A Small Blacksmith's Bunk Car

Firstly I can’t take credit for this. I saw the drawings by Al Armitage,who wrote a series in NG&SL Gazette,The ModelMakers Notebook. The article was in Jan/Feb 97.

After reading the article which was for ½" to the foot, I thought it would make a nice On30 model, so I built the carcase from Artist’s Mount board,with corners braced and Door recessed.I had already decided to use Paper Creek's wood wall siding and tarpaper for covering. Yes, paper!.

I cut a piece of unpainted O gauge walling wrapped around carcase to give size, then scored every plank before gluing to shell. The corner trim and horizontal batterns were made from double thickness to give depth. Likewise around the door.

The roof was cut from cereal packets and covered with tarpaper, as well as on one end and back wall with the roof wrapped under eaves. The barge boards were made from single planks glued to cereal packet then glued in placed.,The stove was made from tarpaper rolled around a kebab skewer, then glued and placed on roof.

The underframe was made from evergreen plastic strip,detail with Grandt NBW’s. This was mounted on a Bachmann side dump chassis,then the bunk house mounted on it,the underframe was painted brown,and then stained with brown ink, a small set of steps were made from cereal packet and remnants from the Paper Creek sheet.

All in all a quick and pleasurable conversion.

This page updated August 26, 2008
Webpage © Larry Rickert
Photographs and text © Marc Witten