Scratch Building: Western Pennsylvania Model Railroad Museum

This video demonstrates modelers of the Western Pennsylvania Model Railroad Museum layout scratch building structures using a computer-aided drafting produced simple house structure on illustration board. The objective is to create a house cutout structure from the illustration board and the house image. It is important to spray the image and not the illustration board because it keeps your fingers from being stuck to the illustration board.

Newspaper is placed to protect the table top when spraying. Tweezers are used to pick up the image and place it on the board. The images are xeroxed on yellow, blue, or brick colored paper to create variety on the layout. Light cuts to the illustration board before cutting out the image ensures that the blade will not slip. More pressure and several more slices will cut the desired image.

To produce the buildings, two walls, a front and back side, a roof, a porch, and a foundation are needed. It’s very important to have something that the front, back and sides can be glued to to hold the structure together. The small pieces of wood placed on the foundation sides are glued with Elmer’s glue. When assembling the walls, small weights braced against the walls will hold them in place as the glue dries.

The porch roof and ceiling are also glued to the front of the building. The porch deck, its supporting structure, and the roof is also glued to the building. Trim such as the porch post and railing are the finishing touches on the house. To learn how these are made, watch the full video. For more tips for making railway structures from scratch, or videos on creating structures, visit the Model Railroad Academy archives.