Modeling Brickwork

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
1

Hi y’all. Hope everyone is safe and staying healthy.
I’m scratchbuilding a brick boiler house that was part of the CNJ engine servicing. IT’s simply a 20 ft by 40 ft building with a large window at one end, two smaller windows and a door on the back wall and one window on the front wall. Also there are pilasters at the corners.

From Sanborn maps and the few prototype photos I been able to collect, I’ve created wall plans/templates in Sketchup. But how to create the scale brickwork. Of course, there’s styrene brick sheet, Evans Designs high quality/resolution brick paper and other brick sheet materials, but I’m fascinated by a 2015 RMC article by scratchbuilding maven Bob Walker who built a huge engine house by resin casting wall modules with molds created by laying INDIVIDUAL bricks as molds!

There was zero description of how he did that.

I know, seems like a ton of work when there are great options as mentioned above, but as this little boiler house would be upfront in a diorama of the prototype, well…I’m intrigued. Does anyone have any info/experience of actually laying HO scale brick courses?

Thanks,

Ed

2

I did a kinda-sorta version of this once, using molded rows of bricks as the thing that was ‘resin-cast’ in RTV a la Clouser (I know this dates me badly) and wiping paint-based ‘mortar’ into the joints to lay the courses. This was for a scene where a wall was being erected, showing some of the actual bricklaying detail including the story poles at the corners and some stringlines modeled with that old joy, #36 Vicryl.

For brick ‘casting’ my advice is to go almost entirely the other way: make molds for the actual face of the wall that can be ‘tiled’ on the mortar lines, and treat them like molds for ‘stampcrete’ to cast and then make up the visible walls.

I highly respect someone with the skill and patience to make up individual brick molds (and probably to demold and trim each individual brick) and then mortar and set the wall prototypically. You’d almost have to work on the equivalent of a surface plate with depth indicators unless you used relatively-soft spacing strips for the horizontal course mortar lines (perhaps with appropriately-struck pointing at the visible face) as setting them ‘prototypically’ would probably involve something like an operating microscope. Doable… but I shudder at the sheer time involved in doing it right.

3

Do you have pictures of this you can share?

I would love to see this model.

-Kevin

4

Well, I suppose that if you wished to build the structure literally brick-by-brick, it could be done (and be a source of great pride). However, were I building a brick building, I’d work with walls already representing brick construction, then alter them, as needed, to match the prototype that you’re attempting to build.

DPM offers modular walls which might be suitable starting points: add doors/windows/pilasters/etc. as needed, either from the various wall sections which they offer (cut a suitable window from a wall section not otherwise suitable for your prototype, and then cut an appropriate opening into the wall section with no cast-in openings.

Another option is Walthers brick sheets, also cast in styrene, but as larger plain sheets than those from DPM. These are a rather brittle plastic, but with care and the proper tools, you should be able to create the walls as described.

Here are some DPM structures, built mostly from as-offered parts, but with some altered to suit the oddly-shaped building lots that were available…

…or this former Vollmer roundhouse, rebuilt as a locomotive shop, altering the wood-supported brick over the doorway, second track from the right…

…by replacing it with this…

5

Wayne & guys –

Nice work there. Very nice, indeed.

A follow up question: Does anyone have a favorite brick sheet brand (ie Walthers or others) What brand of brick material is the highest quality/most realistic?

Thoughts?

Thanks,

Ed

6

DPM offers a wide selection of wall parts with various window styles and sizes, along with pilasters and cornice details and a variety of heights, but their main drawback, if you wish to create a monolithic brick wall of a larger size is the stock size of the wall pieces, at 2 7/16" in width.

The Walthers brick sheets, also in styrene, are 4" tall, with the brick detail 9.75" wide. The main drawback, in my opinion, is the difficulty in cutting openings (for doors and windows) in it.
I originally attempted to do so using a corner-punch, which shattered the sheet into several pieces.

An attempt using a #11 blade in my X-Acto dulled the blade rather quickly and a utility knife was only slightly better.

I found it preferable to drill holes where openings were required, then use an X-Acto saw blade in the regular X-Acto knife-handle to cut out the openings, finishing them with a suitably-sized file.

The base of this water tower, one of several on the layout, uses the Walthers brick sheet, and, fortunately, only one opening is needed on each…

Another option, if you can find some of decent quality, is brick paper. The ones shown below are paper, but are photos of real buildings, with the paper cemented to .060" sheet styrene…

I have not been able to find decent brick paper locally, nor will photobucket allow me access to photos of some which I bought in the late '50s/early '60s. I’ll attempt to gain access to the photos, and will add them here if successful.

Wayne

7

Hello All,

What scale are you working in?

I model in HO.

I’m kitbashing two (2) Walthers Norther Light & Power kits to make one larger building to cover the booster that sits on my pike.

The brick detail of the walls is very fine. I couldn’t imagine trying to replicate this brick by brick.

As far as printed patterns try Textures.com. You will need to register to download the free pattern files.

For 3D sheets check out JTT Scenery Products under “Architectural Model Parts” > “Plastic Paternd Sheets”.

For the slate roof of my kitbashed structure, I used their Scalloped Edge Tile in HO.

I used a chalk texture rattle can paint to simulate the color and texture of the slate tile roof.

Hope this helps.

8

Holy crap I never heard of laying individual bricks in HO. Does not sound fun…

Color of brickwork relates to the area. East coast brick is usually dark red. In Colorado around here tends to be more orange-ish/yellow in color.

9

Hi Wayne, Don’t know if this site would help you with Canadian Bricks but this might be worth a look,

http://www.wordsworthmodelrailway.co.uk/brickpaper.html

It is English/British but you never know!

Hope this helps

Cheers from Australia

Trevor

10

Building an HO building with individual bricks, is right up there with casting my own fishplates and rail spikes. [<:o)]

11

Thanks, Trevor. I wasn’t yet actually in need of brick paper, but merely lamenting that it didn’t seem to be available. I still have a lot of structure kits to build and a bunch of Walthers styrene brick sheets and DPM walls and details…I will likely run out of time before running out of stuff to build.

Wayne

12

Wayne –

I found a company – EvanDesigns – that allows you to select brick styles and colors and print your own sheets (they suggest using matte photo paper). Still, I’d like to do weathering so it would seem a bit trickier to wether paper as opposed to styrene but not having ever before used brick sheet, I can’t say.

My original thoughts stemming from that Railroad Model Craftsman scratchbuilding article mentioned at the begining of this thread intrigued me about how the author made his own resin casting forms by laying individual bricks or rows of bricks. That’s how he said he created his own brick sheets. Trouble is, there was absolutely zero reference in the article as to how to do that. Specifically how /where did the scale bricks come from? Might he have just cut rows of Walthers brick sheet and impressed it into a mold? Doubt he used “individual” HO scale bricks! BTW, loved the comment in this thread about that being like casting one’s own spikes and fishplates! [%-)]

Anyway, really appreciate the heads up on the difficulty of working the Walthers plastic sheets. My boiler house is pretty much as simple as your water tower base - just 4 walls, right angles albeit with a sloped roof and windows and doors.

I will probably reach out to the editors at RMC to see if I can get a contact for the author and ask him directly. If I succeed and find out what he did to cast his own brick sheet, I’ll post ot back here.

In the mean time, many thanks, stay well and happy Fourth of July to all.

Ed

13

The more I think about this, the more I think a ‘master scratchbuilder’ would duplicate a number of individual ‘scale brick sides’, each a little scale model of the surface texture and imperfections of particular bricks in a particular style, then cement these to an appropriate face sheet perhaps with strips and spacers on a wheel to adjust them into register. He would then make RTV sheet molds of these sections and carefully tile castings made from these molds into the large wall areas.

If I were doing this I’d make the several castings with epoxy tinted to give a varied base color, to minimize the detail painting and then weathering on the brick faces. Doing this would involve not modeling the mortar lines along with the brick, but instead leaving relatively deep recesses between the bricks, into which ‘mortar’ would be laid with a syringe or similar tool, and then tooled to strike/rake the visible mortar lines to the style desired, this simplifying the methods used to join the individual sections. As with floor tiling, with enough subsection patterns it’s likely there would not be visible pattern repeat in the brickwork… which might be a thing to watch for.

You could of course use the ‘typical’ way to get mortar into the wall, by wiping paint across and then carefully cleaning or even sanding the protruding bricks. The issue here is that steps to detail the brick faces, including painting or stippling them, would have to account for the mortar lines (or survive the wiping process).

Thinking back to Brian’s stone-viaduct project, it might be fun to take a properly ‘anamorphically-corrected’ photographic image of a brick wall, and print it on something like decal paper at scale corresponding to a 3D brick sheet. (Or use the white glue on heavily-sanded paper used for signs on brick…) Then you get the advantage of photorealistic color combined with the 3D surface texture in oblique lighting…&nb

14

Well-rendered brick paper can look very convincing, but weathering is easier to do convincingly when the surface is three dimensional, allowing “dirt” to collect in the horizontal mortar lines, but not so much on the face of the bricks.

It occurred to me that you could use the DPM wall panels to create larger panels, both taller and wider, if necessary, simply by buying panels of the same type, then cutting them to remove the blank recessed ends and/or the top or bottom details to leave plain pieces with brick detail only.

To make them wider, cut the vertical edges that are to be mated so that the vertical mortar lines between full bricks can be preserved on one portion (or split between the two faces to be joined) and the half bricks along the cuts will re-assemble as full ones.

To disguise the joints, coat both mating surfaces generously with solvent cement - two or three applications are preferrable to one heavy one - then, working on a smooth and impervious surface (glass is a good choice) bring the two edges together very firmly. The softened plastic will ooze out, so simply set it aside until it fully hardens. Once it does, use a chisel-type blade (bevelled-edge against the brick detail) to remove the oozed-out stuff, then the back edge of a #11 blade to clean-up any mortar lines requiring such attention.

Theoretically, you could create a panel of almost any width, but if it gets too wide, it might be wise to back it with .060" sheet styrene or at least some good-size styrene strip, which will help to prevent the wall from taking-on an unwanted curve.

I us

15

Wayne et al –

OK guys, I have an apology to make… Had I turned more pages in the RMC archive, I would have come to answer the question I posed at the start of this thread and saved you all a lot of time and kindness in your thoughtful and well-illustrated replies!

It turns out that Bob Walker (Master Scratchbuilder) DID write about and illustrate his technique for building scale brick walls brick-by-brick. HOWEVER…

  1. It wasn’t really brickwork at all, but rather he modeled STONE WALLS not brick and

  2. It wasn’t brick-by-brick, it was row of bricks carved from basswood strips and laid tightly row by row then vertical gaps/mortar lines carved into the wood.

The article appeared on page 84 of the June 2015 RMC.

He used the basswood “wall”, male to cast an RTV mold and then create the wall with plaster. Here’s a link: https://www.qgdigitalpublishing.com/publication/?m=59407&i=612287&p=84&pp=1

Fascinating detailed technique with impressive results ( https://www.qgdigitalpublishing.com/publication/?m=59407&i=612287&p=88&pp=1 ) but I think I’ll go for DPM wall panels!

Again, sorry if I’ve wasted your time when I should have kept turning pages in the RMC archive to get the answer!

All the best,

Ed

16

No problem! This is an interesting thread with lots of great ideas for future reference.

FWIW, if you want actual HO scale individual bricks, they are available on eBay. I can’t see building a wall with them, but they would be great for a brick pile in a construction scene:

https://www.ebay.ca/itm/100-Extremely-Tiny-Miniature-Bricks-HO-N-scale-Red-railway-model-wargame-diorama/161304880942?hash=item258e85272e:g:wbwAAOSw2CFdnk7y

Dave

17

I built a couple of small HO structures using brick paper for the 4th SGRR layout.

They looked 100% amazing in photographs, but not quite as convincing in real life.

This was not a waste of time.

-Kevin

18

Interesting thread

I have two methods I prefer to model brick as they are quick and easy. One I do with oven bake clay which can be rolled out and baked after the brickwork is finished. The nice thing about this method is it can be curved for a retaining wall while it was still warm out of the oven.

This little experimental example was done in about 10 minutes before baking and then about another 5 minutes to put the colored washes on. I have more recently learned drywall compound smeared in the joints looks great. A little too dark in my color choices and had I took more time with the pizza roller the brick rows would have been more evenly spaced.

The other method I prefer the most is scribing foam. I used to use a ball point pen but the ink bleeds through the drywall compound when I fill the mortar joints. A rounded pencil tip works the best for this technique.

My wife saves me the styrofoam meat pans hamburger, steak and chicken comes in. The styrofoam pans are only about 1/8 to 3/16" thick and will work great for making buildings out of. I plan on making a brick roundhouse this way in the near future.

TF

19

TF –

Thanks for the interesting ideas!

If you don’t mind explaining a little more detail, I assume you carve out the mortar line rows and vertical mortar lines after rolling out a sheet of clay. Is that right? If not, how do you “carve” the bricks?

Also, interesting is the use of the meat pack styrofoam. Do you back the styrofoam with styrene or other backing for structural strength and if so, what adhesive do you use?

Bob Walker’s RMC article referenced in this thread showed how he lined up basswood strips using graph paper. He literally glued the wood strips to the graph paper to keep the mortar lines aligned. I wonder if taping graph paper to the styrofoam sheet and burnishing along the printed lines into the foam might be a good way to scribe the lines into the foam, at least to provide guides for the final scribing.

And thanks all for your responses, this has been a kind of how-to article unto itself!

Best,

Ed

20

Sure

With the oven bake clay I actually have a roller machine I can set at different depths to roll the clay out.

I found a spacer tool at Michaels I can impress on either end of the clay for the brick spacing. My old method I took a ruler on the spacing impressions and lightly rolled a pizza cutter along the ruler, then took a jeweler screwdriver and impressed the brick lines.

I found this method somewhat time-consuming, it works but it takes more time.

More recently I made a proof (The top one) and created a negative imprinting the bricks in with a scale lumber end. I spray it lightly with Pam, put a clay sheet over the proof and a layer of wax paper, then roll it with a wallpaper roller. I have gotten more consistent at it than the examples shown here after I found a wider roller.

They look really good after they’re painted and the joint compound is put in the joints. If I remember where I put them I will post them later today. I like the clay for retaining walls but I prefer foam for larger projects.

TF

P.S. As far as the meat packing foam backing, I have not made a building yet. I’ve done some samples and like the results. In N scale I do not think I will need any backing. In HO, one could always glue railroad board to the back of the foam which would make it quite strong. They sell railroad board at the dollar store. Two great big sheets for $1. I always use polyseamseal from Menards for gluing foam. It’s the best.