An electrical box

As I mentioned in the previous post, the diorama I'm working on shall also contain an electrical box as then used by the Stockholm Electrical Works ("Elverket"). This is a picture of such a 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).  (EDIT sep 2022: Now called "Fine Detail Plastic")

And today I got the resulting 3D print delivered by UPS:

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

A diorama with a nostalgic touch

The first project to be described on these pages is a diorama I have decided to build. The displayed scene will have a nostalgic touch, in the sense that is will include 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.

- A lamp post from those times.

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

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

The picture, which has served as my modeling reference is by Mats Jonsson, galleri orange. Another reference is a picture of a document detailing the dimensions of the m/61 booth,

which I found on the "Gjutjärn och svart bakelit" blog by Patrik Wandin.

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

In parallel with the booth I have also modeled the actual pay phone, which you can see through the door in the photo above. I could not have built my tiny model without the help of David, maintainer of the "Nostalgimacken i Bergkvara" blog. He has been kind enough to provide me with measurements of the phone.

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.

Finally, the status of the booth as of today. More to come.

Thanks for watching.

A new blog

Welcome to my new blog!

I already have a few blogs and and web pages, dormant or still live, describing my various model rail roading endeavours (see the list of links to the right). This new blog is meant to chronicle my other modeling attempts; dioramas and what not.

Time will tell what will appear on these pages. I hope you will find something of interest.