Trains @ Station Studios

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:

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: