Model Train Journal

My daughter's pumpkin carving for 2020:



Gotta do something for fun.

Wife did the left one. I did the middle and the kid paint the little one.

Brilliant! That middle one with the pickle clenched in his teeth reminds me of the warehouse supervisor I worked with while in college...dude always had a soggy stub of a cigar in his mouth.

While wrapping up a number of other things here, I started a paper building project I've been wanting to try. This, a take on the Lionel bungalow, but scaled up to something a bit closer to O-scale (the originals were probably closer to 1/64, or S-scale). Anyway, just getting started:



Sarge has built a number of very nice paper/card buildings for his layout, so I've been wanting to give it a try. Needed to find something more akin to tinplate, and Paul Race and Howard Lamey have a number of projects on their site:

https://bigindoortrains.com/primer/buildings/lackie/tinplate.htm

I also have a stack of the old Toy Trains magazines from the 1930s and 1940s, each of which featured a cut-n-paste model for the pike. Might try a few of those too, although they'll need a bit of clean-up after scanning.

healey36 wrote:While wrapping up a number of other things here, I started a paper building project I've been wanting to try.

I see that you are reinforcing the corners but how think is this paper? Last one I did was a Pioneer Valley paper structure; pretty good stiff paper, but I thought it might have been better with more behind it like some foamboard or equivalent.

I originally printed it on card-stock but it seemed a bit flimsy, so I used matt-board I picked up at Michael's or the local framing shop. Probably a sixteenth of an inch thick. I was going to print the windows on cardstock, cut out the mullions, and paste 'em in with a bit of acetate behind them (thinking I was going to put a light in it), but couldn't make a job of it. I'll try it again on the next one.

If you use foam-core, then you have to frame out the windows, right? Or are you using Grandt-Line windows that glue in from the outside? I've done that in the past, but for this I wanted the sheet-metal look. I cut out the windows, then printed filled versions on cardstock which I pasted in from the back. I had to dab in a bit of paint on the edges to cover the matt-board edge.

I'm going to need to print a bit of additional paper to cover the corners of the building where things don't butt quite so nice. That may be a problem trying to match the color. I printed this thing some 15 years ago, but when I print it now, the color is a bit off (probably an issue with my HP printer).

When this is done, it's going to be pretty garish, which I guess is probably right.

healey36 wrote:If you use foam-core, then you have to frame out the windows, right? Or are you using Grandt-Line windows that glue in from the outside?

What I've got has decent printed windows so I'm not opening them up, but if I were to do that, I'd probably replace them with Grandt Line if I could make those work.

Making the single shed-dormer and the front entryway is going to be a bit fiddly...if the project goes south, that's likely where it'll happen.