Southern Highlands - Construction, November 2022
November was another busy month of work on Southern Highlands, with a large portion of time concentrating on the The Maltings, a large brick structure north of Mittagong station that at one point in time provided the prepared ingredients for making beer to all the breweries in the state of New South Wales.
As the Maltings Malthouses 1 & 2 adjacent to the Main South railway line are such a long structure, it was decided to break the construction into three main sections - two end wings, with a third main section in the centre. Each section was then broken into sub-sections to enable 3D printing of the walls and to aid in scratchbuilding the roof afterwards. Foam core board is used as the shell for the structure. Much time has been spent analysing drawings, historical and site photos, counting bricks, and designing the Malthouses 1 & 2 in a Computer Aided Design (CAD) program.
The end wings assemblies were tackled first. The walls were glued together and to a length of foam core board. The board was then then reinforced with lengths of aluminium angle to act as stiffeners and to prevent warping of the prints.
The centre section of Malthouses 1 & 2 consists of two small rooms which sit either end of a long loading dock. The rooms and wall behind were printed as one piece. The walls between these two rooms feature three different facade designs and so were drawn and printed as three pieces to be glued together.
A similar process was used to construct the main section. The walls were glued together and to foamcore board before being braced with aluminium and corner gussets. As the rear wall sits next to the backdrop and will not be seen, pieces of 4mm thick hardboard and 9mm ply were cut to shape and glued to the front and side walls to complete the shell. The middle of the building is taller than the rest, so the visible sections of the side walls were printed to match the rest of the facade and glued into place. More interior bracing with foam core board helps keep the shell rigid.
On the end wings, a length of aluminium angle was glued along the apex of the roof to support roof. The roof was made from sheet styrene with another corrugated iron shaped styrene sheet laminated on top. The centre section has different shaped roof sections so styrene formers and bracing were cut to suit, with the same sheeting applied on top. Strips of self-adhesive aluminium tape make up the flashing.
Other areas of the layout received attention over the course of November. The stonework of Stonequarry Creek Viaduct received varying washes of weathering before the scenery surrounding it was applied.
The small details that make up scenes on a layout were not forgotten. Items for placement on various parts of the layout at a later date were prepared in readiness.