Workshop
The workshop came into being when I was experimenting with the position of the new diesel tank. It's in a corner, on the edge of the layout and it didn't feel right at any angle. I placed the length of fence that will go beside the engine shed on the board edge and it looked great. The tank then aligned nicely as well. I needed something along the end, but more than a full-length fence. With the sidings terminating along the edge, a building came to mind for the short siding - maybe a workshop - the main building being "next door", but with shared rail access for heavy items? A series of sketches/drawings appeared.
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The new elements would be housed on a bolt-on strip that could be removed if ever the layout was extended. Even a range of different end 'boards' could be made. A 40mm wide timber was prepared, fixed in place by M6 bolts and tee nuts. A twin-layer poly board shell building was created and the plastic door and window units fabricated. The doors started as a roller shutter, then a hinged pair, then they became a three-section, top-hung, side-sliding unit. This made the doors more inset, increasing the 'modelling' of the frontage.
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The building was to have a blockwork plinth, and three courses matching the oil tank supports were applied. Next question: Timber or corrugated iron cladding? When I found some plastic corrugated sheets (Charles Covey 45p each!) I started researching cladding details. As I had also been researching how to finish the fuel tank off with a decent rusty effect, I'd already looked at steel cladding photos. The Doh! moment occurred as I described the project to a friend - 7mm sheet cladding on a 16mm model? I searched and found a source of 16mm sheets made from thin aluminium beer cans, but before buying, I thought I'd try to make some myself.
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I needed some solid rods to make a press/mould and searched through old boxes of bits. What I discovered was a handful of steel corrugated sheets of the correct corrugation size, given to me by another friend years previously. The steel was thicker than the aluminium, but ready weathered. Working with them wasn't easy, but in hindsight, their robustness was possibly an advantage when correcting the distortions made when cropping them to size. Research showed that virtually 'anything goes' with such cladding, but I started off with scale widths, and lengths to suit the area, gluing a couple of panels down at a time. It was a very satisfying process.
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