Arts and Crafts

In high school, we had a subject in Year 7, Art and Craft it was never that interesting until the last semester were were able to do model making. At the time I was into military WWII model making in 1/72 scale and built a Matchbox Wellington bomber flying over an airfield.  Whilst I have ditched the military modelling, I continue to enjoy is railway modelling .

One of the interesting aspects of railway modelling is researching the topic and  its history. I wanted to model an Australian residential building that was part of the Sydney landscape that included a bay window. 

Search

I had been searching for ho buildings with bay windows but only found the IHC Homes of Yesterday and Today series to be the only one that may still be available. These kits are based on the Painted Ladies Cottages in San Francisco with the clapperboard look and narrow width. I did not find these kits available easily. 

Above:  IHC ho house kit 

And Find

Two years ago at the Epping Model Railway show in Sydney in the secondhand stand, I had found one of these buildings built up.  Since then it has been lying on my shelf until recently. 

I wanted to add an apartment on my layout that would be able to feature the front of this kit. 

Above: Start of the cut up the sides, rear and roof were scrapped.

A discussion with a friend as well as reference books being lent provided me with ideas for the building. 

I stumbled upon the architectural style Federation Arts and Crafts Federation Arts and Crafts

By cutting up the front and extending it's width made it a more grandeur building. I also added a high pitched roof and a circular window feature.

Above: Building prior to painting, Roof tiles are made from Noch self adhesive rubberised tiless that I purchased years ago whilst I was living in Switzerland.

Apartment  - Federation Arts and Crafts style
Below is the completed Apartment next to the Art Deco apartment. Both which are on Trafalgar St Wardell.

Sharpening my skills

My third building that I modeled along Trafalgar St, is another small business which is located at number 311. This previously housed the offices of Annandale Saw Works. An internet search has revealed that they were established in 1950 and had their office their even a a couple of years ago with contemporary paintwork of the building then the brickwork of the 1950s. According to the internet it has since moved to Villawood in Sydney's West. Today the offices have seen better days and houses a printing office

Completed Model

Above: Completed model based on photo as 1950s photo per my previous blog The little tram that could

The completed model was built using the Hardware Store Smalltown USA kit and various DPM modular wall system kits

Steps to build

I chose the Smalltown USA Hardware store as the basis of the facade of 311 Trafalgar st because it had three large windows for the first floor. 

So based on this front facade I cut the ground floor level off and then used various DPM modular wall sections to make up the ground floor consisting of a street level large door opening and a semi-circle door entrance as well as modifying the shop front sash window. 

Below is the start of the building facade, a bit rough that at least it provides the basis for the front of the building. 

Painting and weathering. 

I used a cream tone house paint that I had as the basis for the mortar and then used various shades of brown to represent the brickwork. Based of the photo I tried to used less dark coloured brown. basis as the foundation of the mortar 

Bases

Decals 
As stated previously, signage really assists in setting the scene for the model as well as assisting in setting the time period with period fonts and period businesses. I could not read the wording on the original photo per previous blog post as to what was written before and after the words of "Annandale Saw Works"so I used my modellers licence and included the year it was established and a 1950s phone number using 2 alpha characters and 4 digits LU-2346. The decals were homemade using the Testor decal kit and my  inkjet printer.

As it stands today

The building still stands but has seen better days with graffiti on most of the building. This was taken in 2012.