A Farmhouse Build

[dknelson]

Really nice work by Logan Holtgrewe, who had a great two part article in MR back in the 1980s on scratchbuilding a ATSF depot.

There is an art to being able to work from just a photo or two and reason out plausible dimensions and details.  One outstanding example is how John Dornfeld (of the model firm "Depots by John" and Jim Rindt (Rindt's Relics) were commissioned to build a model of an entire town, Zachow Wisconsin, every building, as it was in the 1940s, with no compression and not one building that did not have a basis in at least a photograph and preferably actual measurements.  Sometimes all they had to go by was a dim family photo with a house or garage or chicken coop in the background.

The person who commissioned this had grown up there and went on to do quite well in life.  He wanted to recapture what he remembered.  He also commissioned a full size replica of the (since torn down) C&NW depot in Zachow to house the N scale replica town.

If you ever find yourself in the general vicinity of Green Bay WI, you can visit this incredible achievement.

What John and Jim had to do was very much what Logan Holtgrewe did, working with just an old photo.

http://www.depotsbyjohn.com/Zachow/zachow_historic_project.htm

Dave Nelson

[BigDaddy]

quite right

[RR_Mel]

Jiminy Crickets, he puts my scratch building to shame!  How about a full shot of the finished house.

 

 EDIT:

 

I saw it on WPF.  Simply Great!!!!

 

 

Mel

 

Modeling the early to mid 1950s SP in HO scale since 1951

 

My Model Railroad   

http://melvineperry.blogspot.com/

 

Bakersfield, California

 

I'm beginning to realize that aging is not for wimps.

 

[BigDaddy]

I didn't build it so I am sadly, lacking in details.

My friend, and founder of Severna Park MR, Logan Holtgrewe, built a model of my grandparents farmhouse.  I had hoped to photograph his building techniques but the next thing I knew, he called to say it was done..

 

We only had 3 photos to go on and my memory. What looked like shadows in the photos to him, were the edges of doors and windows that I remember.  So I made some crude sketches and he drew up plans to scale.  

 

 

He deemed that the windows were commercially unavailable.  I would have found something close enough, Logan built the windows from scratch!  His technique for building is to cut the styrene at the top and bottom and sides of the windows, so he has square corners for the windows.  Everything gets glued back together to form a wall

 

 

The wings of the house were not original and were of board construction, while the main house was clapboard. You can see how he modeled that in the picture of the outside wiring.  The windows were also different, hence the custom windows.

I know he scribed the styrene to simulate tar paper. I do not know exactly how he feathered the weathering.  

 

 

The Sunroom with all it’s windows looked bare, so he added people and furniture to that as well as an upstairs bedroom.  He lit both rooms with a lot of led’s.  

 

 

Four in the bedroom and seven in the sunroom.  I think we could have gotten by with fewer lights and led’s of a warm glow rather than the bright white he installed.

 

 

He build a clever wiring system where the led’s get power from a wire grid feeding the upper and lower floors.  The positive wires are on the outsides and it is insulated from the negative wire by a styrene pad.

It feeds down the back side of the house and there are alligator clips that supply power from a two D-cell power pack, custom built of course, from styrene.  

 

 

 

I think the wires would have been better if they terminated with the miniplugs Ed (Gmpullman) uses. Don’t think I am complaining.  It is quite an honor to be given a such a gift.  I was not expecting any interior, led's or the bits of landscaping at the foundation.