Smoke jacks installed

The camera is a cruel critic! These smoke jacks look pretty good in real life, but when you get them under a macro lens, the deficiencies sure leap out. To be fair to myself, I think the camera was tilted in the photo above, and the two smoke jacks are actually quite vertical. To get […]

Gravel stop for the roundhouse roof

You’ve gotta love the Internet. My inclination when designing the edge of the roof was that there must have been some sort of parapet to keep the gravel on. However, if that was the case, the parapet must have been awfully low, or I completely fouled up the depth of the rafters. Now, the rafter […]

Vollmer Mill

At the Halifax and South Shore Railway Museum last summer, The Boy stuck up his hand when the proprietor asked if there were any model railroaders in the group. Later, he intimated that he wasn’t so interested in the railway itself as in the buildings and scene around it. When we got home, he started […]

Roundhouse roof raised

Back when planning this model, I thought I might make the roof out of something serious. Serious like steel. I reasoned the weight would keep the model from ever warping or trying to ride up. Over time, in my mind, I’ve retracted to something serious like styrene; it has no weight, but at least it […]

Roundhouse rafters run ragged

Who was that drunkard who put in those first rafters? I confess there are not many right angles in the roundhouse roof plan, but surely I would have at least attempted to square the first rafters to at least one of the purlins. With any luck, the lack of rectitude will be invisible from normal viewing […]

Smoke jacks

Ordinarily I don’t like to build with pre-cut parts. I find it much easier to glue parts together and trim off excess. However, in the case of the smoke jacks, there are some funky angles around the base, which made it more convenient to draw the parts and cut them on the Cricut. I started with […]

Roundhouse rafters started

This roundhouse is a little unusual in that the rafters run lengthwise rather than across the stalls. Your guess is as good as mine as to why. In the first sitting, I only installed enough rafters to get parallel to the stalls’ axes. I wanted to tie the posts to the walls a little better so […]