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| Bomen SM Residence as it appeared in 2017 |
I was at Macca’s recently, and he showed me one of the Stuart
Walker kits that he was building. It was
the Bungendore Station Masters Cottage, but it bore an uncanny resemblance to
the Station Masters residence at Bomen.
Initial glance was it was mirror imaged, but everything looked to be
there.
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| Stuart Walker Models - Bungendore Station Masters Cottage |
I have always tried where possible to support small cottage (sorry about the pun) industries, and having had success with previous models in Stuart’s range, notably the G2 Goods shed, and A4
station building, I fired an order off to Stuart’s website
On the “buyer
instruction” area of the order, I said that I was planning to mirror image the
building, to better fit Bomen.
Well, I was surprised around 30 minutes later with a phone
call from Stuart, advising that he had been asked for a mirror image kit
previously, and had a mirror image file available. If I wanted a mirror image kit, then he would
burn one specially for me, and get it in the post that day . That sounded like a winner.
The kit arrived express post in Junee the following
day.
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| Laser cut sheets, and a plastic bag with window glass, doors, and 3 resin chimneys. All this for $95, plus post |
It was then I had a good look at my pictures of Bomen
Station SM residence, and compared it with the kit.
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| Note. Large window, with square corners, and hidden by the tree shadow, is a bricked up window |
In summary, the differences noted.
1)
The Bomen cottage had been cement rendered over
the brickwork. Unsure when this
happened, but I will have to assume it was after 1970. Bad luck if not
2)
There are MORE windows on the long side
wall. And one window (that appeared in
Stuart’s kit has been bricked up. One of the new windows is a larger size, than
the others.
3)
There are NO windows on the shorter side wall –
nor any evidence of these being bricked up, so my assumption is that they were
never installed
4)
The rear patio is weatherboard, and not
brick. The current roof extension looks too recent, so I won't be modelling this
5)
There is no door on the far rear wall of the
real cottage – the door to this space is approximately where the kit has a
window.
6)
The chimney castings are a lot plainer than
Bomen, and I will most likely need to fabricate replacements
In addition to the walls, Stuart’s kit has included a lot
more windows than is needed. A nice bonus
The next stage was to cut out new window, and door openings, and fill in those windows and doors
that do not match Bomen. I was lucky in
that the brickwork that I was cutting out of the walls, was about the same size
and number as what was needed to fill the other openings. The process though is at best tedious.
After marking out the new window openings, and lightly
cutting with a SHARP #11 blade, I use a small 0.4mm drill to drill through the
thin plywood, to make a mark on the other side.
These marks are the guides for the heavy cutting from behind.
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| Rearranging the brickwork on the side walls is non trivial, as the kit's brick walls iare actually 3 ply plywood, and does not cut easily. Take your time, measure twice, and cut with a sharp blade, from both sides. Finish off with sandpaper |
Once you have taken out the brickwork, trim it to fit the window
and door openings you want to fill. Care
is needed. I use a thin putty to fill
the gaps, sand, and paint the walls. Unless
you are more careful than me, you will then need to re-scribe the
brickwork. Another coat of paint, and put these to one
side.
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| Gaps filled in, painted, and rescribed. None of the repairs were "perfect", and the worst one, to fill in the fdoor at the rear, will have to be masked with the water heater you can see on the prototype picture |
As Bomen SM residence has a weatherboard patio area, I had to do some other changes. The kit has brickwork for this area, which is not correct for Bomen. I found some suitable North Eastern clapboard siding in my scratch building supplies, and cut out an opening for an aluminium window and sliding door – which might have existed in 1970
I painted all the brickwork with Floquil Antique White,
which is a pale cream, matching the current colour. I have
no idea if this is correct for the 1970 time period. The brickwork was than attached to the heavy
laser cut board provided in the kit, new openings made in the heavy board where there are new windows, and
the walls fitted into the building base.
The window surrounds are painted a brown colour – rather than the current
white colour. I used Floquil Rail Brown
as my paint. Attach the window surrounds
to the walls with white glue. The
mullions, and window framing was painted white, and attached to the laser cut
glazing again with white glue. I have started
to fit these into the wall openings
The roof support structure
is assembled as per the kit instructions, although mirrored..
Thin corrugated plywood is supplied for the
roof, cut to shape with the laser. .
Unfortunately, the roof supplied in my kit was for the normal kit, and
not the reversed one, so some more cutting and splicing was needed. In retrospect, maybe I should have installed
the roof, flatside up, and used corrugated aluminium foil for the roof. Painted in Floquil Old silver. The roof can be detached from the walls at
this stage.
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| The area of roof painted is a spot where I had to fill in a triangle laser cut part. The roof was cobbled together using the kits leftover corrugated sectoios, as the original roof was cut for the normal kit, and not the mirror image kit that I needed The holes in the roof are for the chimneys, not sklights |
I added some stained floorboards to the front porch, prior to adding the veranda awning.
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| New framing for the large square window on the LHS wall. Some windows have been added, but more are needed. Roof still needs finishing |
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| Back porch area is a long way from finished |
Well, that is where I am up to. I had hoped to have finished the model by
now, it has been on the workbench for 3 weeks.
The next steps will be to finish the roof, scratch build the windows,
modify the kit chimneys, and write up the Blog post.
Happy modelling
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