Background 

This one is taken from a picture too. It is a signal bridge, which, in real life, contains levers and accessories to control train movements in a yard or any other place. The original had a span of three tracks underneath but I shrank it into two tracks.

The Faller "original" 

And a sample of the end result

Materials used 

In this model you will use the cardboard,  BBQ bamboo sticks, windows sheets, a very short piece of metal wire and of course the paint, glue and all other tools you like to use. In addition you will need some kind of roof material, I used blue “wave” cardboard, which I weathered and a thinner, preferably brown, cardboard for large windows bars and the watch tower and clear plastic part glue for the windows.  

This model contains a lot more parts and some are put together under the same JPG file to save place and paper. The parts are available as a ZIP file download, parts2.jpg.  

Overview of the contained parts

Building it… 

Cut the parts, paint them and put aside. 

Check the assembly drawings, click on the pictures for a larger view

Parts that you do not need to paint

O, P and Q that will be glued to the “wave” cardboard.

Pay attention to the two Q parts you need to glue them the opposite directions!

Parts R and S come inside the roof as foundations, you do not need to paint those either.

You should paint parts H and M brown for wooden floor, it is possible to see them although they are inside the building.

Be sure to glue the parts correctly

• Parts A and B come between the two C parts .
   
• Parts E and G come between the two D parts.
   

• Inverting the direction of the parts will cause all the inner parts (H, M…) not to fit correctly.
   

• The two I parts between the two J parts.
   

• The two K parts between the two L parts.
   

• Part E should be folded according to the bends of the  two D parts.
   

• The lower H part must be leveled with the door opening. 
   

Info not mentioned in the diagrams

I will let you make it yourselves. It is mostly small that are impossible to make out of a drawing:

• The small windows have lintels 2 mm wide. Be careful  when you cut those!
   

• The large windows bars are made of the brown cardboard and have opening of 5 mm and the bars themselves are 2 mm wide. When done cutting those use clear parts glue to glue them to the transparent window parts you cut to the exact size of window opening.
   

• For the small windows you can use larger parts of transparent sheet and glue them from behind the wall.
   

• Use the bamboo sticks for “wooden” beams between windows and gutters on roof slopes. One additional stick you will need for the watch pillar. Use the pointed end for that. Use four small sticks to hold the chimney top in place
   

• You should use small parts to strengthen the building. Put some cardboard parts under the floor (between parts M and F) and inside the pillar (between parts G and E). When cutting those use the outmost caution!!! They must be the exact size. If cut too long, bumps will be noticed and if cut too short no contact will be possible. These accuracies are to be in margins of 0.1 mm.
   

• Make some stairs… cut three squares, each one smaller than the other and glue them to the entrance. Three parts of modeling cardboard should be the exact  height to fit the gap between the ground and floor. 
   

• When gluing the front J part cut out the door opening.
   

• When Gluing the O parts cut one in half so it will come on the two sides of the S part.
   

• Make a very long but very thin (2 mm) stripe out of the modeling cardboard and glue it beneath the wooden sticks around the windows.
   

• I used a button for an ornament above the entrance door. You can avoid that or use some other stuff.

The Clock Tower

After building the base (two W and X parts), make a small foundation for the top. Make an ‘x’ foundation with a pointed head and glue the thin cardboard to the sides of it cutting exes cardboard. Make a square ornament around the base of the pointed top. The rings (Two watches on both sides…) are made of a natural bamboo cut to thin layers and drilled in the middle to make a large whole. The numbers are computer printed. Size 8 using MS-Word.

 In case you are wondering how Greek/Roman numbers go:

 I  II  III  IV  V  VI  VII  VIII  IX  X  XI  XII 
 1  2   3   4   5   6    7    8    9  10 11  12 

The hands are small pieces of metal wire. After gluing the rings, paint the inside of them white, glue the numbers and the hands. (The watch shows 7:03 because that’s the time I catch my train to college every morning…) 

Weathering. My favorite part of all!

• I used thinner with black acrylic (water based) paint to weather the roof, the Watchtower and on I, J, K and L parts. They are close to the ground and must suffer
   
• The inside of the rings is weathered with a bit of brown paint to give the white some dirty look.
   
• Underneath the bridge I made two black stripes for smoke. (If you use electric locos I guess you don’t need that).
   
• The chimney top should be black underneath. Smoke  comes out of there too.

I have added one low voltage bulb inside the upper floor. Unfortunately I decided on doing that after completing the roof but I didn’t want any wires to show on the ceiling so I opened it again and wired it with a 2.5 V lighting set, which I got in a hardware store and connected it to a model transformer I had for ages.

I drilled the floor all the way to the ground and used a straw as a leading pipe. The result is great and of course you could get a special 16 V lighting set to connect to the train transformer.
As you can see by the picture above, I have used quite a few tools while making this building...
 

Finally, a picture gallery of the finished building