Houses for Southyard

This is the first of a couple blogs talking about building houses for the Southyard area of my layout. I have a spot where four houses are planned. The plan is for them to be company houses. I had built a City Classics house and thought it was a good candidate for this spot. Unfortunately, it is not a build that I am particularly fond of. I don't remember exactly when I built it but it is not up to my current standards of quality for this spot on the layout. Also there are a couple things I don't like about it, in particular the fact that the windows and doors are cast into the walls.

There is another problem with this structure, I'm not sure I like this style house for my northern Michigan setting. This is actually my issue more than other peoples. But when I think of common turn of the century houses they look more like this one.

I also have Wesolowski's book on scratch building and he has plans for one that I kind of like. The house was in the upper peninsula and built by the Quincy mine. I like it but it would need a few modifications to make it mine.

Now keeping in mind that I need four of these houses I have a couple decisions to make. I can buy a few of the City Classic houses. $50 list for a three pack not really in the budget. Copy the City Classic buildings. This is viable but not sure I really like the structure. Scratch build from Wesolowski's article. I like it and there are plans. It's a bit big for the space though. I could change the number of houses to three rather than four.

The last option is to go and take some pictures of houses I like to make my own plans. I like this idea just not sure I want to go to all the trouble right now. Drawing and designing a structure is not my idea of fun at the moment. It is definitely something I would consider in the future though. These houses are in the old village part of Farmington, MI. There are lots of good prototype houses from farmhouses to simple Victorians there.
This brings up a little aside on what to do here. As you know I am working towards my MMR. Although I do not need it currently, one of the certificates is for structures. Part of the requirement is to scratch build 6 structures. I don't do much scratch building. I'm not real good at figuring out what is needed to build a structure. give me some instructions and the parts and I can assemble it. But for me to sit down and actually design a kit? (That is what you are doing after all right?) Just not in my bag of tricks.

I was talking to a couple of friends about this and got some very different reactions. One, through his comments, made me feel like I was not a really good modeller if I did not scratch build my structures. Hmm, you can imagine what I was thinking; it had something to do with a gesture involving the middle finger of my right hand. The other guy was encouraging telling me that I have the skill set needed to scratch build. He truly believes that I should just try it. He's right. But I still have the problem of figuring out what material to use. I have done a couple of small buildings but based on the AP requirements they would not qualify because I used castings for windows and doors. I'm sure there will be future blogs detailing how I go about actually building qualifying structures.

Ok, getting back to the houses. As it stands right now this morning I will make copies of the City Classic house to use in Southyard. I will post pictures and description of how I do it in a future blog. In addition, once I have the other houses built I think I will probably take the City Classic house apart and rebuild it to match the others.

Have fun,

Glenn