Scratch building a city pub from card in N Scale for my N Gauge model railway

great value bedrooms the best pies in chenwell regular live events and almost no fights come down to the weir a warm welcome awaits welcome to chandwell this is the weir a grand old inn i had a lot of fun with this build and hopefully you'll enjoy this video so we're going to look at the steps i went through to build this pub and i'm also going to take some time to show you some of the smaller details that are scattered around it that you might otherwise miss i wanted an inspiring looking pub and i stumbled upon this the new beehive in bradford it's a beautiful double-fronted stone-built pub and it fits in with the architectural style of chandwell very nicely it's got these lovely curved parapet walls and lots of challenging elements like the glass sign above the door i had a really challenging space to put the pub into opposite iron bridge works with the viaduct curving one way and the river the other as ever with my buildings i used serial packet to mock up the shape first i did a couple of attempts and i eventually settled upon this parallelogram type of shape the front and the back are the same size just offset so the side walls are on at an angle i was a little bit concerned i'd struggle to get it glued together without gaps or overlaps but i did manage it if we look here at the finished article it's the exact shape that the cornflake packet mockup was and i'm really pleased with how well it fits with the shape of the building decided i could start its construction i designed it in inkscape as i do with all of my buildings and i start from the inside and work out this is the ground floor with the carpet using white lines to show the main room the porch and two smaller rooms at the back this is the front i use york's magnetic mates plastic right angled clamps and normal pva glue to start the construction simply use a fine tip applicator put pva along one of the white lines i'm using to show where the ground floor goes and the ground floor isn't at the bottom because i'm building it into the hillside the road and the side of the river are higher than the baseboard the clamps just hold the piece up straight and square like this next i'm going to put the back on because i start with the inside and work outwards it's quite easy to put an interior in as we go i don't know how much of this will actually be visible through the windows but i put a little bar in and a few tables and i put the impression of a bar on the back wall and i keep building like this upwards here's the first floor going in it works in the same way as the lower floor i've got the white guidelines on to show me where it goes starting to look about how i wanted i've recessed the front door in to give it a bit of a porch just so i can have a nice tiled floor it's just as easy to print wallpaper and doors as it would be to print bare walls so adding the interior is actually quite simple here's the first flying place didn't see the makeups of the rooms i haven't bothered with corridors and things like that it's just an impression i want to give here every time i added a floor i kept checking how it was looking it's going to look really good i think it's a shame that the walls are going to cover most of this up and depending upon where i put the lights some of this will never be seen at all by checking the building in place constantly as you build it's always possible to make small adjustments if you need to the front door is a little bit higher than the rod because i want to have a couple of steps leading up to it the only way you'll see the front door is if somehow you could look down the archway of ironbridge works like this once the first floor was in place it was time to start adding the lights i use just very simple leds and i wire them in series soldering them together as i go i test the lights and then just roughly place them into the building i try to put them towards the edges of rooms in such a place they're not visible through the windows because i think a bright light shining out the window ruins the effect i don't always get this right once they're in place it's wired up as a chain throughout the building and i hold them in place using red tape you can see here i've looped them from the bottom over the top floor and then down to the bottom where the resistor is and that will be wired through the bottom of the layout into my wiring loom so this is it this is the inside of the building more or less complete i forgot to take into account the shape of the roof on these interior walls so i had to slice them just with a scalpel i think it's going to be okay i've got little notches in the interior walls just to hold the lights for the light above the door i'm using this wall mount light using the woodland scenics just plug system i don't actually have the just plug system so i'm not using the just plug part of it and i just wanted the light itself these things are absolutely tiny i think it's it says it's four millimeters but i think it's actually smaller and the wires are incredibly thin as well of course i glued the front into place before i remembered i even had this light so i had to fettle my way through it by drilling through the front of the completed pub and then using some cotton thread to pull the wires through these wires are incredibly delicate but we've got there in the end and that is also just soldered into the main wires at the bottom of the pub i use red tear to hold the roof into position while the glue dries it's a little bit stronger than masking tape but it's still not sticky enough to stick to the surface and ruin it this is a great way to hold the roof down while the glue dries when i make a building i normally leave the tiling of the roof until almost last but this pub is different because of the front and back parapet walls which extend above the height of the roof it made sense to get the tiles on first i use the scale scenes as tiles which involves cutting strips a few millimeters wide and placing each one individually on top of the previous one so they overlap slightly it's a time-consuming process but i find it strangely relaxing the effect once it's all trimmed is really spectacular it's a subtle 3d effect and it really does look like the tiles are individual rather than strips upon strips once the front and the back were on it was time to add the capping for the parapet for this i just use a thin strip of card and a strip of scale scenes texture from the dark random ashlar sheet all we need to do is place the strip of card in the middle of the strip of paper and then fold the paper around it once the glue is dry on the strip simply a case of cutting parts of it to the right size to fit along the roof here i am doing the last bit of this side i use just eye i don't use measurements so just get it about right slice a little bit off and place it onto the building sometimes it takes a little bit of trial and error to make it smaller and smaller shaving off bits but we'll get there in the end so this one's overlapping a little bit and needs to be fettled a little bit further the sides of the pub were basic pieces of card but the challenge was the chimneys because the chimneys were on the outside of the parapet but also need to continue on the inside i wrapped the chimneys in two pieces i used the back of my scalpel to help fold the paper and then i fold the bottom part of the chimney right round this is the bit that's on the back of the parapet that goes into where the roof is once that was done folded it tightly round and then put glue on the back of the whole thing and attached that to the inside of the side wall the flaps that were left were there to go around to the front glued these down tightly then once the glue was dry i trimmed off the excess i use a brown pen to take off the white edges of the paper before sticking the chimney covering down simply fold it tightly around the chimney to fix it to the side i need to cut out a slot of the roof i did this more or less by eye didn't have to be absolutely exact because the roof tiles would cover any gaps i left a final check with both chimneys in place i think it's going to look okay just use normal pva like usual made sure to get around the led wires i used a piece of card on the front so i knew i was getting into exactly the right place to make fitting the front of the building easier later on once i was happy that it was in the right place i simply tipped it on end and piled a few bucks on top until the glue dried solid the most challenging parts of the facade were obviously the tiny windows but getting nice clean curves on the pediment at the top i use a heavy knife and a steel rule to do the horizontal parts then i use my scalpel with a fresh blade to do the curves when working with curves i always cut from the inside out so that my hand is on the inside of the curve this helps me keep the blade straight i take my time and i use lots of small light strokes and i go over and over and over it until eventually get a nice clean curve the trick with a facade like the new beehives is working out what components to make it from this is n scales we can't go down into really really minut detail but we want enough to be able to give a hint of what the building really looks like i used strips of cereal packet covered in two different textures one was a light stone texture which i took from the scale scenes ashlar sheet and one was a darker stone texture which was taken from the dark random ashlar sheet i cut strips and then started adding it to the front of the building so i'd cut out a little bit get it to the right size paint the edges and then stick it to the front of the building i'd repeat this over and over until i had all of the horizontal and vertical lines in relief across the front of the building i was on with this for well over an hour but the effort really paid off i was really pleased with how it looks here we are at the end i've added all the different bits on in layers as you can see some bits are thicker than others and i think it worked really well it gives the impression of the new beehive without being a faithful reproduction to it right down to the last detail when it came time to attach the front to the skeleton i used ooh glue rather than pva that's because i wanted to get a strong bond almost straight away ooh is good in that it gives you a little bit of play time so you can move it around before the glue sets a glue like rocket card glue grips almost instantly so it doesn't really forgive any mistakes i used plenty of pressure to push it down i also used clamps there wasn't much space on the building to get clamps in where i could use them i do use them they're a god send these things i had to stay here like this for a good couple of minutes while the glue set and it wasn't until after it set i realized i'd put it on a millimeter or so too far to the left i had a bit of an overlap of the side wall which meant i couldn't put the brickwork on that i intended and in the end i had to file it away with a little file and then just paint the edges i thought i might have ruined it at this point but on the finished article you can't tell and i managed to get away with it thankfully i tried a new technique when it came to adding the downspouts and i'm really surprised with how well it worked and how easy it was i essentially just chopped a straight edge down some cereal packet then colored in the edge and both sides of it with sharpie pen this made it a nice black color i simply took my ruler and moved it as close to the edge as it possibly could using a very very sharp blade it needs to be sharp you need a very clean cut i just basically went down in a few light strokes and cut off a tiny sliver of the cereal packet once i had that it was simply a case of putting some very very thin bead of glue down the front of the building and then placing the sliver of card on top use a ruler to keep it nice and straight the pva grips it really tightly because the card is so light and it just goes on really nicely and once it's stuck it becomes a really solid part of the building really pleased with how well this worked out it's the letters on the front that make up the name of the pub i bought this laser cut lettering from scale model scenery each letter is four millimeters high it was really tricky to cut them out of the sprue cleanly without leaving a little nib and i couldn't really file them down because these letters are so fine i didn't want to risk destroying them once they were cut out and sucked a little bit of blue tack on a pot i painted the matte black once this was dry i used valero old gold paint to gently dry brush the letters i didn't want them to be super clean and shiny i just wanted the gold to be there as a hint with mainly the black giving a nice dark undertone i gently applied tiny dabs of pva glue at the positions where the letters would need to go using the tweezers i very gently placed each letter one by one into its position on the pub give my final adjustment while the glue is still wet and this looks really good it's exactly what i was looking for for the glass sign above the door i printed a strip with the weir written on it twice i tried to make it look like the stained glass of the new beehive by bending it around a pen we introduce a gentle curve we want this to be semi-circular i used a tiny piece of oo hoo glue on the back side of the paper and glued the left edge to the little bit of protruding stone work sticking up above the door i let this glue dry for a while and once i was confident it was stuck i then gently bent the other side round and glued the right hand side of the paper to the right hand side the stone work i was almost finished the pub and i was ready to glue the front on when my friend texted me and said you should model the cellar doors open and i locked together using just card this seller ramp i'd already included a recess in the front of the pub to show where the seller would have been but i modeled it bricked up originally so it's fairly simple to cut out the front of the inner skeleton in such a way that it would fit over the top of the cellar like this so you'd be able to see the cellar descending underneath the pub into the darkness below i was a little bit nervous actually committing to the project though because the front was finished and it would mean that i'd have to cut through the completed frontage and cut a hole too small to start with and then i gently increased its size using the sharp scalpel i got there in the end and once it was complete and it looked as it was the right size to fit over the cellar steps to get it to fit into the baseboard though i needed to perform some further surgery on the bridge and the road itself it was fairly straightforward to cut a notch out of the road there was this piece of wall in the way though which is coming off the old bridge i carefully removed that with a scalpel so on the whole once i've added some open cellar doors this little challenge has worked out quite well so thank you for suggesting that simon keep your suggestions and your challenges coming i could never turn them down i drilled holes in the baseboard so i could pass the wiring for the leds through i covered the base of the pub in oo hoo glue and then gently load the pub into the right place at this point the cellar steps are already glued in place so they're not going to move once i was happy it was in the right place and this is a really sturdy building the chimneys slightly over scale are a little bit junky but they did make it perfectly simple to add a couple of rulers and a pot and then plenty of books on the top of the building i left it like that while the glue dried the ground at the back of the pub is a couple of millimeters lower than the ground at the front so i made this wall complete with graffiti that descended in steps from the front to the back i filled in the gap with milliput that dries rock solid after that i painted it brown i like making buildings that go down lower than the ground around them it makes it much easier to bend them into the landscape i just cut strips of two millimeter career board card and glued them into place in a ribbed fashion like this onto which i could put the ground later using the scale scenes pavements kit i created a pavement to go along the front of the pub i glued on little bits of extra here and there so it would fit into the gaps beside the pub to get it onto the layout i basically covered the back of it in glue and placed it into place at the side of the road i used ooh again because i wanted it to grip and stick quite quickly the side of the road and especially the underside of the arch aren't quite straight so i had to push them with quite a lot of force into place so that the pavement bent a little bit but touched all the places where it needed to i created ground out of card for the back of the pub i then used a couple of strips of cereal packet underneath the arch so that when i glued the ground cover on it wouldn't be perfectly flat i wanted it to look like an old cobbled street that started to sink in places once this was done through trial and error i created a correctly shaped piece of scale scene's cobblestone texture i cut out a few holes my plan was to make some puddles to show that the cobbles had disappeared and the ground had started to sink i wasn't sure how well this was going to work i slotted it into place and glued it on top of the strips of card that i added to help make the ground look uneven i added a backyard for the pub using some dirty concrete texture that i had i added this on top of one millimeter card the reason being i designed the doors of the pub to be two millimeters higher than the ground i wanted it to be a step up into the yard and then a further step up into the pub once this was all done we fast forward a little while and i've added some ground cover plants just using woodland scenics clump foliage and flock and i've added a wall around the yard i heavily weathered the whole thing with lots of black and smoke humbrol weathering powder and then i varnished everything using my usual ak interactive matte and ultra matte varnishes the puddles are painted in dark brown being careful to take away the white edge of the paper and then very very carefully dabbed in little bits of the gloss varnish that i used for the river i needed to make sure that the vanish didn't go over onto the cobbles around it and then it stayed inside the recess created by the paper so i added three four five six more layers and eventually it does look as glossy as i wanted it's a nice effect they're still not perfectly level i think the surface tension of the varnish brings them up a little bit but from a normal viewing angle these do look like three little puddles i'm really pleased with how they've turned out i used these laser-cut dockside railings from scale model scenery incredibly fine beautiful models just made out of card glued these into place along the edge of the rivet blank i'll drop the people onto the layout using super glue i was really keen to have a man standing in the doorway of the pub because one of the pictures of the new beehive that i looked at right at the beginning of this project had a man having a sneaky cigarette or waiting for a friend in the doorway of the pub it does set the scale of the building really nicely i quite like this guy if you're going to make a video of a building that you've spent almost 50 hours working on and you're going to show the gluing down of figures with super glue you do not apply the super glue in your tweezers above the building you've just made trying to get it on camera if you do you certainly don't get distracted to work out whether you're in shot or not because what happens is the glue squirts out of your glue pot and dribbles down the front of your building like this my favorite part of any build here a little look at some of the details that i like adding towards the end i added the 12 chimney pots i created this telephone cabinet box out of two millimeter card based on the one that's outside the new beehive this airboard advertises the weir's famous pie knight it's complete with apostrophe mistakes it makes a nice little touch outside the front of the pub i cut the front steps that go up to the nice tiled porch just by hand out of pieces of card and then painted them and weathered them before sticking them to the layout this sign shows that the weir on tuesday is proudly presenting wendy wu it was tricky to cut out these oval signs the pub doesn't seem to be very much of a child-friendly place the ghost sign on the side was done in inkscape just before printing out i was struggling to find a decent advert to go on advertising hoarding but thank you to bernard on rm web who took this photo of a yellow pages ad back in the summer of 1991. it's perfect exactly what i need it's even got a few bits of torn edges on it underneath the arch i added various bits and pieces of clutter including tyres a car some traffic cones and some barrels as well as the bins and the people standing around outside it makes it look murky a little bit seedy add some new graffiti to the wall at the side of the pub don't know who paddy and lottie are but about one of them was responsible for throwing the traffic cone in the river use a little bit of scale scenes aged corrugated iron to create a bit of a temporary fence and finally the whole model was weathered using humbrol smoke and black weathering powder this was brushed on with a soft brush and then vanished in my usual varnishing regime it's dried really nicely i think it really helps bed the whole building into the landscape i had a request from one of my favorite subscribers who said that she couldn't quite tell the scale of these buildings she wanted somewhere to be able to tell so mother this is for you here's a one pence piece outside the front of the pub you're never too old for your mum to watch your videos she never misses an episode and if you don't want to miss an episode either please consider subscribing if you've liked what you've seen please add a comment in the comments below i really appreciate all the comments i get on the videos i'm moving on to the station end next so until then stay safe thank you for watching and i'll see you next time

Channel: Chandwell

Views: 13,814

Keywords:

Id: 0gldE2w7PSo

Length: 24min 26sec (1466 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 14 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/SquireBev]

Very interesting. The scenery on model railways is often more fascinating than the actual trains.

[u/TheJ_Man]

That's fascinating. I've always wanted an N-scale layout. Unfortunately I e never had the space or the time to dedicate to it. I'd really want somewhere I could have it permanently set up.