I had some time over Easter to finish Bert's. Well, I finished the shell. There's still a lot of interior detailing that could be done. For that, I'm going to wait until it has a home on a layout or diorama. Maybe I'll need to replace the MG with a Model-T :-)
The roof seemed to need a lot of attention, and I thought I'd make it removable to make it easy to look inside.
To be removable it had to be a robust, self-supporting little structure unto itself. So, in classic E. L. Moore style, I made three triangular trusses to hold it all together. All the roof components were cut from a leftover piece of thin basswood.
The problem was the roof didn't fit too well. The building wasn't square or accurate enough, and neither was the roof. There were unsightly gaps between the roof and the walls that made the removable roof idea not so compelling. So, I carefully pried off the trusses and decided I'd glue the roof in place. But first I needed to panel it.
I made a stack of paper metal panels in the classic E. L. Moore style. I have a wood block with corrugated plastic panels glued on, which is used to emboss the corrugations into a sheet of paper with a spent ballpoint pen. After the embossed sheet is painted a flat aluminum, it's cut into 4' x 8' panels.
The panels were stuck on the roof with some white glue.
After paneling came the moment of truth: gluing the roof to the walls. As I mentioned, a lack of squareness made it a little tricky to get things aligned and tightly fit. But, I developed a little maneuver known as: The Oxford-Chicago Treatment !
Slather some white glue onto wall edges, carefully place and align roof on walls, place edges of weighty tomes strategically on walls, and presto! Er, well, not so much presto just yet. I scrambled around a bit to buttress the books to keep them from sliding off: a scanner with rubber feet and a weight came in handy. Then I let the whole thing be for a couple of hours while the glue dried, and then presto!
Once out of the press, the roof was stuck to the walls quite well and the little structure seemed to stand not too badly, although it's not perfectly square.
My version of Bert's has doors at either end and skylights. I wanted to maximize opportunities for looking inside, and I didn't think those two modifications were too way-out for this building. Doors on each end allow cars to be driven straight through, and those skylights would brighten up the interior of the real thing. Although, my skylight frames are too thick. I made them from the smallest plastic angle I had on hand as I thought I could build a pair of nice little frames that would trim off the openings and provide a suitable edge to seat the windows. In the end, those niceties didn't seem to matter. I should have just used some card for framing as it would have had a more realistic thickness. My plastic frames would cause build-ups of snow and water that would likely leak inside.
As you can see, the triangular trusses were removed, and instead I added some thin beams from wall-to-wall just to add a little interest if someone does peek inside. Once it's part of some diorama, I'll think about adding benches, tools, and what-not inside.
Bert's and his brothers aren't high fidelity, but they have a certain sweetness that I quite like. I'm thinking of placing them in a little diorama, along with the Mt. Lowe observatory, so I can practice making N-scale scenery before tackling that on the EVRR, and have a little fun with placing the buildings into a scene.
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