Historic building restoration

[Chris]

Well as I couldn't decide what to tackle today it seemed a good chance to try and salvage an old superquick building. originally a country station with canopy and platform it was really just the station building that was worth keeping but maybe it would take a little piece of the canopy mostly to cover the damage where it had fallen off from before.
end picture shows the state, and then with canopy fitted and some flashing, new chimney and the ridge tiles replaced the platform leve even got a floor and a little backscene

[Chris]

Over all im not sure it was worth it other than I have an attachment to some of the old buildings. But it will fill a gap at a platform for a while

[Mountain Goat]

Very good. It is worth it just to rescue them and extend their years. As long as the "Authorities" dont list them you'll be OK!

[Malcolm 0-6-0]

The more I look at card kits the less I find them convincing. They are clearly designed to look good in photographs but in real life nothing really can disguise the two dimensionality of their appearance. Yesterday I undertook a similar exercise as an experiment on a Metcalfe coal merchant's hut that was offered free a while back with an issue of Railway Modeller. Being free meant I really wasn't losing anything if the results weren't up to the three dimensional appearance of scratchbuilt plastic models using the available sheets of bricks, tiles etc. or properly scratchbuilt card models.

I had already built the hut but never incorporated it in the layout because its poor definition of things like the slate roof, and the clumsiness of the printing which plainly showed the graininess of the printing process. This is a real problem because the lack of any texture in the cardboard means that over painting will simply result in the loss of important slate detail.

Basically I tackled the roof as this is generally the part of a building on a layout that hits the eye first. I gently cut away the card roof preserving the walls and also removed the plastic guttering and down pipes I had originally installed. I replaced the card roof with Wills slates which, although a bit over scale in their texture, offer a better 3 dimensional surface to both paint and to add washes and dry brushing to bring out the structural nuances. I then added new guttering using Plastruct channel sections and down pipes using Evergreen rod of a suitable diameter. I had already fixed the usual Metcalfe chimney pot problem of rolled paper by using Evergreen tube of a suitable diameter.

The result is a 100% improvement visually but on balance it is an expensive process to undertake given the basic cost of a Metcalfe kit and the replacement plastic tile and other materials necessary to overcome the poor quality of the kit's roof. I undertook this as an experiment to see if by doing the same thing to the Metcalfe terrace house kits I could save myself a great deal of effort in building a row of these for my layout. The jury is still out on that at present - right now it seems to me to be a cheaper exercise to basically use Scalescenes downloaded brick, printed on thick card for walls and then use the Wills slates coupled with Plastruct and Evergreen moulded sections for detailing and the architectural embellishments while scratchbuilding the windows etc.

[Walkingthedog]

Really, can’t say I agree about them not being convincing.

Must admit they do need a bit of extra care when building and the addition of a few bits, but so do other types of construction.

[Chris]

WTD, you show very well what can be achieved with the card kits,

the model I posted is probably in the region of 40 years old and has stood up reasonably well, I have no time/patience/skill to paint plain sheets of materials to scratch build things so try to limit myself to card embelishments

[Walkingthedog]

Thanks Chris. I have always found the skylight windows they put in the roof and canopies are prone to come adrift so I reinforce them with strips of balsa or even matchsticks to make a proper frame.

[Mountain Goat]

I have mixed feelings about card kits regarding realism as its not the kits themselves as they can be tarted up to look good. Its more that card has a texture that looks different to using plastic, and plastic has a different texture to wood etc. Where the difficulties tend to be is in placing buildings made from different materials together when they are trying to represent the same building material (E.g. brick) of the prototype.
I'm all for rescuing card kits as why bin something that can be rescued? The challenge is in the resurecting of the building. It is quite a challenge and 10 out of 10 for those who've done this.

[Walkingthedog]

I solved that problem by not mixing different types of building. All of mine are card and structures such a water tanks are plastic.

I always think the gap between bricks on plastic sheets are too deep.

[Bandit Mick]

Lovely job WTD. I've used a few Metcalfe kits and always replace the roof with my own slates - but made of card to match in.