Hello again, as I have said I am very new to this. First I would like to thank you all for helping me with my last question about HO track and lay out, you guys are so awesome. I am a little shy on the money things so besides sketches of my lay out I was thinking of building the building to pass time while I save up the cash. I learned about “scratch building” but have no real idea on where to find HO layouts or plans. Any Ideas?? Thanks again for the great help, Jermo
Jermo,
Back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth…well, almost[8D]…Model Railroader typically published one or more plans a month. You can also find books with various building plans. A MR advertiser called Underground Railway Press offers lots of plans, as do many RR historical societies and other small producers. You should also take a look at some articles that describe how someone went about building their project.
But you don’t need a plan, depending on how complex a project you have. I’d suggest starting with something simple like a shed, small barn or warehouse. Draw your own plan of it, as that will help you figure out how plans translate in practice to models. Or just take a few pictures and a measurement or two and work from those.
Next step is figuring out materials, probably either wood or plastic. I’d suggest whatever your most comfortable with helps give you confidence.
Gidday Jermo, while not a dinosaur, but grey and grizzly non the less[;)], I invested in the "Model Railroader 75 year DVD collection which has more plans than I know what to do with [sigh].
Mike is right about not needing a plan but I would suggest obtaining getting hold of one , just to help out getting a feel of plans if you’re not familiar working with them.
Here’s a link to one of our own, mcfunkeymonkey, MC may be working in N but his How-To s are instructive and dare I say it, entertaining…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnhAxpzeVKc
A good quality stainless “Model Railroad Reference Rule” is a valuable and essential tool.
Have Fun.
Cheers, the Bear.
Consider paper/card buildings. They are free to inexpensive and many can be made into very well detailed models. They can also serve as plans for scratch building in other materials.
Paper model software:
Evans Design http://www.evandesignsmodelbuilder.com/
Sites to buy paper models. Some offer a few free samples:
Clever Models http://clevermodels.squarespace.com/
Scale Scenes http://scalescenes.com/
Fiddlers Green http://www.fiddlersgreen.net/
Scale Model Plans http://www.scalemodelplans.com/smp/pgs/catalog.html
ECardModels http://www.ecardmodels.com/index.php/structures/civilian.html
Australian Card Kits http://australian-card-kits.com/
Phillips’Models http://www.phillipsmodels.co.nz/home/browse/37-1150-n-scale-printable-railway-model-downloads.html?sef=hc
Free Models:
Illinois History http://www.illinoishistory.gov/ps/construct_mainstreet.htm
Papermau http://papermau.blogspot.com/
Free Textures:
Paperbrick
Well, now that the others have had their spoke, the LION will tell you this.
What is a building: It is four walls and a roof. You could take a little cardboard box, turn it upside down and have the start of a building. Cut a door and some windows. Use some strips of wood or cardboard to fashion a door frame and the window frames.
NOW go outside with your building and look at your house or some other structure and compare the two. What is different. How are the windows really put together? What framing is around the door. Take two more pieces of cardboard and make a peaked roof.
You do not have to keep your little cardboard house, but at least you have gotten the feel of working with some of these materials and what challenges you will face and what tools you will want to have.
If money is tight, (LIONS never have any money–zookeeper does not allow LIONS to have money), you could build several such buildings.
You have a computer, (since you have written to this forum.) With simple software (LION likes Serif PagePlus) you can build something like this:
ROAR
The NMRA magazine features drawings with measurements in nearly every issue, and back issues of MR and RMC with drawings are certainly cheap at swap meets. My first totally scratchbuilt structure had only plans that I sketched out myself. I had photos of the structure but had not measured it. Using common door sizes as an indicator I was able to guestimate the rest of the dimensions. It helps to have some basic informaton on just how tall ceilings are in residential or commercial structures, and a bit of internet searching can find that kind of information readily enough.
It also helps to have some notion of just how an exterior reflects what the interior looks like – where are the stairs, for example. Bedroom windows tend to be smaller than living room windows, that sort of thing. A private residence tends to have a slightly more haphazard spacing and sizing of windows than does a commercial structure (and yes there are exceptions) or apartment complex.
In terms of the actual construction, it helps to think in terms of you building your own kit (this assumes you have some experience with building structures from a kit). Thus it pays to think in advance of just how the corners are going to meet – with beveled edges as in many commercial kits?, or an overlay that will be covered by an L shaped piece of styrene, and so on. If you are building a structure with plastic brick, how do you make sure the mortar lines match up, and so on. And one tricky item that even some kit manufacturers struggle with: just how does a roof meet a wall?
In some instances scratchbuilding “as if you were building your own kit” could make you consider the modular approach that Walthers has sold for some years, and others have as well. I followed that approach with my four unit apartment building that I scratchbuilt, because it was a very boring building – the two units to the left were identic
Search for “HABS-HAER” (Historic American Building Survey-Historic American Engineering Record). Search that site for the type of building you are interested in. Lots of pictures and many of the records have plans or drawings. None are to HO scale but you can scale them from the drawings and build them to HO scale.
One other option you might consider is something called “kit-bashing”. Which consists of taking one or more commercially available kits and re-arranging or adding on components to make a structure that is unique to your layout.
And of course you NEVER throw away any parts, (doors, windows, ventillators, chimneys, etc.) that may be left over from a kit that you have assembled. They go in a special holding bin, and after awhile you will accumulate enough parts for a structure in and of itself.