I’ve started a new building for the town of Mineral Ridge, on my In-ko-pah Railroad. This is my first attempt at modeling a brick building. I’m using Sintra PVC foam board, and scribing the brick pattern. I began by cutting out the front wall from 6mm thick Sintra, and drawing the door and window openings with pencil. This must be done lightly so as not to leave indentations that will mar the brick pattern:
To scribe the horizontal lines, I made a special tool out of brass. Two pieces of .020" thick brass strips were soldered onto opposite sides of a square brass rod:
Another simple tool was made from a strip of .020" brass, for scribing the vertical lines. (I call it scribing, but on these short lines I’m really just pressing the tool into the material.)
Here are a couple shots of the entire front wall, after the basic brick pattern has been scribed. There are some goofs that will need to be patched up with putty. Also, the top portion of the wall will be built up with layers of thinner scribed PVC for a 3D effect:
I used 3mm board to build up the decorative upper portion of the wall:
I still have to add more layers to create the trim at the top edge of the wall, but here’s how it looks so far:
And here it is set in place on the layout, to give you an idea of how this building will look in its environment:
There will be stone arches above the door and window openings on the ground floor, and stone lintels on the second story windows. To create these, I will be casting resin stone blocks. I started by carving the masters from 3mm Sintra. Here they are laid out and ready to pour the silicone rubber mold:
While I was at it, I also carved some blocks which will be used on the next building:
That’s all for now, more later. Enjoy!
