Sanford and Son. An HO scale scratchbuild

[Saltwater Cowboy]

Hi folks! I was itching for something to do on the layout yesterday and didn't feel like slinging plaster, or painting, or making trees. So, I decided to sit down and peruse through my collection of mags and books for some inspiration. I came across the February 1983 issue of Model Railroader and this neat little article on making "Sanford and Son's Junkyard". (geez; I received this issue in the mail when I was a sophomore in high school!) I had forgotten all about this project, but 27 years ago I had dog eared the page for some reason or another! I decided to have a go at it. Better late than never I suppose! It has been quite a while since I scratchbuilt any structures and it was high time. Most of the Model Railroader articles in those days seemed to have the dimensions and/or the scale drawings of their project articles much more frequently than they do today but this particular article had none. So I decided I would use the WASSG method to come up with the size of the walls and such. This stands for Wild And Somewhat Scientific Guesstimate. WASSG. I rummaged around in my scratch building supply box to come up with the materials. I originally thought to make the structure with styrene but I didn't have much to work with in the box. In fact I didn't have much building material at all left except for a sheet of bass wood. So, by default, that became the product to use. After all wood is easiest to model if you use wood to do it with!



Next, I marked off the measurements for the walls, the false front and the floor and cut them out with an exacto blade. I dug into the scrap box for some suitable doors and windows and came up with some leftovers from other kits. I the marked and cut out the openings for them. I then took a straight edge and the backside of the blade to scribe the individual boards. The blade wandered a couple of times but that was ok as I was going to be turning this into a ramshackle slapped together building anyhow. I then glued the windows and doors into place and glued clear acetate "glass" onto the backside. After the glue dried for a half hour or so I used white tacky glue to assemble the walls to each other and the floor. Using the tacky glue enable me to do all the walls at once and the tackiness allowed me to square everything up. At least as square as an old decrepit building should be after all. I let this sit over night and here's where we are so far. These photos show an overview as well as views of each side of the structure. Until next time...











Matt