A place in which to live
glances. We will see the deer later. To continue with this end of the
house, I originally added the brick foundation under the stable. Then, af- ter observing similar buildings while riding my bike, I realized that on most of them little, if any, foundation is visi- ble. Accordingly, I pried off the layers of brick; fortunately, it came off easily and came in handy later on. I also built up a ramp made of stripwood to reach the front stable door, a feature that is also endemic to these buildings. Moving to the back of the house, I built a bulkhead entrance to the cellar from stripwood and some of that sal- vaged brick material. The hinges are simulated with short bits of styrene rod and the handle is a piece of bent brass wire attached with n.b.w. cast- ings. The clothesline is made up of doweling and stripwood with a rope of thread coated with white glue to keep it more or less straight. And, oh yes, there’s that buck intruder.
I mounted the structure on a sheet of thin plywood so I could make it remov- able from my layout if the need ever arises. When fully scenicked, I’ll build up the surrounding vegetation to cover any gaps. To create ground cover for the now completed complex, I used var- ious grades of ground foam for the grass and real sifted dirt for the drive- way, at the end of which is a mailbox and support made of several different sizes of styrene strip (don’t forget the flag and a number on the box). That pretty much is the story of the larger of
52
the two residences. The additions and changes I made simply add to the real- ism of an already superb kit, and it will be a centerpiece on my layout. But, what about that other house?
A kit for a kit house
In the early part of the 20th century, full-size kit homes, garages and other structures were offered by a number of companies. They came in all sizes and types, from small, cabin-like houses to veritable mansions. The parts, both in- terior and exterior construction mate- rials and all the millwork, were loaded into a boxcar or two, sent to the closest rail unloading point, then transported to the building site to be erected by someone who hopefully knew what they were doing. The buyer provided the foundation work and furnishings. Essentially, we still see this today, al- though modern pre-fab and modular homes are generally delivered by truck and not train, and more assembly has been done on them at the factory. Mer- chandisers big and small were part of these enterprises. A number of years ago RAILROADMODEL CRAFTSMAN ran an ar- ticle about the construction of a model of a Sears Roebuck-offered kit house; that article eventually led to commercially- available kits in HO and N scales. Another maker was Aladdin Homes, headquartered in Bay City, Michigan. This firm offered a broad variety of resi- dences in a wide price range, and my sec- ond house model is based on a Branch- line kit of Aladdin’s “Drayton” house
which, as advertised after discounts, sold for $207.10 in 1917. The Branchline ver- sion offered an excellent starting place for a small house in the O scale town of Albion, but for my purposes, it needed some changes and additions. This kit is from Branchline’s Laser- Art series and is a four-room structure with a covered porch. Like the larger house it, too, is available in HO. The instruction sheet features a floor plan from Aladdin’s 1917 catalog and shows a living room, dining room, kitchen and one bedroom, but no bath- room. Two entrances are shown on the plan, but only one is provided for in the kit, off the front porch. Accordingly, I concluded that by my modeling period, 1950, indoor plumbing would be in or- der. I also decided to create a rear en- trance onto a small porch, and it would have a simulated storm door. In addi- tion, one of the downfalls of laser-cut wood kits is the reality that the wood grain often goes in the wrong direction, so I chose to replace almost all of the kit-supplied trim with suitably-sized stripwood. I did use the kit’s windows and front door, and, while I was at it, I decided to add a garage for the family “woodie.” Let’s start with the additions to the house.
I built most of the main house first so there would be good points of refer- ence for the changes. For the bathroom I first had to decide where it should go. I opted for the right rear corner, off what the plans referred to as the din- ing room. I didn’t have clapboard that
MAY 2012
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