O Gauge Modelling on the GWR
A personal Journey
Building the Retort House for the gas works
I purchased 8 frontages to make up the building walls. The roof came from Invertrain as used on their goods sheds. Here are the packs:
Three B28 sections
Two more B28 sections and a B27 the frontage with double door opening
Two B26s with the gable ends and a pack of windows and a pack of brick window infill's. All this will allow me to make up a rectangular building 3 x 1. But several of the sections need their sides or top cutting off. As follows:
4 of these sections had their side pieces removed. This will make the brickwork look a lot better without double brick framing.
The gable end was removed as well as the side pieces as this piece will be used in the centre of one of the 3 section side walls.
I used a floor standing band saw with a fine blade fitted.
The first thing to do is glue the sections to a sound backing. I use A3 3.5mm Polyboard obtained from London graphic Centre.
The plaster sections are glued to the Polyboard with undiluted PVA glue and held down with a few weighty books and magazines! I used two pieces of board for each side. These are then left to dry thoroughly. Once dry they are cut out and now constitute a single side made up of three sections. Using Polyboard will also aid the construction of the house as it glues easily together with a contact adhesive as will be shown later on.
The next job is to fit the blanks in the first two storeys and the window frames on the top floor of all four pieces. Once they have been made to fit, the window openings can be painted black as shown here
The brick recesses are resin and vary in thickness. To make them look right some of the framing will have to be removed so that they can be sunk into the openings. Currently, a few are proud of the main brickwork and this does not look right. I glued them in place with contact adhesive. If there are any large gaps these can be filled in with Decorators Caulk described as an acrylic solvent free dispersion that fills gaps and is flexible. First i fill the gap then brush over with a wet brush and finally pat it dry with kitchen towel. The windowframing are painted first. The metal window panes are given a top coat of green paint. Then the walls can be given a coat of 'dark brick' matt paint from Railmatch. The first coat seals the plaster as shown here.
The painted window frames have been fitted and glued in place and now the four walls are put together and held in clamps as shown here. A roof support is also added at this time.
One end has had an opening cut into it to take the conveyor from the coal crusher.
The glue needs 24 hours to set properly.
The next job is to paint all the window ledges and start on the second coat of brick. The doors came from Invertrain and were cut to fit as shown here.
Herer the brickwork has been washed over with a diluted cream solution to fill in the mortar.
A chimney adorns the house and has been righted! and finally the roof painted all that remains are the barge boards to be put on and painted.
