I have spent more than just a few hours looking at layouts and just how other people did things. The best ones seem to be about 20% manufactured and 80% hand made. I ,for one, am rather enjoying scratch building things for my layout. Right or wrong I can say I built it. My first attempt was a bridge. It came out quite well, but a little off in proportion. I have several other parts planned for my hands to get to work on. What I want to see is what you have built. Right or wrong, good AND the bad. Maybe a quick explanation of how you built it. If I can get enough responses I may be able to refer back to this thread for my future projects. Here is my out of scale bridge. Shaun
My first attempt at scratchbuilding a structure in N scale. Built while in a hospital bed for 3 days for tests, using balsa wood, Xacto knife, and a grade school ruler to figure dimensions. Used sketches of a house I watched being torn down for an urban renewal project. I raked the back of my knife along the soft balsa-wood sheet roof with a ruler to simulate shingle texture. My first attempt at a trestle in HO, ca 1970. I had seen my dad build a medium-size Lionel-scale trestle with a jig 15 years earlier. Power plant boiler in HO from plastruct structural shapes, styrene sheet, leftover space shuttle model parts. Modeled from 1 inch square photo in industrial development brochure. My mother-in-law’s house in Hutchinson, Kansas in N from styrene sheet, bought doors & windows, and etched brass fire escape parts to make porch rails and grillwork. Common elements: Ordinary materials, a little ingenuity and at least some reference to a prototype (except the monster trestle...)
Some pretty amazing structures in this thread: http://www.trainboard.com/grapevine...icial-scratchbuilt-structure-thread&highlight=
Well I have not done much in the way of scratchbuilding, I build a small grain elevator once, never did finsh it. Its the Red elevator seen in this photo. I'm more a Kitbasher.
