Kingsway k214 - Lizzie's Big Pie Shop
The Christmas 2022 free download from John Howe of Kingsway Models was Lizzie's Big Pie Shop. At this point in history, the UK was going through changes of Prime Minister on a regular basis and after Boris Johnston the incumbent was Liz Truss, who lastest only 49 days. Her economic mantra was "make the pie bigger" but her attempt to do that ended on 25th October when she was forced to resign after the money markets did not like her economics. John's parody of this is Lizzie's Big Pie Shop.
2022 Free Download.
The model does not appear to be based on a particular prototype but the design is colourful and full of interesting graphics, e.g the lettuce. The Daily Star set up a webcam on an iceberg lettuce to see if it would have a longer shelf-life than the prime minister. To add to Liz Truss's humiliating resignation, the lettuce won.
The model
The sheets were printed at 51% full scale for N scale (1:148) onto thin card (160 gsm) or paper for glueing to thicker card (about 1 mm thick)
The thick card was fine for the main structural items (roof base and supports, pavement) but it was difficult for the internal walls especially around the central door. If I was doing it again, I would use the thinner card and double up where necesary.
I like doing John's free downloads because some of his ideas for construction are quite novel. In this, the main structural item is the roof base painted black on the edges to represent the gutters. The internal walls are glued to the underside of this base.
Windows and shop fronts
As on other models I have completed recently, I glazed the upper windows by adding a layer of thin clear plastic between the outer layer and the printed windows.The printed windows have curtains, so you could not see inside anyway. The clear plastic gives the sheen of glass.
The Download gives two options for the shop windows. The first is just to print out the shops directly on card and the second is to cut out the window frames, glaze them with clear plastic and construct the provided internal display for the shop. In N scale, the cutting out of the window frames would be difficult. I wanted to try a third option similar to the approach I used with the upper windows to create the effect of the glass on the shop window.
The entire printed shop front was covered by a layer of clear plastic stuck on with PVA. Another copy of the shop front was cut to give the top nameboard, the bottom board with the side members. These portions were glued with PVA on the plastic layer using the original layer as guide.
The photo shows a plain printout of the shop front (laying on the surface) while the building has the two shop windows made using the sandwich construction. I hope you can see the improvement that this technique gives.
Conclusions
This is an attractive building with an interesting basic structure.
I admit that things went wrong in making this model. There were problems in getting the central door right and the roof is not right. It is supposed to fit onto the roof base with about 2mm all round to represent the gutter. I could not get mine to have an even gap all round.
My conclusions:-
- I like the Kingsway method of using a thick roof base as a main structural item which also represents the gutters.
- My method of using a clear plastic layer over printed house windows, that I have demonstrated before, works well with this building.
- The sandwich method of construction of printed shop windows is encouraging and I am keen to try it with other buildings.
Making Lizzie's Big Pie Shop was an interesting exercise, but I cannot yet see a use for it.
Article dated: 19/04/2023