The 70’s Files: The widow Hatley’s house

This is another project that started from a set of drawings published in Model Railroader during the 70’s. I was one lazy builder on this project. It’s basically just Bristol board cut into the basic shapes, glued together with balsa reinforcement, painted, and tarted up a bit with some balsa details. But with the widow herself standing on the front porch, the crude, wonky details, and the chintzy curtains in the windows, it has a certain melancholy charm.

These days if I wanted to make some simple row housing in bulk based on this design I might try photographing some real siding and using printouts of it as the wall material. Supplemented with some commercial plastic castings for the windows, doors, chimneys and other details, a serviceable little model might result that could be useful as a background detail.