I wanted a small frame church for the small coal-mining town of Darwin (Virginia) on my HO Winneshiek & Western Railroad. There are a number of choices out there. Walther's Cornerstone has a "Cottage Grove Church" with nice proportions, but it always seems strange to me to have to work to make plastic look like wood when one can build something out of actual wood. B.T.S. also has a nice-looking church kit, and they have good kits with modern laser-cut wood. I was also aware that there had been a church kit made years ago by Historical Scale Miniatures (HSM Models).
This interest was rumbling around in my mind when I went to the Great Scale Model Train Show in Timonium, MD on October 10. A dealer there had one of those old HSM kits for the Bodie Church. This kit is modeled after a Methodist Church in the ghost town of Bodie, CA. Photos of the prototype church can be found at: http://bodie.com/tour/church.asp While the kit was originally sold for $6.50, it is long out of production and they were asking $30.00. This price is still less than the list price for either the Cornerstone or BTS kits. I decided to try my hand with this old kit.
The paperwork in the kit indicates that this model was originally released in 1965. The kit consisted of: Two sheets of 1/16" thick scribed wood, a bundle of stripwood, cardboard to be cut out for window frames and such, pressboard for floors and roof, a roll of the "Campbell" gummed shingles, and two pages of plans/instructions. There's no lasercut anything here. The kit was supposed to contain a bell, but it did not. I had an old locomotive bell in the box that works nicely.
I took my time with construction. I was able to do better with this kit than when I built similar kits back in the late 1960's, primarily because I could now afford to actually keep a fresh sharp X-Acto blade in use. That was critical in cutting the window openings and window frames. I can hardly ever build a structure kit without making some modifications. I did add more interior framing to resist/prevent warping. I went online and obtained a number of images of stained glass windows which I reduced in size to fit the windows. These were just printed on white paper and glued behind acetate "glass". Doing this eliminated the need to have an interior which otherwise would have been visible through the windows.
Difficulties encountered included the fact that the provided roll of shingles was not sufficient for the whole roof. I needed three more courses of shingles on the main roof, but fortunately had kept leftover shingle rolls from previously constructed Campbell kits. The wood "angle" pieces that were provided for the corner trim on the building were not deep enough to cover the edge of the siding on the cut edge. I used some Northeastern 3/32" angles instead. I installed half the roof and then had to cut through the top "beam" to make room for mounting the bell tower. As I was doing so I realized that light coming through those stained glass windows from inside looked pretty good. I then cut a hole in the floor and inserted a building light bulb left over from a Cornerstone building. The windows look good, but some of that light does bleed through the siding itself and my biggest regret is that I didn't "blackout" the interior walls during construction. Does anyone have a recommendation on how to "frost" or reduce the lumens from one of those Cornerstone interior light bulbs??
I'm hoping that the photos load properly to allow you to see this church. Pastor and I are hoping that life in Darwin becomes more peaceful due to this influence. I need to find or make some picnic tables to set behind the church to be ready for the next ice cream social.
Bill
How about placing a resistor in series with the bulb to reduce the voltage? Not smart enough to tell you size, but would need to know the voltage being used.
That sure builds up into a nice looking structure - thanks for including a photo of the box because that looked familiar even though the name of the company initially rang no bells (no pun intended). Back in those days a "kit" often involved the manufacturer essentially doing your shopping for you of the raw parts you'd need and supplying the drawing, with everything else left up to you. Nowadays maybe we'd call it "directed scratchbuilding."
Dave Nelson
Oh, a P.S.:
The photos of the original church show what appears to be a lightning rod atop the bell tower with a round insulator at the base. I cut off a pin and mounted it to simulate this. I thought about wiring the lightning rod to an electrode directly above the pulpit - That would be some positive encouragement for the Pastor to be sure to speak carefully.
Paint the church red and I would feel present at Clint Eastwood's "High Plains Drifter" movie-set town Lago, filmed on the south shore of Mono Lake, itself not far south of Bodie.
Nice job assembling the "ready to scratchbuild" kit.
Mark