Good Progress on the Border Loop Signalman's Cottage

So on Saturday this weekend, I had a mate come over to pick up a couple of my level crossing detector kits.  I thought I would get my demo version out and place it on a table in my pergola to show off how it works.  It wouldn’t work.  I was dumbfounded.  It took me a few minutes to realise that the bright sunshine was playing havoc with my infra-red detectors.  Once I realised that, we took the demo board back down to the shed and set it up inside the shed and sure enough it worked perfectly.  We had a discussion about various implementation scenarios and hopefully is now all up to date and will have a great time installing these kits.    

Straight after my visitor left, I got the spray can out and painted up some bargeboards for my Kyogle Norco Dairy building.  I placed some masking take on a piece of wood, and stuck the various boards to the masking take.  That way they don’t go flying when the spray of the air and paint mix comes out of the cans.  These were left to dry.  Today I added these to the Kyogle Diary building.  However a document that I sighted today from the 1930’s shows this building as the Butter Factory. 

The Kyogle Diary building with sliding door open and the platform lent up against the building.

This photo shows the door I cut in for which I don't have a door for as yet and the window I cut into the end of the building.  Down pipes have been made but are yet to be fitted.

A shot more at platform level

So later on Saturday afternoon I retired to the kitchen table and started to mark out the window openings and doorways on the three sides of my Border Loop Signalman’s house.  I then cut out the various openings, and then added a base and some internal walls.  That way, when someone looks inside, they won’t see straight through.  I then added a plane styrene rear wall and the base house looks quite good.  Later on in the afternoon, I started making up the rear veranda section.  On Saturday evening everything was glued together.

So today, I decided to try and paint the building a blue colour.  I gave it a primer coat first and then the light blue.  I have a photo from the distant past and it shows the house painted a similar blue colour.  I then went searching in my window collection and found four that fitted the openings that I already had cut in the house.  I then painted these a white colour.  Once the windows were dry they were glued to the model.  I also found two doors from my container of doors and these fitted exactly.  So these have now been added as well.  I cut the roof for the back veranda and painted it silver.  My remaining task is to add the roof.  I have made a frame and cut a paper template, but I hate making roofs.  I think I will bring the model along to our Tuesday Nighter’s meeting and discuss the roof with the modelling guru’s in attendance.

This shot is the southern end of the Signalman's Cottage

This is the rail side of the cottage

This is the side closest to the signal box.

So this afternoon I started doing some more work on the Kyogle station building.  I was cleaning up the window and door openings.  I will work on this during the week.  However, I have been given an order for some more tarps.  So this afternoon I cut up and rolled up 30 tarps.  I have another 26 that I can make up later this week, but I will have to resort to saving my wife’s teabags in order to make a few more.  I also received a few more orders for steel loads and clotheslines.  Who know I might be able to knock out a few more this week as well.