7mm Building a GWR brick Waiting room

[LarryG]

I described modelling the station masters house and waiting room at Carrog station (Dee Valley) in workbench thread, but it got unwieldy and was slow opening up. So I decided to put this in the GWR Action section seeing as the brick waiting room was something of a house-style in parts of the GWR.

The first move was to photograph the building square-on with as little perspective tailoff as possible. Having measured the length of the building (29' 6"), the photo was then printed off to 7mm scale, which was then used as a scale drawing....

The lavatory wall is 84" long, then 41" to the first window on the left, 23" for each window with 13" in between them. 36" to the door. 40" door width and then 60" to the end of the building. The height of the waiting room from platform is 10' 3".

The lavatory end wall measurements are: 56" to the doorway. 36" wide doorway, 18" to end on wall. The canopy width is 66".

The opposite end of the building is partially below ground level due to the path down to the Down platform. Therefore only 92" of the end wall is visible above ground level and only 72" of the wall where it is adjacent to the field. The building is set back 11' from the platform edge.

 

[LarryG]

After printing the building to 7mm scale (I also built it in 4mm), the building walls were cut out of 60thou Plastikard to measurement and also checked against the photo....

The next move was to clad the walls with Slater embossed English Bond brick starting between the windows to get the brick pattern correct....

The walls fully clad....

Thick glazing material was taped to the photo and the window frames traced in cream paint using a ruling pen. When dry, the outer frames were added in chocolate....

Close up showing the rounded corner bricks in window and door openings and on the corners of the building...

The assembled walls, decorative bricks and slabs on top of toilet wall. Note the rounded corner at this end of the building only extended to the height of the toilet door. The back corners of the building were square. Interestingly, when this waiting room was rebuilt from rubble, it ended up one course of bricks short than the original. So my model is of the restored building...

 

[LarryG]

The next move was to fit the guttering. I know it looks strange, but it prevent the walls from bending inwards. The outer edge was rounded off on the underside to represent guttering

Hopefully, the picture below shows this. The roof was 60thou thick as usual....

Tiles were cut in strips from Plastikard embossed 4mm scale paving slabs. The bottom row was glued on first and the rest slightly overlapped as shown....

Looking more like a building now.....

The canopy was built from a rectangle of 60 thou Plastikard curved on its bottom edge to resemble guttering. Then Slaters corrugated sheet was added top and underside....

I'm afraid I cannot remember where i bought the wooden canopy edging. I nipped off the blobs to leave the upper part of the edging....

A mazak girder left over from a Hornby toy was sunk into the front wall of the waiting room to give added support to the canopy...


On completion, the building was sprayed with Halfords Red Oxide plastic primer....

 

[LarryG]

The building was sprayed an orange-red colour (cellulose) and then the engineering brick sections were brush painted, again in cellulose. Mortar was a weak matt white enamel paint brushed over the bricks and wiped off the surface of the bricks with a damp cloth of turps. Each side was done one at a time to prevent the paint running out of the brick cement courses. Then the building was varnish in matt cellulose. Today I would use Halford Matt Lacquer from a spraycan...

7mm and 4mm versions of the same building...

The back of the building was plain with no windows....

With the cement course highly visible, it shows the importance of getting the bricks between the windows perfectly positioned...


A comparison with the real thing. Note the support girders...

Finally, a general view of Carrog station in 4mm scale. In a senior-moment, I stupidly replaced the Peco bullhead track with Peco Code 100 to match the outdoor sections, and that is how it remains to this day....