical wires, attached a 1 millimeter brass tube to the hole and threaded two magnet (enamel) wires through the whole thing.

 

 

In front of the left reflector in the picture above is the 2323 (2.3x2.3 mm) SMD LED that I intended to use to light the lamp post. It is the same type of LED as I used to light the telephone booth.

 

Next it was time to assemble the lamp post. First is a picture where the reflector part is to be soldered to the horizontal part of the post. I had to fit the LED in the reflector and thread the wires before soldering the different tubes together. This since the 90 degree turns would not let me thread the wires afterwards.

 

 

And here is the final assembly.

 

 

Nearing the finish line. Primed...

 

 

...and the painted a blue-grey color. As I remember, the posts had about this color. Maybe a little more towards green, but since I really do not know this will make do.

 

 

Lennart

Edited July 16, 2018 by Svedberg

[Svedberg]

With all the elements to be included in the diorama built and ready, it was time to start on the diorama itself. I cut the diorama base from foam, and built a wooden frame around it.

 

 

Next I laid out the various elements on the base. In the picture below you can also see the foundation for the telephone booth, the fitting for the lamp post and a paper print representing the grating around the tree. I have also laid the cork that will become the street paving and the curb. The storm drain has also been test fitted.

 

 

I intended to set the pavement on the diorama with stones. Not the street part, but the pavement, because that is how I remember certain areas from my childhood. For that purpose I have watched a number of YouTube videos on how to model cobblestones. Now, the term "cobblestone" is often used both when referring to cobble-sized roundish stones and when actually referring to set paving using quarried stones, also called Belgian blocks. What I am after is really the latter, but the videos mostly refer to cobblestones, regardless of which type of stone they mean. Here is an example of the kind of stones I mean.

 

 

The technique described in the following video is what I decided to try:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAyxveNfnsE

 

My NorthWest Short Line cutter was indispensable when cutting stones from cork.

 

 

Here nearly half of the stones are in place.

 

 

And finally - the last stone has been laid!

 

 

With stones and street paving in place, painting and weathering could begin. I used various colors, mostly Vallejo, to obtain the desired effect. The sidewalk stones are actually more blue than grey. I used Vallejo Intermediate blue (70.903) and Vallejo French Mirage blue (70.900), a tip I got from another YouTube video. Can't remember which right now.

 

 

 

I also needed a wall to frame the scene, positioned along the back of the sidewalk. It was made of a piece of extruded foam, clad with sanding paper to simulate a plastered wall. The wall was later painted. Along the top I put square pieces of cork that would be painted to simulate stones.

 

[Svedberg]

With all elements done, including the pavement and street, I put everyting in place and did some final touchup and detailing. More photos will come in the 'Ready For Inspection' section.

 

 

Lennart