4mm Terry's Card Buildings Thread

[Terry]

I decided to get on and build the small wall which sits on top of the roof and encloses what I shall call the lamp room. Like the rest of the structure, this low wall is hexagonal. I took measurements from the drawing and, using my schoolboy geometry, and a compass, plotted a hexagon of the right size on paper. I used this line drawing as a plan, around which I built the walls. Each individual wall is made from 2mm greyboard, chamfered at both ends and covered in dressed stone paper..





The wall of the 'lamp room' has been carefully glued in place on top of the roof after carefully measuring and drawing small location 'dots' with a pencil as an aid..




The narrow plinth around the bottom of the 'lamp room' wall was made and applied in one piece. It is two 3mm wide strips of thin card laminated together and covered in dressed stone paper. I held it against each side in turn and put pencil marks at each corner which were then scribed on the back with a scalpel blade. Each corner was bent and the strip was stuck in place starting with the face over the door, with the join at one of the rear corners..



Terry

 

[Terry]

The next stage was to make something which represented the lamp and lens. This is what I came up with..

These are the spools around which your dental tape or floss are wound. I always force open the empty container to retrieve these just in case they might come in useful for a modelling project. I picked up this lovely bead, and some spares, at a craft show. I ensured that it had a large enough hole in the centre to take an LED.




I had a packet of these tucked away for some reason which escapes me..



I glued one flange to the top of one of the spools..



Gave it a lick of paint and stuck the bead on top..



Yes I know that it is not strictly prototypical, but in 4mm scale I couldn't quite work out how I was going to get a lens to float and rotate in an oil bath, around a constant light source, without is sploshing everywhere whenever I moved it!

As regards finding a way of simulating the light appearing to flash on and off, I had this little electrical gadget tucked away in a drawer for some time just waiting for the opportunity to use it. At last, the moment had arrived!




When it came to actually trying to fit the LED inside the lens, I realised that it would not be attached to the inside of the lens, but to the base, the roller from the dental tape box as shown previously. This has an inside diameter of 9mm. I cut two pieces of plastic tube of differing diameters, one of which would just fit inside the other. I glued the larger diameter tube to the inside of the lamp base. The LED was glued to the inside of the smaller diameter tube which was then inserted inside the larger diameter tube. The smaller tube was slid up and down inside the larger tube to get the LED at the correct height, and then the two tubes were glued together. The next step was to feed the wires through the small hole in the lower roof and glue the whole lamp assembly in place.




Terry

 

[Terry]

I pondered over how to make the six rather large windows and decided to go with the self-adhesive label method, previously described in this thread. The windows were drawn in pencil on the labels and fixed to the clear glazing, before cutting around the panes and lifting out. I sealed the outer edges of the frames with Micro Kristal Klear to prevent them from lifting. Structurally, the windows on the model would support the roof so the glazing needed to be quite thick.




The finished windows were glued together at the edges, but not glued to the walls below. This would allow the whole window unit to be removed should the need arise.





I drew and cut out the hexagonal upper roof, as per the lower roof previously, as well as a smaller hexagon to fit under the roof to locate it to the tops of the windows. The two roof parts were glued together and given a coat of shellac (French polish) to harden them.




The upper roof was painted and fixed to the top of the windows using Micro Kristal Klear. A thin bead was spread around the outer edge of the smaller hexagon which engages with the window top edges. The Kristal Klear dries clear and I was hoping that it will be sufficient to bond the windows to the card roof. Happily, this proved to be the case.




At this stage I realised that the windows needed to be raised slightly above the outer walls. Accordingly, small strips of styrene were glued to the roof beneath each window.
A small cheap plastic measuring spoon was used to fabricate the dome, or cupola, on top of the roof. The handle was cut off and the resulting lumps and bumps made good with a file and sandpaper. Narrow strips of self-adhesive label were applied to the dome..




The domed roof was brush painted using Humbrol enamels. It is supposed to represent copper when it turns that lovely green colour. Reference was made to a picture found on the internet. It was fixed in place using Revell 'Contacta' liquid glue, which appeared to be adequate. A hole was drilled through the top of the dome to accept the intended weather vane.




Terry

 

[Terry]

As it was possible to see clearly into the lamp room, I decided to install a representation of the top of the stairway. A top step was cut from 2mm Greyboard and covered in grey paper from the Scalescenes Dressed Stone sheet. More steps were drawn flat on a piece of card and coloured with Pro-Marker pens and the top step was glued to the end. A small piece of handrail was fabricated from brass wire and attached to the top step, thus..




The staircase was stuck in place beside the lamp and is just visible in this picture..




I decided to stray slightly from the Ahern drawing with regard to the weather vane. The one shown on the drawing is not very impressive so I decided to enhance it a bit by making a small ship. The hull was shaped from 60x60 thou plastic strip and the masts were small pieces of wire to which paper sails were attached. The finished ship was painted with Humbrol enamel paint. Unfortunately, I couldn't fathom how to include the four points of the compass as the letters would be extremely small, so it was be fitted without.





And finally, here is the finished lighthouse. With hindsight, a second bead glued on top of the present bead might improve the look of the lens. A five-minute job for one of those wet and cold winter afternoons.



If you would like to see the model in operation, here is a link to a YouTube video..

=

Thanks for following this build. I hope that you found it enjoyable.

Terry

 

[Osgood]

Well given your prolific use of cardboard and sticky-backed stuff, I think the least you could do is award yourself a Blue Peter badge in the form of the ship profile on the weathervane - wonderful modelling!

 

[Terry]

Thank you very much. Glad that you are finding the builds interesting.

Terry

 

[Terry]

A Signal Box

Not a John H. Ahern model this time, and not a step by step build. Just a few photos of the small signal box, constructed from card, for my Southern layout Farleigh.

Whilst perusing my copy of Southern Signals by G.Pryer, I came across a beautiful 'Brighton' ground level signal-box formerly situated at Adversane Crossing, between Billingshurst and Pulborough. In the photo, the signalman is obligingly stood outside the box which gave me a rough idea of the dimensions.

All interior detail was made from card except for a row of headless Peco track pins to represent the levers. Interior detail consists of lever frame, shelf with block instruments, etc., Tyer's No.6 Tablet Instrument, desk with Train Register, chair, stove and a clock. All details derived from the book A Pictorial Record of Southern Signals by G. Pryer (OPC).

Constructional details: 1.5mm thick mount board mainly used, covered in Scalescenes' white clapboard paper, varnished and painted with a self-mixed stone colour in acrylic paint. Roof slates from Scalescenes. Postcard for barge boards. Windows made from discarded plastic packaging with thin card frames and self-adhesive label glazing bars. The door panels have been scribed onto the card and the door knob is a Peco track pin. Gutters and downpipes from plastic strip (Evergreen). Fixing brackets on downpipes from self-adhesive label. The rather fine fire buckets together with supporting brackets came from Dart Castings. The finials presented me with an interesting problem. None appeared to be available commercially during the Covid-19 lockdown period, so I resorted to using my mini-drill as a lathe and did a spot of miniature wood turning. They are made from the ends of wooden cocktail sticks, secured in the mini-drill and fashioned with needle files whilst being turned. Strangely, quite an enjoyable experience.









Terry

 

[Terry]

A Barn

Once again, not a blow by blow account of the build although the techniques used are much as already described earlier in this thread.

On consulting Miniature Building Construction, I found on page 67 a very nice drawing of a barn amongst other drawings of farm buildings. Out came the mount board and here is the result. The roof presented one or two problems but we got there in the end. I decided to use Scalescenes 'Plain Clapboard' instead of scribing the planks. I must say that I wam quite pleased with the look of the walls. The Scalescenes printed sheets were sprayed with matt varnish which allowed me to weather, using watercolour paints, without the fear of the ink running. Here are a couple of photos, one before weathering and one of the finished article..





Terry

 

[40057]

As it was possible to see clearly into the lamp room, I decided to install a representation of the top of the stairway. A top step was cut from 2mm Greyboard and covered in grey paper from the Scalescenes Dressed Stone sheet. More steps were drawn flat on a piece of card and coloured with Pro-Marker pens and the top step was glued to the end. A small piece of handrail was fabricated from brass wire and attached to the top step, thus..

View attachment 202061


The staircase was stuck in place beside the lamp and is just visible in this picture..

View attachment 202062


I decided to stray slightly from the Ahern drawing with regard to the weather vane. The one shown on the drawing is not very impressive so I decided to enhance it a bit by making a small ship. The hull was shaped from 60x60 thou plastic strip and the masts were small pieces of wire to which paper sails were attached. The finished ship was painted with Humbrol enamel paint. Unfortunately, I couldn't fathom how to include the four points of the compass as the letters would be extremely small, so it was be fitted without.

View attachment 202063
View attachment 202064


And finally, here is the finished lighthouse. With hindsight, a second bead glued on top of the present bead might improve the look of the lens. A five-minute job for one of those wet and cold winter afternoons.

View attachment 202065

If you would like to see the model in operation, here is a link to a YouTube video..

=

Thanks for following this build. I hope that you found it enjoyable.

Terry

That is really wonderful.

 

[Terry]

That is really wonderful.

Thank you very much. Very kind of you.

Terry

 

[Terry]

Small Country Station With Attached Living Quarters

For a drawing of this delightful building, turn to page 146 of your copy of Miniature Building Construction (1969 reprint) by John H. Ahern.
The building consists of three parts, a brick built Station Master's house, wooden offices and waiting rooms and finally, a wooden lamp room and lavatory. Just to give you an idea of the look of the building, here is a card mock-up which I made prior to construction.



I was working from a 4mm scale drawing, one of a series by John H. Ahern.
I decided to start with the Station Master's house, this being the tallest part of the structure. Parts were cut from 1.5mm thick mount board, with chimneys being made by laminating together a number of pieces of card, soaking the edges in superglue and sanding smooth when dry..




The upper edges of the door and windows were coloured with a Pro-marker, 'Sunkissed Pink' to be precise. This is a good representation of Scalescenes' red brick which was intended to be used for the walls..




For the walls I chose Scalescenes TX01 Red Brick, which was first given a light spray of Testors Dullcote matt varnish to render it waterproof. The brick paper was glued to the card using Pritt which I find gives a more permanent bond than most of the cheaper versions of glue stick. You can see here that construction follows the Scalescenes' method whereby the brick paper is carried around the edges of the card. Nowadays, I would not glue the overhangs behind but would seek to carry the brickpaper to the corners of the assembled walls, and trim off the overhangs to give neat joins at the corners, as shown previously in the Village General Shop build.




How the front of the walls looked at this stage..



Terry

 

[Terry]

I usually fit the windows and doors at this stage, this being much easier than doing so once the walls are assembled.
The window sills are slim strips cut from the edge of 1mm card which has been coloured with a felt tipped pen...




Windows frames and the door frame were cut from thin white card. Scenesetters Glazing Bars (available from Freestone Model Accessories) were used with curtains from Scalescenes. The door was simply scribed card.





Terry

 

[Terry]

The walls were assembled. Note the small triangles of card used to keep everything square at the corners..




The roof was fitted next. The edges and underside of the edges should be darkened with a felt-tipped pen before fitting. We don't want any white showing on the finished model..




The dormer was made from mount board, scribed to represent the planking and glued to the roof..



The structure was coloured with felt-tipped pen to match the door and window sills. The roof area inside the dormer was coloured with a black felt-tipped pen..




The window frame was cut as a single unit from thin card, and fitted in place..




Glazing bars were added using the self-adhesive label method, as described earlier in this thread. Scalescenes' curtains were glued behind and the roof was made from two small pieces of mount board. The roof edges were coloured with a felt-tipped pen before the roof was fitted in place..



Terry

 

[Terry]

I decided to press on with the next part of the building - the waiting room and office, and tackle the roof slates later. Firstly, the parts were drawn onto mount board..




And cut out. The chimney was formed with layers of mount board, as before. The sides and end were scribed to represent the weather boarding and given a wash of watercolour paint after this photo was taken..




To make the window and door frames, firstly the cut edges of same were run around with a felt-tipped pen. Thin card was also coloured and thin strips cut. All cut edges were coloured..




The thin coloured strips were glued in place with Pritt..




This is the effect when looking from the side..




Windows were added using Scene-Setters Glazing Bars, as before..




The doors are made up of two layers of card, mount board for the base and thin card for the panels. The main doors were to be in the open position so were not fitted at this stage..



Peco track pins were subsequently added to represent the door knobs.

The walls and one end were assembled on my trusty glass sheet. A false roof was added to square up the structure and a small triangular piece of card was glued to the top to support the main roof, due to be fitted shortly. Two interior partitions were added to strengthen the building.




The other end of the building has a brick chimney attached which is visible part way down the building until it disappears behind the lamp room. The chimney was built earlier in this thread and was covered in the same brick paper as used for the station master's house. I applied it with Pritt. Once the chimney was bricked, the wall was glued in place..




The assembled office and waiting room was held in place against the station master's house and the roof marked for cutting out a small section of roof to allow the buildings to butt together..




The two buildings were glued together and the roof cut out for the office and waiting room. Before gluing in place, all of the edges and underside of the edges were coloured with a black felt-tipped pen..



Terry

 

[Terry]

The main doors were glued in place and attention was then turned to fabricating the chimney tops. The tops of the chimneys were measured and the dimensions transferred onto a piece of 1mm thick greyboard. The dimensions were transferred again to 2mm greyboard but slightly larger all around to allow a 1mm overhang on all sides. The two pieces of greyboard were glued together, thus..




My Letraset Promarker (Sunkissed Pink) was run over all surfaces to colour the greyboard before attaching a strip of Scalescenes brick paper around the edges of the 2mm greyboard. The finished piece was then glued to the chimney..




I cast my eyes over the drawing of the building and made a list of the features still to be added. I find this is a good way to focus and makes it possible to make a plan of action. I realised that I had not yet fitted the small porch over the door of the Station Master's house so set about remedying this. Quick and easy to do. One rectangular piece of card for the roof, two triangular pieces for the sides and a further two smaller triangles for the supports, a semi-circle being cut into these for added interest. All coloured with a felt tipped pen and Scalescenes slates stuck to the roof..




Scalescenes slates were added in overlapping strips to the roof. I always run a dark coloured felt-tipped pen along the lower edge of each strip
of slates, before fixing it in place with a glue stick. Failure to do this will result in the white edges being visible on the finished building.




The lamp room and toilet were added to the building. Construction much as previously shown. Slates were applied to all roofs. Scalescenes' ridge tiles were stuck on the two larger roofs, using a glue stick, and flashing (Scalescenes) was affixed around the chimneys and where the roofs join together. The black patch on the roof is where the toilet skylight will be positioned.




Terry

​

 

[Terry]

The two ends of the skylight/vent over the gentlemen's lavatory were drawn and cut out. The edges and insides were coloured with a black felt-tip pen..





The skylight was simply built up with two thicknesses of card, one being 1.5 mm thick and the other postcard thickness. The lower edges were coloured with black felt-tip pen..




The thicker card was glued in place first and then the thinner, wider card, was glued on top. This was repeated until the desired depth was reached..








The other end was fixed in place. The ends were subsequently painted to match the general colour of the building.




For the glazing I used Scene-Setters Glazing Bars, as used on building windows. I rubbed the underside of the glazing with abrasive paper to give the impression of frosted glass. A thin strip of grey paper was glued to the ridge.



Terry

 

[Terry]

Thin card was used to simulate the framing of the timber buildings. After fixing in place this was painted in the same colour as the other woodwork.




In my view, nothing makes a building look more like a railway structure than a platform canopy. For the valance I had to hand a commercial product from Slater's which they described as Midland Railway Station Awning.

Firstly, I cut down the height of the valance as it was too deep for this building. The valance being made of plastic, I decided to cement it to a rectangle of styrene, this being the full size of the canopy. I then covered the whole area in card as I wanted to maintain the card 'feel' and 'look' to the building. The valance at the end of the canopy was fabricated from styrene to match the Slater's product. I painted the valance in yellow acrylic which, of course, looked nothing like the watercolour finish of the building! However, once dry I was able to over paint with watercolour to match the rest of the building.






It was a quick job to make and paint the screen outside the gents' toilet. Sankey Scenics provided the 'Gentlemen' sign. I took the opportunity to weather the building with dark watercolour paint, starting at the bottom planks and brushing upwards.




Time to fit the bargeboards. Straight away I ran into a problem. So far, the building has been constructed using 1.5mm mount board, with an occasional piece of postcard. I needed white card whose thickness fell somewhere between the two. A search of my card stock revealed nothing of use. Idea! We had pizzas for dinner and they came on a card backing. A quick dive down the recycling bin revealed two pieces of card about .75 mm thick with a white surface on one side. Result!

Quite pleased with myself that I had done my bit to save the world by recycling the recycling, I cut 2.5mm strips of the aforementioned card, trimmed the ends to shape and coloured with a felt-tipped pen. When stuck in place, they looked ideal..




To represent the eaves on the wooden buildings, a narrow strip of the aforementioned pizza card was painted and stuck in place under the roof edge. The gutter was represented by Evergreen half round strip No.242 which is 2mm wide. This was painted matt black and then a fillip of glue was run along one edge, this then being pressed against the card eves. I use Cosmic Shimmer acrylic glue which is quite thick and grabs almost immediately. It also has the advantage that any excess is easily cleared away with a cocktail stick leaving no trace behind.

Downpipes are represented by Evergreen 3/64" rod No.221, painted matt black. The top end is bent to shape to meet the gutter and is glued in place. The brackets holding the downpipe to the wall are simply small slithers of printer paper coloured with a black felt-tipped pen..




Detail on the other side of the building. Posters from Sankey Scenics




All gutters and downpipes were completed..






The final touches were added to the model.

Chimney pots are from the Dart Castings range, painted with acrylic sienna brown (from a tube 'borrowed' from the wife's craft shed), and weathered with a lick of black acrylic paint. Dart Castings chimneys come with a handy spigot on the base, useful for both holding whilst painting and for firmly fixing the chimney in place. Drill a hole, plop in the glue, push the chimney in, job done!

The nameboard was printed in a dialogue box in Microsoft Word. This is useful because you can also add colour. It was cut to size and glued to card (our old friend the pizza base). A felt tipped pen was run around the edges and the front was given a light spray of Testors Dullcote matt varnish to seal the ink. Cosmic Shimmer acrylic glue was run along the bottom edge of the nameboard and it was placed in position over the main door.

Final photos..









Thanks for following this build.

Terry

 

[John57sharp]

Very nice work and some good tips too. Hording card packaging has become something of an issue for me, but it’s cheap and cheerful and recycling too.

cheers
John

 

[Terry]

Hello John and thank you for your kind comments. I find that it's all too easy to amass bags of plastic packaging, intended for windows. I currently have enough to complete every window in a model the size of of Hampton Court Palace. Now there's an idea..

Thanks for your interest in this thread.

Best wishes,

Terry

 

[Heather Kay]

a model the size of of Hampton Court Palace. Now there's an idea..

*buys in large supply of pop corn*