Keeping Dry (2)

Let Kit Bashing Commence!

The cunning plan is to make the Airfix (aka Dapol) platform canopy wide enough to span two tracks for fbb's very practical carriage shed. Out come Mrs fbb's kitchen scissors and snipping commences; and, in a process that is harder to describe than to execute, five narrow roof trusses become two bigguns.

Engineers amongst the blog readership will howl with derision at the lack of structural integrity of the design, but it is a start. 

The next player in this dramatic development is Alan, regular visitor to the church's Wednesday morning drop in. Co-incidentally he had turned up with a few lengths of plywood which were the right height for shed side-walls. Bonus (and free!)

But windows are difficult to make, quite beyond fbb's lack of dexterity. A company called Ancorton sells laser-cut stuff which is exquisitely expensive but just right for a large industrial building.

They come in sets of four for a modest (?) £6.50. OUCH! But fbb could never replicate such tricky tracery so, swallow hard and purchase. Next problem; how to make window sized holes in plywood that was really too thick. Received wisdom suggests that you drill a series of holes and join them up with some kind of cutting device. (rat-tailed file? keyhole saw? angle grinder? chain saw? kitchen knife? surgeon's scalpel? oxy-acetylene torch?)

What the perceived wisdom did not warn about was the consequences of using a large electric power drill to drill powerfully. No-one talked the talk about too much torque ...

... which rends the plywood walls asunder. Disaster darling. There's only one solution and it's back to advice from the celebrated Bodge and Dodge school of modelling. Take one hammer and one ancient and useless screwdriver ...

... and bash! Once the window frame is in place a multitude of sins is well hidden from view!

£6.50 well spent, eh?

From now on it become easier; largely an assembly job. Extra girders from a company called Plastruct ...

... to support the platform canopy girderage, which in turn supports the roof trusses. The clothes peg is trying to hold prayed plywood together until glue sets. Always use the finest materials possible!

Now all we have to do it add the actual roof which, you will remember ...

... is now too narrow for the roof trusses. Seemples:- Sheets of plastic timber wall cladding look quite like sheet metal roofing material ...

... from a distance, that is. The walls are covered with plastic stonework which is a sheer luxury compared with good old modelling days. Then it would be brickpaper (useless for outdoors) or lots of hand cut cardboard stones protected by a thick coat of paint. Finishing touches included rust on the roof, stonework round the windows and some greenery growing where it shouldn't.

The blue framing is bits of an "O" gauge signalbox kit bought years ago.

Five platform canopies needed five windows, but Ancorton's came in sets of four so ...

... one window is bricked up. Neat solution. 

The completed shed has been in place since before the summer precipitation and has, as planned, kept two trains nice and dry and ready for use. Ready, that is, once the grime from the building site next door has been scraped off the rails. It rains sand!

Despite the dubious engineering ...

... the structure looks adequately industrial from within and substantial from without. Annie and Clarabel are impressed with its cosiness.

The only thing now needed is some interior lighting and model club member Bruce has come up with an excellent solution; of which more anon when fbb buys his next plate.

 Next new bus launch blog : Monday 23rd November