And so begins my adventure in scratch-building a structure. Sure, I’ve scratch built things for my model railroad before — newsstands, kiosks, a pigeon coop and other small items. But a scratch built structure, for some reason, has always been pushed to the bottom of my to-do list. Well no more. 

I’ve started construction of a Pennsylvania Railroad interlocking tower. I’ll preface this article series with a disclaimer. While I’ll make every attempt to build this “correctly”, this series is more about scratch building a structure for the first time and learning what works and what doesn’t. Think of it as a journey… and believe me, there will be mistakes along the way. 

The Prototype: PRR Hunt Tower

Using the book, Trackside on the Pennsylvania – Volume 2 (because of its nicely done elevation plans), I’ve selected PRR’s Hunt Tower in Huntingdon, PA as the general prototype. Why draw plans when you can find them already done? 

Out of all of the towers included in the book, this is the only one that includes a brick first floor and a wooden second floor, which I think is nice visual variation. Plus, it gives me the opportunity to work with two different surfaces, so if it turns out I’m not good with scratch-building with one, hopefully I’ll be extra good with the other. 

For my layout, the tower will be placed in a fictitious town, so while Hunt is the prototype structure, it will eventually wear a different name. Because of this fact, I won’t be overly critical of myself if something is ”off” from the prototype. After all, it’s not really Hunt tower, just a similar tower elsewhere on the PRR (so stop rivet counting!) And if you’re not modeling the Pennsylvania Railroad, you can still use these techniques to build a tower for just about any railroad. 

If you are following along with this article series and decide to build a Hunt tower of your own, keep in mind that there are some areas that I accidentally used the wrong width of styrene. So you’ll end up with a structure that is slightly larger (about 9 scale inches) than the prototype. If you want your model to match the prototype exactly, you’ll need to make size corrections as necessary by following the blueprints more carefully than I have done. But, also be aware that the blueprints in the book appear to have some mistakes when compared to prototype photos. Bottom line — do what you think is best. 

Building the Second Floor

Overview

Like most towers, Hunt features a lot of uniformly spaced window openings on the second floor. These openings dictate the placement of windows and doors on the ground floor, so I knew I needed to start with the second floor just for spacing purposes. This way, if something was slightly off, I could easily make adjustments on the first floor, which has far fewer openings — and the spacing isn’t nearly as critical. 

For me, one of the most challenging things to do is cut nice, uniform, square openings in a sheet of stryene. I knew this would be the make-it-or-break-it part of the build for me (personally). So, instead of trying to cut window openings out of single styrene walls, I decided to piece each wall together with styrene strip, using spacers to help me keep everything aligned. This method gave me perfectly aligned, perfectly spaced openings while building the overall walls in the process. I used a 90 degree metal angle to keep everything square. 

The assembly process is identical for all second story walls — just the sizes of strip styrene change. I’ve used .020″ thick strip and I’ve used a .216″ spacer for all window openings (unless noted). The .216″ spacer is made from .156″ and .060″ strip glued together. 

Side Walls

First, I built the two small side walls, since they’re the same size. For these, I’ved used .020″ x .100″ and .020″ x .060″ Evergreen styrene strip. Height of openings are about 7.5 scale feet tall, following the blueprints. 

Rear Wall

The rear wall of the prototype tower includes spacing for a chimney and 7 “openings”, but only 1 window. The other openings are covered with horizontal louvers. 

I couldn’t find information about whether these louvers are original or if windows were covered after the structure was built. However, in the blueprints, the spacing between the openings is different, and there wouldn’t really be a reason to have windows facing away from the tracks. Therefore, I’m making the assumption that they are original and used for ventilation. 

This back wall is one area that I used the wrong size styrene. As I just noted, the spacing between the louver openings should be less than the space between the normal windows. I incorrectly made them the same as the spacing (.060″) on the side walls. When I noticed the difference in spacing, I slightly reduced the width of chimney space to keep the structure from being “too far” off of the blueprints. While I’m not concerned with following the prototype exactly, keeping it as close as possible makes it easier to follow the plans in other areas. 

For this, I’ved used .020″ x .100″, .020″ x .080″ and .020″ x .060″ strip. The .080″ strip is important because it reduces the outer edges of the finished wall by .020″ — the same thickness of the styrene. That way, when the walls are assembled (butted together at a 90 degree angle), the .080″ strip and .020″ thickness of the opposing walls will create a .100″ area of wall. So, visually, the spacing on all 4 sides will be the same. If I didn’t reduce the width of the outer pieces to match the styrene thickness, 2 of the walls would have wider sections. 

Front Wall

Because of my mistake on the rear wall spacing/width, I was concerned that this front wall would be difficult to get right — especially since the rear wall has 7 openings and the front wall has 6. Surprisingly, because the front includes a bay window, there are extra wall segments necessary and this worked out perfectly in the long run. With the bay window, the front wall(s) are actually 5 wall pieces — 3 on the forward-facing plane and 2 to form the sides of the bay. 

I started with the 3 forward-facing sections. These are made from .020″ x .100″, .020″ x .080″ and .020″ x .060″ strip. The two outer sections are mirror images of each other. I purposely made the strips toward the middle of the tower a little wider so I would have room to adjust the bay if necessary. Then, I marked a small dot on each piece so I wouldn’t get them confused. 

 

Finally, I created the 2 bay sides from .020″ x .040″, .020″ x .060″ and .020″ x .100″ styrene. Sorry, I don’t have photos of the bay side walls. The bay only has one window opening, so .020″ x .100″ was used for the top and bottom, .020″ x .060″ was used for the front of the bay and .020 x .040″ was used for the rear of the bay, following the plans. However, I think looking back, I would have back the front and back pieces both .060″ wide. 

Sanding

As a final step with these walls, I sanded all of the sides smooth and even. I also lightly sanded the front face of each piece so that any seams from the strip styrene would disappear and make each wall look like it was made from one continuous piece. 

To Be Continued…

In the next upcoming articles in this series, I’ll build the window frames. These are done exactly as the wall sections, creating one large wall with smaller openings and then layering them behind the main walls. Then I’ll assemble the second floor walls and show you how to add the tower’s detail trim before moving onto the first floor.