Equipment Barn and Silo: FG Style

[treadhead1952]

Hi All,

No, I haven't fallen off the rock or anything, just busy at the salt mines and with little time to do much else than work and tinker at the modeling bench a little each evening. My tinkering has yeilded up another one of Fiddlers Green's kits, the New England Equipment Barn and Silo.

This one has some history behind it, Chip, our glorious leader at the FG site lived here growing up after it had been converted to a home sometime in the 30's. The building itself is still around, standing in the Village Green at Monroe, Connecticutt. It was once even featured in an article in Better Homes and Gardens. The design is taken from English styled barns with a little Yankee ingenuity tossed in by us colonials.

I used multiple print outs to add some depth and dimension to the printed walls by cutting out individual features and then slicing and dicing them up even more. The five windows were all cut outs as well as the kit supplied extra window frames. I did cut the panes out of one copy of the windows each and then reinforced the small dividers with some super glue before adding them to the printed ones on the walls. I did much the same with the double doors on the front and rear as well as the small entry door on the side. The loft doors have separate sections that are added to the walls to create that nice white trimmed appearance and yet another cut out copy of just the doors themselves were added.

Having a mis spent youth working around barns back home at various times, one of the features that I felt was missing was the jib beam that stuck out from under the overhanging roof above the loft doors. This is not part of the kit, just something I added. I made a pulley set up using some punched out discs and a support frame from some heavy foil. I drilled a hole at the top of the loft doors and threaded some white thread dyed yellow with a Sharpie pen to look like rope through the hole to the pulley and back again. I gave it a bit of a droop and glued the ends to the inside roof. The little cupola atop the barn was given a trim job and panels glued inside to recess the louvres a bit. To make the effect even more pronounced I added another set of the outside panels atop the originals. The stone foundation got two more sets of cut outs added to build it up and the doors and tracks also got doubled up. I added a small step to the bottom of the small side door and as a final touch made up some lightening rods from some stretched sprue for both the barn and the silo.





Like most of the Fiddlers Green building models it comes in HO, N, and Z scales for the rail road buffs out there if you would like to find a generic barn to add to your layout. With a little tinkering it does build up to a pretty nice little kit.

[redhorse]

I was wondering what you were up too. This one looks nice, I'm enjoying these buildings you're making.

[Art Deco]

Your detailing added a lot to the visual impact! Nice work!

[cgutzmer]

Very good work! I like it a lot, it could fit into a few different ages of railroads too
Chris

[ct ertz]

Mor great work. Cool. I really like the layering.

[treadhead1952]

Thanks Guys,

I must admit that I am enjoying updetailing these little buildings, my scale of choice is N scale which means they are only a couple of inches tall at most. With a little tinkering, I think they offer a lot more possibilities than the plastic and paper ones that you buy at the hobby shop already built, not to mention, a whole lot cheaper.

[Don Boose]

I'm glad to see these early "cartoon" FG buildings getting their day in the sun by way of your very fine versions.

Several years ago, I built a bunch of these with the grandsons. They helped to populate their Thomas electric train set and fo a while, several of them were lined up atop their home television set as a little linear village. One of the favorites was the kipper factory, since kippers made an appearance in one of the Thomas episodes. They almost developed a taste for tinned kippers, as well -- I thought they ought to see what kippers actually were.

Now: More! More! Jay

Don

[treadhead1952]

Thanks Don,

These little buildings are great fun to do and you can't get too lost in trying to detail them up like some other things I can think of. :D

I have already started on my next one so it won't be too long of a wait.