Franz Section House Scratchbuild

Thanks to a couple of days off this week for American Thanksgiving (while I live and work in Canada, my office does the lion’s share of our business south of the border, so the office is closed these two days) I had a chance to actually spend a good amount of time working on model projects this week. And the main project I’m working on right now is a model of the section house for Franz, where the ACR crossed the Canadian Pacific transcontinental main line.

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Being able to just kick back and relax and spend a couple of evenings and pretty much most of my Saturday enjoying my models allowed me to actually make quite a bit more progress than I expected and the main body of the section house is essentially completed:

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The body of the structure and the doors and corner trim were constructed in the same manner and using the same approach and techniques as with the tool sheds, just with a slightly different shaped building.

As the windows on the Franz section house were all covered (and a 1981 slide in my collection showing a general view of the structures along Franz siding shows that this was the case then as well, and the newer bunkhouse and maintenance tool/storage shed are also in place then) I did not cut out the window openings to install window castings, but overlaid rectangles of .010″ styrene on the surface of the structure wall to represent the cover over the window opening and scratchbuilt frames with .010x.060″ strip and a .020x.020″ bottom sill.

The roof is .040″ sheet and still needs some fascia trimming to finish up the detailing, and a mount for the chimney in the centre of the roof line.

Next will be a matter of constructing the porch and porch roof and the footings on which the structure sits and is raised off of the ground.

4 thoughts on “Franz Section House Scratchbuild

    • Thanks Trevor. It was nice to have a full day to just kick back with models and actually make some real nice progress on something.

      I’ve been doing a little bit more trimming along the bottom of the structure this evening and starting my plan of attack for the veranda porch on the front, but northing worth photographing and writing about just yet.

  1. Chris:

    I just discovered your modeling website a week or so ago. Really enjoying it. I have had your prototype ACR site bookmarked for a few years. Why would a guy from Kentucky bookmark Canadian sites. Well, my wife is Canadian from Seaforth, ON. That’s one reason.

    The other: The wife and I have been on the Algoma Central three times. Once, on the tour train in the late 80’s when the kids were in elementary school. A second time in 2005 when we went on a four day run in our motor car (speeder) from the Sault to Hearst and back. In October 2013 the wife purchased us two tickets to tour the line in trains 1 and 2. If some one said, “Let’s go ride the Algoma”, I would do so in a heart beat!

    If I didn’t grow up on the Louisville & Nashville I would be modeling the ACR. Keep up the sites, please. I will look weekly. Really enjoy your work and your sites.

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