What started out as a quickie project, something to do while watching the sunset, turned out to be bigger than expected. But she’s complete and needs only a base to sit on, since the building was designed to perch on a hillside. Learned what not to do (again), and almost wiped the whole thing out when the cardboard I flopped down on to shoot the photos, became a great sled! Hope the pictures go. I already missed on the first attempt.
I like that! Great ambience!
Needs a grizzled old miner standing on the porch…
Joe,
That turned out really nice.
Tell us a little about it, materials etc.
Ralph
Very nice. I agree with Ken :;
Very nice. I always liked the look of a structure on a hillside.
That does look good. I need to build a couple!
Very nice! I need to build a half dozen similar to that for miners housing around Majestic.
Love it Joe. You did great work.
Thats great! With a little landscaping it would pass for real. What did you use to make it?
Terry
If the hillside was green, it would be perfect for our cows in Vermont…you know…legs on one side are shorter than the other side…perfect for hillside grazing!
Bob
Super job Joe. Very realistic looking.
Thanks for the nice “atta boys,” y’all. In my original post, which the dog ate while I was trying to remember how the include photos, I mentioned some details. So next time around I went for the shorthand version.
Anyways, as people say, the inspiration for this project came from an article in the January 1992 issue of Model Railroader and was part of a series called “Especially for Beginners,” who must have known a lot more about scratch building than I do because I came across construction issues that left me struggling. I have been calling this a cabin, but in the story it’s called “The House on the Hill,” which brings to mind a Peggy Lee (and othere artists) song called, “The Folks Who Live on the Hill.” I can hum it for you.
Because my “Railroad That Will Probably Never Be Built” is supposed to run across a hillside (I have the hillside) I figured this house would be perfect. I especially liked the “cellar” which is enclosed by aging “wood” planks, one of my favorite images and something I’ve learned to replicate quite well in styrene. BTW, one of the HO finescale manufacturers sells a kit of this building–on stilts–that is a flopped version of the one depicted in MR. How’s that for imitation being the sincerest part of flattery?
Since we live part time on Maui, I always like to have a project to work on in case it rains a lot or I get bored. Last year it was the Small Hotel (called “Star Hotel” in an MR article). The hotel, fyi, is about 85-percent finished, needing only its twin chimneys and several supporting posts for the porch roof that surrounds the wrap-around deck. Can’t wait to show it off.
OK: the cabin. First, it’s all styrene. Walls are 1/8 inch (a bear to cut windows in) covered with Precision Plastic sheet clapboard, the small board kind (they make three different kinds), “glued” on with Weld On 16 (thanks Russ) that’s smeared on zig-zag fashion. There are other means of affixing plastic sheet to the base material (spray-on cement, sticky paper as described by Jack Verducci in an old Garden Railways). But the Weld On method works for me and allows enough setup time to position the plastic sheet on the base.
Some people would cut the plastic sheet to the same size as the base material, then cover the corners–where the walls join up–with either strip or L-shaped material. But I am obsessed with have the siding match up perfectly with the corner material (not overlap it), so I make sure there’s enough room at the edge for the corner strips to fit (say, 1/8-inch or whatever size strip you use). I do the same thing with windows, i.e. leave room around the opening for the sills, etc, to butt up flat against the siding. This adds another layer of complexity (and busy work) to my project. The windows, in case you haven’t guessed, are Evergreen styrene strip in sizes appropriate to the plans, which I copied and enlarged to 1:22.5 scale. I have the exact sizes of strip I used (I keep a log book) in case you gotta build one of these.
Sidebar 1: I prefer to make my own windows and mostly I do. It’s not too difficult, even without a proper jig. The beauty of working with styrene is it “glues” so easily so that you can breeze through your work pretty easily (does this sound redundant?). One mistake I made this time around is that I made the muntins (the window-separating sticks) too wide, which makes my windows look to toy-like. But I was in a hurry packing up my supplies to take to Hawaii and chose the wrong size.
Sidebar 2: what happened to the walls after the Weld On had dried. Namely, they warped like crazy. I had bows all over the place and all the reinforcing strip in the world didn’t flatten them out. I had to buy woodworking clamps to hold the walls together at the corners while waiting for the Weld On to set.
Let’s see. The roof, floor and ceiling, which I added for rigidity, are 1/8 sheet, spray painted with Krylon Black Primer to obscure the interior, which I was determined NOT to model. The “tar paper” roofing is Tyvek, a DuPont product that the postal service uses for its express envelopes. I got this idea from on Ray Dunakin who painted both sides of the stuff with his color of choice (gray for Ray, Grimy Black for me) before affixing it to the roof. Because Ray used matte medium as an adhesive, I did too, but it came out too shiny looking for me and I had to dull it down with generous applications of Bragdon’s weathering powder. It’s supposed to stay on forever, but I doubt it. Since my models will never live outdoors, I’m not concerned.
The cellar boards are styrene strip that’s distressed by running a Zona saw blade lengthwise along it, several times–until you get the desired grain effect. Light passes mean small grain like in new wood, heavier passes, maybe even some made with a coarser blade, produce more pronounced grain that looks like really weathered wood (another plus of styrene). In the past, I’d slap on craft paints right on the naked styrene, but after reading an MR article, I spray everything with Krylon Gray Automotive Primer, which I let dry thoroughly before applying the various colors–usually gray and burnt umber. Make sure you wash your styrene thoroughly before applying any paint, 'cause if ya don’t the paint won’t stick, period. I know. I tried taking a shortcut and wound up with a huge runny mess that I had to clean up with acetone.
About those cellar boards: there’s a door along one side that’s supposed to have hinges and a hasp, but so far Ozark Miniatures has not sent them. Hello? Anyone there?
The front porch: pretty straightforward. Just a lot of curse-inducing work, especially attaching the porch roof to the main building.
Because the cabin needs a hill to stand on, I dragged everything out to this sort-of dog park and nature preserve behind our housing tract. It took some searching to find the right hillside and even then I had to do some excavating to make it all fit. Because I anticipated lying on my back at some point, I brought a large piece of cardboard to lie on. Big mistake. The second I flopped down on the cardboard, the thing became a giant sled, which began to glide down the hill towards my precious work of art (work of Joe?). Anyway, another lesson learned. A dusty photo shoot that left my camera and lenses all dirty. BTW, most shots were taken with my Canon 50D with the 24-105 L-series zoom fitted with a polarizer. Photoshopped to tidy things up a bit.
Does that cover it? Are we there yet?
wait a sec, that looks like the cabin i live in!
I didn’t want to say, John. Now rake up those pine needles!
If you want to branch out – I have a lot of straw on my tracks!
Nice job Joe. I like the proportions very much too. Now…get to work grading that hill!!! 
Naw, Richard. I got me a Pacific Coast Railway sidedoor caboose to measure and photograph up Sacto way.