Erecting Wooden Building

The cardboard mock-up for the relief building I started in June underwent some adjustments during my summer holidays. The opening was adjusted to fit my Baguely-Drewry and Fowler locomotives and I sketched in the windows on the top floor. The cheap cardboard mock-up allows all sorts of adjustments to be made at pratically no cost and very little effort. Now the relief building is ready for cladding with wooden boards and later to have lights and detailing added. With the adjustments made, the building finished with a width of ca. 40 cm and a height of 35 cm. In most scales that would make a substantial structure, but not in 1/19 scale.

The rough foamboard structure ready for a covering of wooden boards.

When I enlarged the opening in the building to accomodate my two large locomotives, I decided to keep the tolerances minimal around the Baguely-Drewry loco. This should illustrate that the large locomotive was a late addition to the company's list of equipment, and that the building was there before that particular loco arrived.

The cardboard mock-up with enlarged opening for the track, experimental window openings and a miserably illustration of a lamp above the door.

Cardboard has given way to foamboard. The Baguley-Drewry is a tight fit in the opening. Don't stick your head out the cab window!

The core of the building was cut from 5 mm foamboard. Internal bracing of corners and guides for placing flooring was made with square wooden profiles. The floor was made from the same foamboard as the walls. Where the floor didn't obtain a good light-proof fitting against the interior walls I added some black electrical tape to cover the small gaps. This will hopefully avoid light from the lamps on first floor to shine through to the ground floor.

The roof is designed to lift off for work on the interior lights on the top floor. The removable roof will also help if I should have to repair windows or fit other details at a later time.

It's obvious that the relief building is extremely shallow.

To enable a correct wooden cladding of the two storey building, the upper storey wall was made from a double layer of foamboard. In that way I can mount the wooden boards on the top floor overlapping the boards on the lower part of the wall.  

Without skips in the door it's easy to see the building's limited depth.

The building is basically just a facade with very limited depth (8 cm where the track enters) and I painted all interior surfaces black to make the building appear to have just a minimum of depth. As the windows are quite small the most critical view will be through the large opening for the track. I consider adding double doors to help obstruct the view into the building.

My work on model buildings hasn't been limited to 1/19 scale. At work I'm custodian of the office's 1/87 scale model of a Danish station. It's made from laser cut cardboard and needed minor repairs. I finished the job on my last day at work before my summer vacation.