Roundhouse front wall

Progress on the railway always takes a bit of a dive in November as I focus on Christmas gifts. In stolen minutes since the Railway Modellers’ Meet, two weeks ago, I’ve managed to add the missing blocking and timbers to the front wall of the roundhouse. The pillars for roundhouse doors are generally very heavy, […]

Roundhouse arches

Information is a curse and a blessing. On the one hand, having real prototype information makes our models that much richer. On the other hand, once you have it, it cannot be ignored. In my case, Peter Newman shared a Del Rosamond photograph of the roundhouse after it had burned (unfortunately I don’t have permission to […]

Roundhouse studs

Today The Girl helped me cut the studs for the roundhouse walls. We used HO scale 4×6 – a little heavy, perhaps, but I felt it was worth having some extra bracing to hold up the card. I had originally thought I would use the stud assemblies that I cut with the Cricut, but inspired by yesterday’s post, […]

Roundhouse Walls go Up

While working on the Railway Modellers’ Meet last night, I almost finished placing the remaining walls. That back wall is going to be tricky and quite delicate while the model is under construction! At the end of the evening, I was sitting back, admiring the progress when I noticed that one of the back wall […]

Erecting the roundhouse front wall

Putting the roundhouse together is a delicate operation. Not only is this not a square building, but also it needs to match the track configuration. So, it was with some trepidation that I approached erecting the front wall. I think along the way, I also changed my mind about how the roundhouse was going to […]

Roundhouse front wall

It appears that the front wall of the roundhouse was individual vertical board siding with about 6″ boards. So, I designed that up for lazy-guy individual boards on the Cricut and hacked it out of more Strathmore card. This time, I was slightly more careful not to paint adjacent boards with the same load from […]

A week of redos

It was a heavy week at work – most nights until past midnight. So, I didn’t get much done on the roundhouse. Even so, I managed to get a little bit done in the fifteen minute snatches between times. As I mentioned last week, the original shingle roof for the shed didn’t allow for any […]

Details on Cricut board and batten

Scribed and cut lines on the CricutA recent comment over on Model Railroad Hobbyist, where I cross-post some of this blog, made me realize that I didn’t do a great job of explaining the approach to board and batten. I actually thought it was simple and self-evident from the photos, but I guess it wasn’t. […]

Cricut shingles

Perhaps there is no harder problem for railway modellers than shingles. First of all, because we tend to have a bird’s eye view, they are right up front and centre. Secondly, it takes a team of workers about a week to re-roof even a modest house. So, while you could install individual shingles, it will drive you […]

Cricut board and batten

It is so nice when a plan works on the first attempt. Frequent readers of this blog know it’s rare for me, and so, I’m taking a moment to savour the victory. The battens went on today, pretty much as planned. I was amazed at how well they lined up with the board joints beneath […]