Meet Al, the scratchbuilding guy

[FJ and G]

If anyone says they are bored “playing” with trains, go talk to Al, who goes by scratch b rules. He will get your interest stimulated with some scratchbuilding ideas.

http://www.scratch-b-rules.smugmug.com/

I spoke to Al the other day from the Pentagon, where my cell phone went out of range. So, I had to go to the fifth floor near the roof. When I called him, he too was on the roof, literally, in 18 degree temps with howling wind in New Hampshire, doing a roofing job (he also bartends and for chow, he catches fish, which I think he shares with his bulldog mastiff).

Al sent me his tower to model on my under-construction layout, which is pictured here, with the sun rising behind the mountains on the Tequilla Sunrise subdivision of the Santa Fe (light comes up behind the mountains) with 2-rail track and a thin wire running down the center.

Well, I don’t have my notes I took so I’ll try to give you the skinny on Al’s work from memory.

First off, Al eschews buying out of box stuff. It’s just too much fun making it, he says. Even die-hard scratchbuilders buy their mulleins or whatever they are called, that comprise the window frames and door parts. Not Al, he does it all himself.

Everything in this tower, except for the glazing, little guy and electronics, is wood. The warmth of wood over styrene is undeniable. Wood rocks!

He cut everything from balsa with an exacto and metal ruler and simply glued together the parts, with the aid of an angle to square everything up. The paint is oil-based. The electronics involved are simple: a bulb connected to 12 v DC source.

I too enjoy wood as a construction medium but the only thing I do differently is rip my wood with a table saw, as I found you can cut things paper-thin. But Al’s work is the best. He has modeled many structures. This one took about a week.

Al takes his camera out and photographs old buildings and works from that. No fancy plans! Cept for his good builder’s eye. The tower plans he took from a picture in an HO catalog.

So next time you get bored watching your trains loop round and round and round the ole oval, get yourself some scrap wood and paint, and jin up some custom structures.

[FJ and G]

Oh, for glazing, he used plastic that a tool was wrapped in.

[Anonymous]

Way to go Al. You rock!

[laz 57]

Good job AL looks real nice. Keeep up the good work.
laz57

[brianel027]

Wow. That's an impressive looking tower.

But do I get bored? Heck no. My scratchbuilding skills are probably that good too, but my patience is another matter. I've done some scrathcbuilding too... buildings and cars. But I enjoy kitbashing and do a lot of that. I love making modifications and improvements to my existing trains and stuff. At this point all of my engines have now been altered and improved. And I've not counted, but I'd guess I'm near 60% of all rolling stock has now been repainted. The other 40% has been modified in some way, even if it's just minor stuff. Like box cars that aren't opaque to my liking, get masked and painted on the inside.

Once in a while if I do get bored, I'll look at something like my K-Line grey NYC Alco and think "that two tone grey is wrong." So I made a paint mask for the shell and did it a two tone black and grey. Painted the handrails yellow, added marker lights and decals... looks SO MUCH better now. Bored... heck no.

[Anonymous]

Dave, Thank you very much! It was my pleasure to have somebody call me from the Pentagon, I had told some of my buddies and they thought that was the coolest! It's not every day a person gets a call from the Pentagon. Thanks for enjoying my work and thanks for all the compliments! It looks great on your layout just as I would have imagined.

P.S. I forgot to give you the rest of the stove pipe. I think you should be able to handle it...ha...ha.

Scratch

[FJ and G]

a couple of things. If you go into Al's website and mosey around, you'll see that for a construction worker, he keeps his tools very simple:

http://scratch-b-rules.smugmug.com/keyword/tools

Also, he models narrow gauge O scale, so that's why the 2-rail track. He's trying to save up some money right now to move into a new place, where he'll build a new layout so his structures have a home.

I have a feeling that when that happens, we'll hear more from Al, about progress on the new layout up there in the middle of Yankee land.