A French style building for the CFHC

Following my lengthy Chamby based station project and a quick maintenance shed "Clikey" style, I've decided to embark on a long overdue French building for my layout.

Utilising a set of doors and windows purchased from Imagimonde at the Paris Expo last November I'm going to try and replicate the many vernacular buildings we have in South West France.

The biggest challenge is still the roof, as I would like to replicate the clay canal tiles that adorn most of our buildings - here's a pic of some on my own roof ...



It's perfectly OK to use grey slate as they are found on some roofs here, but mainly for prestigious buildings - Hotel de Ville, Marie, Chateau etc and certainly not on barns.

I guess the cost of bringing them south of the Loire where they predominate was prohibitive?

Anyway using my stock of scrap 5mm exterior ply from pitchside football advertising here goes ...



I'll try and maintain this thread as work proceeds.

There are three methods I've used for canal tiles;

1. the most expensive, you can buy them in plastic sheet form (nbot recommended because the sheets are not quite big enough for a G scale building, and its hard to disguise the joint.

2. again costs a bit but lengths of 5-7mm dowel glued vertically down the roof , painted in exterior terra cotta and then the tile ends drybrushed in black.

3 the cheapest and therefore the one i've used; buy some of the plastic piping they use for running wiring in, and with a dremel cut it to length and then in half. you will then have scale size tiles.mount in the usual way/

the problem i found with method three is that when overlapping them the thickness builds up quite a bit. If you find a better way let me know'cos i've been trying for ages!!bonne chance

mikey

Excellent, I love threads like this where we can see stuff happen as it progresses to the finished article... looking forward to seeing how this develops Brian!

As said before. There is always something going on from the active members here.

That's what makes this forum interesting and a pleasure to administer.

Pierre will be pleased to see his doors and windows being put to good use.

I've been waiting for a rainy day to get on with my indoor projects and today did not disappoint!

So I got stuck into the French style building again starting by cutting out all the apertures with a hand fretsaw and gluing a batten to support the first floor ....


Then clamped and glued the sides in place ...


Decided not to clean up the old plywood as the mould patina will look pre-weathered...


Then cut out a roof - they're fairly low aspect in our part of France as opposed to LGB Alpine, and glued a batten to support the two sides ...


Then with the sides in situ and chamfered the ridge with a plane, cut two end gables to suit...


Chamfering the ends to fit the roof is temporarily glued and fixed with gaffer tape before being removed as a unit and allowed to dry. It will be reinforced with glass fibre mat and resin in the next stage ...

Chamfered ends on an angled roof....

Some crafty modelling there. What is this building going to be?

It is typical of farm buildings here in the Charente with a double storey central barn with wide doors flanked with single storey outbuildings. All will be revealed in due course!

Wow that's going to be one hefty building when it's done - good stuff, bring on the next instalment!

Not sure what canal tiles are but for pantiles I am using resin tile sheets from

http://www.modelrailwaybuildings.co.uk/index.html

You can see these if you go to the Victorian Warehouse. These are sold for about £5 each and are pretty good.

Hi David

Yes pan tiles are pretty much the same thing but the bottom tiles are curved too!

thanks for the link! I couldn't see them on the site, so I've emailed them for details !

I've had a very quick response from Dave at model railway buildings, here's what he said ...

Hi,,I can supply cast sheets of pan tile but not resin..the roof sections are made from a very hard plaster base ceramic.they are 4.5 x 11.5 inches.
they are £5 each unpainted and the last 4 I posted cost £4.60..postal costs would depend on how many.
The roof section are the same as supplied with L110 on the web site.
Many thanks
Dave

As they are not absolutely what I'm looking for and possibly difficult to trim to size, I'll probably not proceed, however the details may well be of interest to others?

The sun is out so not much progress today.

Positioned on the layout to see how it fits ...

Glued acetate sheet - looks a mess - to back windows ....


Now with windows and doors glued in place ...

Can i ask what glue you are using?

Mikey

PVA for main costruction. A "no more nails" type rubber based adhesive for the widows and doors.

This combination has stood up OK on my other buildings so far

thanks

Yes, sorry about the resin bit, but the plaster is all but resin to me.

I cut these sheets of pantiles on a Proxxon mini table saw using an hardened blade, as the standard blade will blunt very quickly. They can be layed so that joins are well disguised with a bit of filler between sections.

The last 4 sheets that Dave refers to, were for me to complete my model of Leon loco shed
which will in fact double as the overall station roof for my fictional Villaviciosa Puerto station.

Photos to follow when I have had time to figure the photo hosting mechanism.

re :pantiles - I may have found something of interest

Domuskits.com

I hae just got a small packet of 25 for 3 euro, I think I got the 1/10 size though by mistake.

There is another brand : aedes ars , AEDES Which is probably the right scale and they were 2 euro a pack. I am using my netbook and a slowish connection so cant really search at pres but they do look the biz.

I gottem from Hobby in San Sebastian, but they said they can do online sale at Hobby Oh dear thats a shame the weshop does not show the entire range, must investigate further,

Congratulations Brian
Your little house have a nice face.
I specially like the color of the big door
Next one you should make more little holes for the windows (but you are free to do like you want )