Talking T Gauge

chrismears · Joined: 17 Oct 2008 Posts: 3

Hi

It seems as people that we have comfort foods, and as model railroaders we all seem to have comfort projects. At least I know I do. A long time ago I bought a copy of Mike Gill's book on building model railway buildings. The first project in the book is a little 2 storey English stucco cottage. I've always really liked this project and every time I've thought about modelling in a scale outside my native N scale I've built a copy. It's a fast project and I've always liked the result.

Of all the different scales I've built this in, this is the finished version in 2mm scale

I'm trying to get a feel for the size of these models and what modelling in 1/450 will be like. So this model seemd a natural place to wade in. I fired up AutoCAD and redrew the plans for 1/450 with the intent of building a paper model. This is an un-scaled version of the paper model template. The idea here is a layering approach, removing more of the plan for each successive layer

If you'd like to try this out, I'd be glad to send you a PDF (to scale) for the house. Just drop me a message and I'll get one out to you.

Last night I got the walls up. I've been playing around with a window that works for me as visible, yet still relatively to scale. I'll get that part done and hopefully tonight have a set of pictures to scale.

Cheers
Chris

chrismears · Joined: 17 Oct 2008 Posts: 3

I've been playing around with some ideas and I thought I'd share what I've got so far. I've built two

I haven't done much clean-up to the models, no filling the corners, no painting, and they look rougher than I'd like. But I'm encouraged.

The material for both is paper. On the first version I decided to follow something I normally do for model buildings: to build a foundation to allow the structure to be placed in the scene after scenery work is complete. This model uses cardstock from a file folder for the walls, and the windows are printed onto paper. The mullions are drawn as thin as my printer would allow and I'm basically happy with them.

I was reading about that great, fantastic, Victorian railways coach elsewhere in this folder and thinking about the layers technique some more. At our local dollar store I was able to buy a package of Avery brand labels. I printed a couple of versions of the house to the sheet of labels, then cut out different layers and laminated (well, er, stuck) them onto some more card and then folded up this second iteration

The first thing I noticed was just how much my rushed handiwork showed up when magnified this large. I must do a better job with the knife next time when cutting out the window openings, and then a much better job of lining things up in the windows.

Speaking of my third approach, I have been thinking about styrene with about 0.005" relief for the windows which recesses windows and doors in about 2.25" (0.005x450) which feels about right.

Thoughts so far
I really liked the printed windows. In this small a scale I really don't think I'll be able to tell the difference between a transparent window and one whose simply printed black.

Finally, I can see that one of the biggest challenges facing me as a scratchbuilder in this scale will be the delicate balance between texture and scale dimensions. This will take some time to find.

Cheers
Chris