Mt Yatala

Thanks Gary, this scene still be in the town, so there will be some commercial development. I intend to have that all at the right hand end, the residential on the left.

For the commercial properties, I plan to use the Pikestuff building as a construction hire shop. I can make the warehouse part of it smaller if I want to. Then I have a Walkers models Golden Fleece servo, further I want a Pie shop, this will be a kitbash of either the KFC or the Walthers ice cream store, yet to decide. Then there is the church. When you look at most churches in a town, they almost always have a hall, this is almost always not modelled, I plan to buck that trend. There may also be a scout hall. There is another building I would like that could either be a regional supermarket or something like that, but will have to see how it all fits. Those merchants row buildings look good, and easily 'Australianised'’
Cheers
Tony

 

Good idea Gary, although I have seen that done before somewhere. Makes me think about a Lego exhibition though..
Cheers
Tony

 

Pinching an idea from a modeller who generally does Australian buildings, for roofs of buildings. I follow him on Facebook under the handle Momake Models. He cuts strips of corrugated styrene and layers it to stimulate roof tiles. I have a building with a pre made roof, and while it is moulded as shingles, and I could probably get away with just painting it the right colour, I wanted to see if I can take it to the next level.
To do this, I decided to go small, and do a test for a garage. This already comes with a nice corrugated steel roof, so I used it to give me the size of a sheet of 0.25mm styrene as the base. I then cut strips of Evergreen 4526 to match Wunderlich tiles as much as possible. These strips are 5mm wide. It works out close enough to 1mm overlap for each layer of tiles. Starting from the bottom, with a strip of 1mm x 1mm square to get me started, i layered the strips up to the top.
The result is as below.

This looks promising, and i will do the other side, tidy up the edges and then paint before I make a final decision. It is a time consuming process, not so bad for the simple roof, but some of the other buildings I want to do have more complex hip roofs with valleys as well.
Cheers
Tony

 

Got both sides of the roof done, now onto the.ridge capping. I measured up some from our roof and used a length of the right scale size angle styrene. Also had a look at the edge of the roof, some times people use barge boards, but some buildings just use a mortar edge. My Tamiya putty had gone hard in the tube, so used the stuff I have for the full sized house, and it worked really well. Might stick to it from now on, much cheaper.

I then wanted to model the flanges, so scaled of the prototype I glued one side of the small strip at regular scale intervals.

When they were dry, I simply bent them over the top, trimmed to length, then glued down the other side. This seems to have come out ok, now for painting.

Cheers
Tony

 

Painted the roof with lifecolour "terracotta" and then did a dark grey wash. Was wanting a light grey wash, but dark was all I had. Still think there lighter wash would have been better.

Reasonably happy with the result though. Now to make guttering for it, attach the window and maybe just a hint of the bottom of a roller door being mostly open.
Cheers
Tony

 

The garage is finally finished, took way too long really for what it is, but I'm happy with the result.

Here it is posed with the same kit that I built many years ago to the instructions. I dispensed with the corrugated roof, substituting tiles with the ridge tiles. I installed guttering with end caps and downpipes.
The downpipes are styrene, dipped in tap hot water for about 20 seconds, then bent to suit. The guttering itself is styrene C section.
Rather than having the supplied swing doors for the garage, I decided to have a roller door. Another styrene profile was chosen here, it includes an old school key lock in the middle.
Going to have to go back and put guttering on the old one now.
Next project is already underway, will also be a real time consuming one. No pics yet, but hopefully there will be something to show for it soon.
Cheers
Tony

 

I've finished the first wall of the next building. A suburban brick house. This is a Walthers kit, that, with a few tweaks should look quite Australian. First job here is to make sure random brick colouring. Did this by squeezing out a small amount of paint onto the inside of a bottle cap. Then dipped a toothpick into this. This picks up just enough paint for one brick. Did a base coat of all bricks, then picked out most of them with other colours. To get a mortar effect I have used ground up soft pastels in the past, but this wasn't working real well for some reason. So I found that humbrol white weathering powder seemed to work well. Below is the wall with the brighter colour on the left before I used the powder. The stuff on the right is after the powder.

Once I finished the whole wall, I sealed it, quite happy with the result.

This is the back wall that no one will see anyway.
The other walls are going to keep me occupied for some time.
Cheers
Tony

 

Finished all the bricks and added the windows. Here is a comparison with what I have done so far compared with the image on the front of the box.

It took a very long time picking out every single brick. The chalk mortar technique did not work well for this building, not sure why, has worked well for me in the past. With the help of a white wall I have a result that I'm happy enough with.
Also have installed the windows. I have painted them Vallejo Silver, to replicate 70s aluminium windows. The main window at the front I cut away the mullions and put in new parts of frame with a more Australian profile, fixed centre glass, with 2 outer sliding windows that open towards the middle of the window.
I will leave this here for now. The next step with this one is to redo the roof using the technique I used earlier on the garage. But that will take a long time. For now all I really need is the footprints of all the buildings to work out the final layout, and then to make sure landforms with differing heights based on the buildings.
My next task will be to knock up the basic station, platform and building to see where that fits into things.
Cheers
Tony

 

Onto the next structure, this will also not be completed right now, it's more for planning the landforms and how everything will sit together.
The station is that next structure. I have had one of the classic amri/Berg's A9 station building for some time. It is just a classic structure here, not just in Sydney, but spreading out to other parts of the state as well. I will be building it to the same length as the kit, but almost everything else will change. This building is normally used on island platforms, thus it has awnings on both sides, but I will just have one, not having an island platform. The roof will probably change to being corrugated steel, the rather coarse windows will be made finer, the awning brackets that are supplied are pretty chunky, I have 3D CAD models of these, so I can really get these looking better. There will be other modifications as well.
I also picked up some platform edges, modelled on Sydney suburban platforms, nicely done as brick. I was going to make my own, but am opportunity presented itself to buy some, so that will save a bit of time.
I then made the platform out of wood, which will be permanently attached to the board, I just need to double check the clearances with the biggest carriages.

Once I have this roughed in it will be on with the next structure, as the detail on the station will slow me down quite a bit, but it's not a race.
Cheers
Tony

 

And jumping again to another project, another of the houses. For this I found a Rix brand kit called the Maxwell Ave Home. This is American but a few details caught my eye, namely the brick porch an a weatherboard building. This is a common style of construction of some of the older houses in Newcastle Australia, so I was keen to make one of these.
The kit as it stands looks a bit too American, with the varied pitch roof, one for the main house and a different one for the porch. I built the porch first, then worked out exactly what i was going to do the with rest.
I decided to make the front wider, to do this i used the back of the building, which is the same moulding as the front and "cut and shut" them together. One issue with these kits, and it's probably down to their low cost is that the windows are not separate mouldings, but part of the piece, so i can't just make a longer wall and put some holes in it and use the windows that way. I ended up making the front wall almost double the width, by putting the two gable side parts together and cutting off the gables on these. It ended up slightly narrower than two walls as there corners are mitred for assembly the proper way, but i had to cut these down and butt them up to each other. Since no-one is going to see the rear i made a plain styrene panel for that. A new gable section was then cut to place on top of the two fronts, this was at the same angle as the porch roof. The porch itself will be placed in such a way that as much of it as possible with be over the join in the two front sections.

This new gable is of plain stryrene, i could have used some evergreen clapboard siding i think i had the right side, but then doing it in plain and adding beading strips to it makes it look like fibre, a common way of doing this in the real work. This will hide the join.
I then had a bit of blank wall to use, i considered making the building narrower, but then stooging around on google street view looking for inspiration i found this in the Newcastle suburb of Mayfield, the diamond window.

To the right you can also see the classic Newcastle brick and wood house. I knew i then needed to have one of these windows.Pretty simple job, just a thin saw cut of 9.5x9.5mm square tubing and then a hole slightly smaller, giving the appearance of a window.
Next job is to build a bit of re-inforcing into the structure and put on a roof. I put feelers out on a more local group this afternoon as to whether i should go for tiles or corrugated iron. The original roof is shingle, now not much use, but also now the wrong size anyway.
So far i have had 2 votes for corrugated iron and none for tile. Tile is a lot more work, as i will be using the same method as the garage.
This is my first Rix kit, i have been very impressed by the quality of the plastic itself, and the mouldings. I have another of theirs in my plans for this layout, so looking forward to that.
I will actually finish this building off before I get into the next one.
Cheers
Tony

 

Finished this one mostly, still have to add glazing, but i may want to make some of the windows open, not decided yet, so that can wait. Also need to add guttering. Pretty happy with how it turned out, on the layout it looks rather large, but I'm hoping that a few well chosen and placed trees will fix that.

I may install lighting and some internal walls later, depending on the eventual theme of the layout (day/night)
Much as for my own records, here are my paint choices. Walls Vallejo Off White, Window frames and porch wall tops Tamiya Gloss White, Bricks for foundation and porch Life Colour Terracotta, floorboards on porch Model Master Wood, after scoring planks into plain surface. concrete steps Model Master concrete flat, front door Vallejo Flat red, roof AK brick red and doorstep Vallejo German grey.
I'm undecided about a chimney, but I do think it needs a TV antenna, of course a chimney is a good thing to attach said antenna to.
Cheers
Tony

 

A lot has happened around here in the past few weeks, we have had one room flood after a large rain event, a decision to declutter most of the house, and then the washing machine broke. So modelling is taking a bit of a backseat, I shouldn't really be starting a new project. So back to one of the uncompleted ones, this time the station building.
This kit, while having good bones, is a product of another era and needs a bit of help getting it up to scratch. One thing that is bothering me is the thickness of the window mouldings. I remembered this technique off another modeller who did great things with one of these kits. It was sanding the rear of the window casting to make it smaller and the frame not as thick. The original is on the right and the modded one on the left.

Not a lot of difference, but I can tell, and I am pleased with the result. Still have a lot of windows to go though.
Cheers
Tony

 

Still continuing at glacial pace with this, I seem to have put more pics up on social media than here for the next build.
I have started, and getting close to finishing, my first timber laser cut building. A Walkers Models 1950s Commission House, a simple little gable roof fibro affair.
This is my first one of these, although most of my other work around the 1:1 house that i live in is done in wood I am familiar with some of the issues here.
After seeing advice on these the first part was to spray prime all parts first to hopefully stop any effects due to atmospheric water. This was seen as when i had sprayed the first side of the thinner sheets of wood, they did warp a bit. This was countered somewhat by spraying the other side after.
The building itself has 2 skins, a thick inner wall, and then a thinner outer wall. In the case of a brick or weatherboard building this could be textured, but not needed for fibro.
This kit went together very well, the pieces being very well designed and the consistency of the dimensions of the cut elements was excellent. The glue of choice I used by tacky craft glue. This is basically PVA wood glue, but with a real thick consistency, chosen as parts will stay together when fitted, normal PVA you would have to clamp. Some joints with this I needed to clamp, but the awkward ones to clamp did not need clamping, which was helpful.
Pretty soon I was able to knock this up.

The instructions are somewhat basic and difficult to follow, one of the results of which is that i did not use the supplied window pieces for the glazing. These are quite thick pieces of perspex that just fit. But allow a bit of wood expansion, glue lines and paint, this was not going to work. So i used my usual method of thin acetate sheet. Grinding the sides of the thick perspex would take me until next year. They are pictured below, just in front of the house.

I have kept pretty close to the same colour palette for all my buildings, the walls are ivory, this one has the addition of 2 blues, darker blue for the window sills and will have a lighter, or faded blue for the barge boards, which are yet to be installed.
The roof is another shade of red.

Haven't made too many mods yet, but i might change the gable position to match this part of the world, this is a QLD model i'm thinking
For this layout I have one more laser cut building to make. I do have 3 more in my stash for the next project.
Will I buy another laser cut one? It seems a lot more work than the styrene (although I am not painting every brick here!) I like the idea of not having a cloud of micro plastics in the air when i sand an object to fit though. Some pieces are maybe a bit coarse, if i did this again i would have used styrene for the beading strips rather than the supplied wood strips. I saw someone elses model with an open window after i had glued all mine in place.
A lot of extra detailing bits are to be made and fitted by the modeller, some are to be expected, such as guttering or downpipes, but not having ridge pieces for the roof was a surprise.
I still have to work out the lighting. The kit comes with foundation pieces to suit a sloping site. As i have not formed the land yet these parts will have to wait, along with an attached carport.
Cheers
Tony

 

I decided to modify the gables, this approach should also hide any gap between the walls and the roof section, should I wish to keep the roof removable. The original kit has the gables as a continuation of the walls, but most of the similar style houses around here have the gables overhanging the walls by about the same amount as the eaves on the other walls. Additionally the gable panels are very close to the edge of the roof rather than inset.
So, it was a simple matter of blocking it out the correct amount.

Then assembled, with the faded blue barge boards

Now I need to make decent front eaves and guttering.
Cheers
Tony