Archive for March, 2006
Figure Building
I was really intrigued when I read Chris Walas’ articles on figure building (chapters one, two and three) on MyLargeScale.com. Here is an index into the key sections of Chris’s Chapter One: A Simple Figure:
- Material List for Sculpting a Simple Figure
- Building the Armature
- Roughing in the Body
- Pants
- Shirt
- Fingers
- Feet
- Head
- Hair
- Painting
Armed with all this good information, I started sculpting a figure: Engineer Bill.
He’s based on a photograph from the book “The Fossmill Story” and is designed to stand in the cab of my live steam Konrad engine. I found it much easier to get the proportions right working from a photograph. Here he is after painting:
LHR Engine No: 1 “Konrad”
The first engine for our garden empire is a Regner Konrad. It is a very simple engine that uses a single oscillating steam cylinder to drive the wheels through a gear system. Reviews for the engine have been very positive and I bit the bullet and purchased one. Here’s what it looked like right out of the box:

The Konrad looks like it could easily be kitbashed into a small turn-of-the-century logging locomotive. Here’s a list of things I’m considering to change:
- Install new wooden bumpers at both the front and rear.
- Install link and pins couplers back and front.
- Paint: red and green colors need to be repainted black.
- Add a new more-to-scale engineer figure.
- Add a roof.
Well, here’s everything done but the new roof:

And one with “Engineer Bill”, my scratchbuilt engineer figure:


