LX315-OO Ultra-Low Relief North Light Engine Shed / Wagon Works Side Wall Build Guide
The LX315 is one of our latest kits, based around a London and North Western Railway (L&NWR) engine shed. This Ultra-Low Relief Northlight Engine Shed/Wagon Works can be applied to any layout due to it’s generic and common design. Since this kit is only 8mm thick, it can be added almost anywhere on your model railway due to its low profile, but still gives the presence of a building. In this build article, Iain and I show you how we built this kit and wrapped it in some of our texture sheets.
These are the parts supplied in the kit. You have a back piece, overlay, bargeboards and 7 buttrest pieces. The back piece is cut from 4mm MDF, the rest of the parts are cut from 2mm MDF. We started the building by laying out all the pieces and doing a dry run first to see how they fit together.
For the wrapping, we’re using TX198-OO and TX105-OO. We started by cutting out appropriately sized pieces to cover the recesses on the back-piece. This is marked out by the engraved lines. We trimmed off the excess borders on the wrapping sheets, then lined up the pieces where we wanted them to go. We decided that we wanted to have one row of vertical bricks at the top of the recess to add some variation. Next, we folded the texture sheet over the back wall to leave us with a nice marker to where to cut the sheet to correctly size it. Then, we repeated this process 5 times to cover all recesses, drew on marker lines to make sure they were all inline and straight and glued them down with Pritt Stick. We found the less was more, and if you put on too much glue it causes the texture sheet to become lumpy and distorts the appearance.
Next, we started on the overlay. We scored a flap to fold around the end, then we used the overlay as a template to draw the first of the guidelines. To leave enough excess to cover the width of the kit, we drew on a 10mm margin around the guidelines. Once we were happy with the guidelines we had drawn on, we cut away the rest of the sheet and scored the fold lines with the back of our craft knife. One sheet wasn’t plenty this time, so we marked on overlay where the first sheet ended and repeated the above steps for the last piece. Don’t worry about the join, this can be covered later on.
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Next, the recesses. On the back of the texture sheet we marked the outline of the recess then connected the corners together like illustrated. We cut along the diagonals, leaving us with 4 triangles per recess. These are to be folded around the overlay. We trimmed these as necessary. Next, glue on the texture sheet and fold back the triangular pieces to cover the pillars. Do not glue the tabs around the roof, these need to be folded around the back-piece as well.
Next, we glued the overlay onto the back-piece. Take care that you properly line the two parts up. For this we used Rocket Card glue instead of Pritt Stick as we wanted something with a bit more bite and hold the two pieces together better. Once you have the two parts glued together, carefully fold over the tabs over the Northlights and glue in place. After that we wrapped the buttrests in the red brick.
Now the tricky bit. Wrapping the barge boards. We decided to wrap them in the Coping Stone texture wrap taken from the AX002-OO download. We found this part quite a challenge due to the angles. With this step we recommend that you find the method that works for you. We used the middle section of the coping stone texture for the front of the barge board and folded the rest around. We intentionally left the large piece that folded over the top loose and as it is, so that it folded over the rest of the building and gave the impression of a roof. Unfortunately the pictures for this stage are rather lacking. The barge boards could be painted and weathered to achieve a similar effect.
Finally, the home stretch! We decided to add some blue brick as a finishing touch. We added a strip of 5 blue bricks to the base of the shed, simply cut a strip of your desired width and glue over the top. We used off cuts from the coping stones to touch it up a bit and smooth off rough edges. To hide the join in the brick work, we added a drainpipe which we fashioned out of a bit of spare metal pipe.
This concludes our look at the build & installation of the LX315 Ultra Low-Relief Northlight Engine Shed/Wagon Works. The kit will enhance any steam era or preserved engine shed scene and adds an extra bit of depth and detail to a compact space.
Happy Modelling.
Great Article. Really like the look of this kit. Looks amazing after your wrapping. Thanks for sharing.
Your welcome Martin, looking forward to seeing how customers & club members customise these low relief items. Lots more of these templates will be joining the product range 😉