Hi from down under,
I would like to have a go at scratch building some railway structures from polystyrene or similar and would like to find some plans. any suggestions of a good place to look?
Regards
Bob

There are a lot of plans in Railway Modeller , usually one a month. However, I would suggest looking at real life and going from there. If you can count bricks then 4 courses up a wall is 300mm, one brick is usually 230mm long, and it's normally fairly easy to draw up a basic plan of something. You don't have to be entirely accurate either. You can then make what you want, rather than something everyone else has!

Dave

I suppose I cheat a bit, I don't do the measuring bricks and counting courses route, slightly easier is to estimate size from door height which I take as around 6'6" t0 7'. For an even easier route measure a typical kit, Scalescenes, Metcalfe  etc this gives a basic range of height, length etc which you can vary by a few scale feet in length (but not much in height), you then place doors and windows differently, add bay windows, porches, dormers etc.  For a model of an actual building then working from at least a few photos is a must, if you're lucky enough to have accurate square on photos it may be possible to convert these into a silhouette scale it then use for cutting pattern.

Cut from card or embossed plasticard, download brick, stone and tile textures from Scalescenes print to A4 label stock and stick to A4 card, paint plasticard if you want different coloured brick etc.
This gives an example of "variations on a theme" terrace houses with alternative door positions, 4 or 6 houses to a terrace with or without an opening for a ginnel, alternative rear extensions; for low relief use just one and cut the gable end in half stick the cut half at other end, fold gable back at right angles, for a complete terrace use 2. the rear extensions are an option. you could extend these to 3 or more floors.


This one shows a number of completed terraces, including some low relief and also a few Metcalfe kits and Peedie cast resin ones, beware guessing some of the kits have been "enhanced"


This shows a number of cut ones ready to assemble including Peedie models etched doors ands windows and some cast chimneys and gateposts etc


To ensure the corect size cut outs for windows, doors etc I scan each size of window or door and save as a white rectangle which I then copy/paste into positions on the black drawings, I then output an A4 sized image which is usually big enough for 2 complete or 4 lo relief 4 or 6 house terraces, to the software for my plotter cutter which usually takes about 10 minutes to cut an A4 sheet of houses. For roofs I use embossed plasticard and cut it by hand, the cuts for a roof are pretty straight forward, no need to fire up the plotter cutter.  I stick the etched windows and doors to the inside before assembly then stick "glazing" over them, OHP transparency  serves for that, I often just cut one pieced to cover the whole of the inside of the wall, hleps hold doors and windows in place.

Chimneys, for the stacks I use square or rectangular plastic tube wrapped in brick or stone paper to match the building, put some plastic filler/putty inside smooth off the top and push cast or 3D print chimney pots in before the putty sets.

One easy mistake to make is to try and fit the rear extensions on the same sheet but at 90 degrees to the main building parts, giving vertical bricks on the extensions, I'll let you guess how I found this out!

Bay windows, porches and dormers can be added after the main shell of the building is assembled, a fairly simple porch can be added using some angle plastic strip stuck to the inside of the doorway, you can arrange it so that the porch is either recessed into the doorway or outside, alternatively Scale link do some cast pillars and porches.

I'll try and do some detail photos over the next day or two.

Quote from: Dorsetmike on March 22, 2020, 03:57:47 PM
For a model of an actual building then working from at least a few photos is a must,

As Mike says, if modelling a real building, photographs are a must, (especially if you have a memory like mine!  ). Can I suggest that you have a look at my Averingcliffe thread - this link
https://www.ngaugeforum.co.uk/SMFN/index.php?topic=44061.msg619150#msg619150
which shows the real station at Mohill and a couple of pictures I took part way through its construction. (It is still not finished  but I am getting there).

Also railway modeller ( peco publications ) has articles on actual areas, stations, track plans maybe worth contacting the editorial to see if they can help or whether they have any published article on your  chosen subject  plus local libraries

For surviving buildings, look at Google Maps/Street View.

Mike

Here's one I'm contemplating, flint and brick construction on the main A350 at Strurminster Marshall  between Poole and Blandford, I can do the flint and brick walling, but I'm undecided how to treat the door and window surrounds also the corners.
1/. cut out matching brick and stick over the cut out sides or
2/. Edit the photo if necessary and scale it to match the cut sides then print to A4 label stick the whole thing to a plain card cut out
2/. spend a fair bit of time in a photo editor, first copy the flint and brick texture into the outline of the side, then edit in the brick door and window surrounds and corners, cut the sides from blank card print the image onto A4 label stock and hope it matches, cut out door and window openings from the covering. It is theoretically possible to print the image to card add some specific registration points and then cut, it's a lot of faffing about and you have to be very accurate (86 year old eyesight makes that a bit difficult) especially as at 2mm/foot scale you don't need to be far out for it to show!



I'm strongly leaning towards method 2

Personally, I'd print three scaled copies of your photograph onto A4 sticky label paper, use the first as your flint layer, second as windows/door frames (cut these out with scalpel and stick onto first layer), finally third as brickwork layer (ditto). This will give some depth to the various elements.

An interesting challenge!

Mike

Thank you everyone,
Gives me plenty to investigate and think about and evaluate my capabilities.
Regards and keep safe
Bobbyvabc

G'day mate 

You mention polystyrene as a building material. I assume you mean plasticard? Here are some terraced houses I scratch built from that material many years ago:



But you might also consider card - the blue building bottom left is  based on an American design:



Or there's always kitbashing - sort of halfway between scratchbuilding and kit building, I guess!



Good luck! 

@Bealman
Strange train formation in the 2nd pic, George

Yeah, I thought that myself when I looked at it, but that is a 2012 photo showing my three "new Farish" locos which I posted back then as "The Three Amigos", and I recall finding it funny in my warped mind that I separated them by Saxa Salt wagons.

Dunno what I was on a the time 

  that awful stuff that's branded VB I expect