Project 20 - 0 Gauge Layout - Part 13

I started to raise the ground level to rail height in the dock yard. Upon reaching an area where there are to be buildings I had to stop because I want to embed buildings below ground level and at that stage had no idea what buildings to fit. I had to find some suitable. There is little room between the dock yard tracks and the branch line so I had to consider small buildings, maybe huts.

I found a delightful little hut by Scalescenes, given away free of charge as a taster for their range of downloadable card kits. I could have designed and built my own but wanted a quick result this time. Scalescenes are very generous in their copyright allowing kits to be customised and replicated for personal, non-commercial use.

Their kit is for 00 gauge. The first thing to do was to scale up the parts for 0 gauge and I am pleased to say the decoration suffered no degradation.

Sclaescenes builds require a range of card and board thickness from 200gsm to 2 mm thick. For 0 gauge 2 mm becomes 3.5 mm, a board size I did not have, except I do have a large stock of Ikea corrugated cardboard boxes saved from furniture purchases. Among these were some close to 3.5 mm.

Using corrugated cardboard for the first time I was pleased at its ease of use and robustness of the finished model. One mistake of several made during the build was to transpose the side walls resulting in the chimney and fireplace being close to the door when it is meant to be furthest from the door!

The hut is available in a variety of brick and stone decoration. I chose stone, partly because I wanted to add texture and the large stone blocks would make it simpler to achieve than brick.

I printed the stone decoration twice. The first was layered onto the building as normal. The individual stones of the second were cut out and glued over the corresponding stones of the first layer. As a result the second layer of stones stand proud of the mortar lines on the first layer.

The effect is not that noticeable at normal viewing distance but, close up or in optimum light the result is quite effective.

Four other customisations are the walls that have a 2 mm skirt for embedding in the ground. The gutters with facia boards designed and fitted using my own method. The drainpipes are 3D printed by myself and a door knob, which is in fact a post for the guard rail of a scrapped Airfix 00 gauge turntable!

The paint scheme is BR Southern, an option supplied in the kit. The hut therefore, is a yard office for railway purposes.

To Part 14.

To Part 1.