HO Scale brick yard office - progress and how-to guide.

[danielb]

As part of the extension to my HO scale switching layout, I needed a yard office building to go along with a heavy metals unloading spur. I've always liked the Walthers yard office, but I'm not paying £25+ for a tiny kit like that.

So I figured I'd make my own, and thought why not make a build thread/tutorial on how I did it. So, here we go!

Materials list:

5mm Black Foamcore board - A3
Cereal Box card
Basswood strips (just in case)
Clevermodels.net Union Hotel Brick
Clevermodels.net Painted Brick
Clevermodels.net Doors and Windows
Clevermodels.net Standing Seam
Clevermodels.net Distressed Cinderblocks


Stage 1 - the core

To make the core of the structure, I cut four squares of the black foamcore board - two 5cm x 7cm, one 6cm x 10cm, and one 5cm x 10cm.

These were glued together to form the walls using extra strength white glue. The taller wall forming the front of the building.




The core was then flipped over, and a roof cut from cereal box card by placing the core flat on the card and simply cutting around it. You could be much neater by using a ruler, but for the core of the structure it's not really needed. I then used an offcut of foam to form a brace stuck to the inside of front wall to stop the roof from sagging.

The roof was then glued in place.





Next, I use cereal box card to form the inner layer of the structure which is glued to the outside of the core to form relief - into this I cut window and door openings - this will become clearer from the photographs.

To ensure that the windows and doors all line up correctly, I lightly score a straight line along the top of where I want the windows/doors to be.

From here I use the cut out texture paper windows and doors as a template to score around, simply held in place with a finger. I then remove the texture papers and cut out the window/door holes using the scored lines as a guide.




After this, I cut out and stick on the texture paper I want for the walls - in this case Clevermodels Painted Brick. Don't worry about covering up the window and door holes, as this is addressed next.



Now flip over the wall and cut lines diagonally from corner to corner of each window/door hole...



...fold the newly created tabs inwards and wrap them around the back of the wall layer, like this:



Glue all these tabs down - trimming off any bits that might overlap with other tabs (eg when two windows are side by side). You don't want any of the tabs to be visible when looking at the structure from the front.

Glue the completed outer wall layer to the foam core.



Place the completed wall face down on your desk and Weight it down with something suitably heavy - like a soda can (other brands of soda are available! )

Repeat this process for all four walls. The completed walls will be shown in the second part of this thread.

I hope the first part of this has proven useful for new modellers, or even modellers new to cardstock structures.