Hi, I am a brickmason by trade, work with real size brick and block building real size homes, but ever since recently I have this persisting idea of micro-masonry, and the first thing I thought of as to where I could apply it was railroad scenery modeling. So, if anyone is interested in having, say, a model railroad station actualy BUILT out of REAL mini-bricks (half of an inch, maybe even quater of an inch) with REAL mortar between them feel free to e-mail me at kozyrev@juno.com What I can do is basicly mail to whoever is interested a small section of a wall so that one could get an idea of how it looks. And I can assure you it will look terrific!
Alex
Such a size would be suitable to larger scale garden railroads than the smaller model railroad scales–a quarter-inch long brick in O scale (1:48, the largest model railroad scale not considered ‘large scale’) would be the equivalent of a foot-long brick, which might look okay for a cinderblock building but not so good for a house. In the most popular scale, HO, a 1/4" brick would scale out to nearly two feet long.
In a garden scale, however, a 1/4" brick would be about right. 1/2" bricks might be good for dollhouse scales or someone modeling 1:20.3 or larger scale stuff.
The military modlelers have been using bricks for many years now. Their purpose being different from ours is to show a wall that has been hit by a shell and destroyed. There is no question it would look fantastic and anything done prototyically is going to add to the realism. I give you tremendous credit for being able to do that however I have to consider the time factor. To build a wall brick by brick sounds like it would take much longer and time is my enemy. Maybe on one or two front and center detailed buidlings but I woudn’t have the time to do many of them.
Doll house modelers also use mini bricks, unfortunately, they are HUGE compared to the scale most people model railroads.
I’ve been thinking of modeling some of the old Adirondak Great Camps in N scale. using real stone for the foundations & sticks for the log walls. Even a stone 16" across scales down to 1/10th of an inch. This will take some delicate stonework to get it right!
Wayne
Alex,
Based on your posting, I’m assuming that you don’t read Narrow Gauge and Short Line Gazette. I think you would be interested in a firm that advertises there named Stoneworks:
http://www.RRStoneworks.com
Admittedly, it’s stone instead of brick, but you may find their booklets and other products of interest.
Bob
NMRA Life 0543
There was an article (years ago) in either Model Railroader or Railroad Model Craftsman in which individual scale bricks were used to build a structure.
either last month or the month before, there was an article in MR about painting bricks with a mortar color first and then using cosmetic sponges to apply brick color. I painted 2 buildings with this method as of yet and once you get your pressure on the sponge right, it looks GREAT[:D]. i got perfect mortar lines and it looks just like brick-by-brick construcion. This is less time consuming and the bricks are to scale. I would reccomend this over actually building a model like you would a real building[2c]