Getting Brick City ready for the USA
One of Warren’s most famous builds will be leaving the UK for the USA later this month. St Pancras Station - as the centrepiece of our Brick City tour - will be showcased at the Reading Public Museum, Pennsylvania, USA, from 29 May - 6 September, 2021.
Strengthening the model
The build has not left the UK before and it has always been transported and installed by Warren and the team. St Pancras was the last model that Warren and Teresa built before turning their hobby into a business - it was finished in 2010. As such it is not a glued piece - despite its size and complexity - so we’ve been working on strengthening and supporting some of the more delicate sections of the model, such as the roof and the two towers, to ensure that it arrives safely after its international journey.
Exterior of the St Pancras clock tower model being glued
Interior of the St Pancras clock tower model being glued
Sections of St Pancras model in their flightcase
New interpretation panels
We’ve also been working on new interpretation panels for the model. When the COVID-19 pandemic took hold, we thought that we might need to be able to effectively encase the model and so we designed a minimal truss construction that would hold see-through blinds and incorporate a barrier to surround the model. We really like the effect the truss gives and the greatly increased space it gave us for interpretation for the model.
Creating the sections of truss for the new barrier and interpretation combination for the St Pancras model
Interpretation panel holder on a truss section, waiting for the printed panels to be attached
Refreshing the tour
The pandemic also gave us a chance to refresh some models in the tour. The original line-up were all in the Brick City book and were driven by territories where the book was going to be published. For the refresh we wanted to represent a wider range of places and cultures and cover all 7 continents. The exhibition was on display in The Leicester Museum over Summer 2020, but as not a lot of people have yet had a chance to see the new models we thought we’d give you a preview below.
Packing models for safe transit
Once all the new models were built we wanted to update their transit system too. So we’ve invested in new transport and storage boxes and we’ve set-up specific spaces for each model with straps and foam dividers to keep everything secure. All the boxes and the spaces inside are labelled so that - if necessary - they can be setup or packed away by someone other than our team.
Models packed and strapped in their transport box
Container packing design
Once all the individual items are packed we need to work out how they will all fit and be packed safely into the shipping container. Thankfully SketchUp is perfect for this.
SketchUp plan for packing the shipping container
All we need now is for the shippers to come and collect it!
