I am building an overall roof for my N-gauge station. It's about 70cm long. The platform is an island platform which means that the walls of the station, complete with arches, go straight down to track level.



I would like to keep the building removable so that I can access the platform and track for maintenance / cleaning / adding more detail etc in future. However, the wall is irregularly shaped at the base as there are abutments coming out of it to hold the bases of the arches. I want the ballast to go right up to the edge of the walls. I don't know how to do this and keep them removable.




I thought I may just blu-tack the roof onto the arch supports but with less than 2cm between each arch, cleaning the track will still be a pain. I could glue only 4 arches and blu-tack the rest, but this will be a pain to do and to get looking right.




Has anyone else achieved anything similar?









Base of station wall - how to ballast around this and keep it removable?

This idea has worked when wanting to remove platforms for whatever reason and I can't see why it wouldn't work for your station.

So, remove the station and feed a 'barrier' strip of greaseproof paper that is well higher than the ballast line, or even strips cut from a thin plastic bag, replace the station then ballast right up to the walls and if you use watered down PVA to fix the ballast, this will not stick to the plastic barrier strip.

Give it plenty of time to dry, then ease the station away from the surrounding ballast, remove the barrier strip away from around the base of the building then it should fit snugly back into place between the ballast.

Hope this helps.

Allan.  

Hi Michael,i'm not sure if i'm understanding you correctly but if i am could you not glue something like a cocktail stick or similar to the tops of the columns and have a corresponding female connector fixed to the roof which locates onto same?.

I was thinking along Alan's lines, except i would use some fine wire inserte into matching holes to locate it.

Looking at the wall itself, it appears to have a wider baseline which looks to me like a natural dividing line. Could you cut the wall there, ballast up to the bases and lift the wall from that slightly higher point? That would still allow some room for your hands to get in.

I had a similar problem and got around it by wrapping the building in cling film before ballasting

[user=1360]vulcanbomber[/user] wrote:

I had a similar problem and got around it by wrapping the building in cling film before ballasting

That's just what I did with my engine shed, but took the precaution of sealing the bottom layer of my [card] building to prevent any leakage of water/pva from soaking up the card. I used Lidl W5 water proofer spray squirted into the lid and painted liberally around the lower 1/2". It dries matt and transparent. The 'contained' pva soaked ballast took ages to dry [48 + hours]


Good luck,

Doug

Thanks all. I like the cocktail stick approach, but worry about my ability to get all 21 arches lined up effectively.

Cutting along the plinth would work too, but the opposite wall has 16 floor-to-almost-top arches in it and would be an equal pain getting them all aligned.

I think I will go with the cling-film and sealed bottom approach. That had simply not occurred to me.

Thank you everyone. When the time comes, I will post updates here.

Deluxe materials.com  Have produced "Tacky Wax"  The wax is used in temporary fixing ,might be worth a look at ?

You could always fix cocktail sticks to roof and paint bottom  of sticks and place on plinths leaving,hopefully,a mark for fitting.

 

You could always get some double sided tape, cut it to fit in the gaps and stick it down, remove the top layer from the tape and then lay your ballast. When you pick up the shed the appropriate gaps will be there to relocate it. You may have to tidy up the excess the first time you take it out but after that it should be ok.

Could you possibly glue the capping stones to the white posts/supports of the canopy and not to the brick piers.  Then to locate the brick piers use the Tacky Wax between the capping stones and brick piers, set it all in place, mark around piers with pencil, glue piers in place and then ballast around them. Atleast this way when cleaning rails, you won't knock the capping stones off.

Cheers, Gary.

Well I have bitten the bullet and gone for the cling film approach! Unfortunately, cling film these days doesn't seem to cling very well, so it was a bit loose around the edges. I have tried to get it as tight as possible when pushing down the ballast, so let's see. It's all done and drying. I can see already that the edges will be a bit rounded and loose, but once the train shed's roof is on, I don't think that this will be very obvious.

Now the really hard part - being patient for a couple of days while the glue dries!

Ballasting in progress:

And it worked!

It came away from the cling film perfectly, and none of it stuck where it shouldn't have done. A bit of cleaning up to do and one or two spots where there's a gap appeared or the ballast is the wrong height, but I am thrilled with the result.

It may seem like a small thing, but I would never have managed this without your suggestions - thank you very much indeed!

That means I have to start on the remaining 17 roof supports now

Looking good:doublethumb, I like what you have done with that overall roof with the arches on one side, how were they done? are they part of the scalescenes kit or kit bashed?

Thanks Aaron,

The walls were scratchbuilt. They're the length of four of the Scalescenes' modules to keep the proportions and arch spacing the same.

The Scalescenes roof is designed to sit at platform level, so with mine being an island platform, I needed to make the walls higher, hence the nubs for the supports to sit on. The arches on the nearer wall were cut out from the Scalescenes window arch templates, but taken right to ground level.

I drew a template in Microsoft Visio and printed it out full size, stuck onto card etc in the Scalescenes way.

I've added five grimy windows at the back wall, which will be ground level. Ground level raises behind the station, so no windows. These were made from the Scalescenes windows templates, and printed onto transparency using their grimy windows.

Here's a more overall shot:

I must say that the ballasting has come up a treat. Well done. I'll be in the same position when ballasting my layout, although I only have to go around 10 x 3.2mm posts…

Nice work. I guess patience pays off afterall ! ;-);-)

Cheers, Gary.

With those arch templates you made, would you say they belong to scalescenes or your self?, I hope to build a row of arches very similar to yours but in 00 gauge for kingsmead, to separate the western and southern lines on the scenic area of my fiddle yard, And I was wondering if I could acquire your template to build them? (that is if they are of your design and don't encroach on the scalescenes copyright)

Hi Aaron,

The templates come as part of the Scalescenes 'Arches and Windows' download, on the "Scratchbuilders Yard" section of the Scalescenes website:

http://scalescenes.com/products/TX00-Arches-and-Windows

If you click the 'preview arch styles and instructions' link, you will see an image of the template in use.

You just print it onto paper, stick it to heavy card, cut out, and there you go.

I just marked the centre points of where I wanted each arch, drew around the template and then cut it right to the bottom.

Hope that helps! :)

Mike.

Certainly dose, I will bare this in mind when I get round to the scenic area, Thanks

Errm - I think this is the wrong thread for your question Kevin ..................... :hmm