May has been a Month to get back on working on Muttama and cover some of the other minor remaining tasks for Narellan to get both layouts ready for the potential upcoming Model Rail Events in 2021 and 2022. Here is what I have been up to during the month of May.
Gatekeepers Cottage
Before the day of automatic Boom Gates where roads would cross over the Rail. A Gatekeeper was Employed to either shut the gate to prevent road and pedestrian traffic crossing the rail line whilst a Train was passing through and shut the gate across the rail line when no rail traffic was passing through. As the name applies the Gatekeepers Cottage was generally a designated residents for whom was employed as the Gatekeeper for that crossing. There are many Gatekeepers Cottages still around in existence today where most are used as private residents.
Modelling Muttama Gatekeepers Cottage
Fortunately, the plans for the Gatekeepers Cottage for Muttama where found in the NSW ARHS Resource Center in their Digital Archives and have found a couple of photographs which has helped remove a lot of guess work on how to model this building. In fact, I have found that most Gatekeepers cottages were of similar designed but with a few variations. Unfortunately, the Gatekeepers Cottage at Muttama no longer exists today.
Base of Muttama Gatekeepers cottage drawn up ready to cutup.
Sidewalls drawn up on the 1.5 mm Evergreen Clapboard Styrene Sheet. I normally cut any side that is of the same measurement in a single cut to ensure both sides are are consistent length to one another.
Doing a retro fit before constructing the main body of the Cottage. It is worth pointing out that I have also added another layer of styrene sheet to strengthen up the building so to make it more robust especially during transportation of the Layout.
The Roof section is the main challenging part of this build. I have simulated the build using cardboard card to ensure that I have the dimensions correct before cutting up the styrene to construct the roof section.
Styrene roof work in progress.
Some internal Roof supports to help firm up the roof structure. The square pieces of styrene are used to hold the chimney in place.
Roof Capping, Guttering and eves are now completed. Only the flashing where the roof and chimney meets up needs to be applied. That will be done during the painting of this model.
The Modified balcony which I suspect was either converted into a Sun Room or a form of protection of the weather has been added. The Door and the glazing will be eventually added.
Above two photos on the Bathroom/Laundry extension.
Still a fair bit of work to go on this build, but hopefully will complete this for the next blog update.
Weekly Monday Modelling Nights For May
As mentioned in my last Blog that a small group of railway modellers meet up and basically work on building model Rail projects. For me, I am taking advantages on of these meet ups to work mainly on the rolling stock for my Narellan Exhibition Layout. I manly have worked on my CCA Kit and Kit bash a Casula Hobbies HG Kit reflect a heavily modified HG 5434 which ran into Narellan. I did manage to get some good pictures of HG 5434 from the NSW ARHS Resource Center before COVID situation but unfortunately will not be able to share them on this blog due to copyright reasons. Either way, building and kit bashing rolling stock kits is a new experience for me, will share later on my triumphs and tragedies in my future blogs.
Current work in Progress in converting a Camco FO kit into a CCA Carriage.
Above two photos is the work in progress for the HG 5434.
