Modelling an Italian village in N scale from scratch - part 7
2025/05/24
The village of Val dei Pomi by now has a station (with a Bar Stazione), a bakery, a Tabacchi, a hairdressers and a city hall. Now it’s time to add a primary school.
This building is more than a simple square shape, although all the corners are 90 degrees. So I started it with a skeleton, to add the walls to later. It didn’t work flawlessly, I had to sandpaper it slightly along the way, but it worked well enough.
I made sure to add holes in the skeleton to run wires - I wasn’t planning interior lighting, but adding holes later is a recipe for distaster, I’ve learned.
Windows with the sticky-label method. A question of try, and try again, and worth it in the end (with a full bin of discared bits next to my desk…)
The prototype has these typical horizontal lines roughly where the floors are. There must be a name for this feature, no idea. I tried to model that before but was never pleased with the result: with masking tape and paint the paint would still run below; thin paper curls easily; thin slices of card thend to lose their sharp edge. So this time I tried 1mm styrene strips. I painted them ivory, which the photos don’t show but it takes the shine off and adds just that extra bit of texture.
Quite pleased with it, except at the edges. Anyway, after doing this I saw a video of Sami where he uses painted masking tape, cut into thin lines. I’ll try that next time!
Note the gap in the line above the front door, there’s a little canopy there, underneath I drilled a 0.7mm hole for an smd led.
When painting the walls (in a gradient, light yellow above, darker below) I made sure the printed lines are still faintly visible. This made an excellent guide line when glueing the strips of styrne so they match around the corner. The other guidelines are for the boards with children’s drawings, a feature of the prototype.
I also used the styrene strips for the hortizontal windowframes. The vertical strips could be omitted, i had painted the inside of the window holes white and that was enough for the hint of a fully white frame.
The backside has a stairhouse with only few windows, so I settled for a simple printed image of a staircase, rather than putting together a full staircase. A green light on the top for the faint shimmer of an emergency-sign.
On the backside and right side, I added a milky print behind the windows.
For the front and left side, I added a simple interior from bits of classroom clipart. Since I’m not adding interior lighting (apart from the emergency light in the stairwell and an outside light above the front door) there was not really need even for that, but that’s modeller’s pride. It would bother me if it wasn’t there!
Saving the most difficult for last: the roof. Now this building has an indented front, and on the backside an extension for the staircase. It makes for quite a complicated hipped roof. I used apple maps, google maps and earth as well as my own photos of the building and I think I worked it out well enough. First i created the base from card, and adjusted it on the model until I was pleased enough with it. Then I added a second layer with the same elements, testing those to fit without glueing them, then I cut the redutex to size for those elements, and only then fixing them in place.
Putting the front stairs together from card and bits of odds and ends…
Trying out the roof…
adding a sliver of aluminium foil around the chimneys to simulate the ligning:
Meet the original! It’s quite close. The model is mirrored and less wide, and I added the blinds - but I think this is a good hommage.
That picture also brought home how much the school yard is part of the atmosphere. Much easier to make it now on the bench than later on the layout. Made me chuckle though, here I am building with card and now I’m adding a base plate just like the plastic kits!
Two layers of card, to prevent it curling up when painting, a bit of greenery and static grass. And a lasercut fence from Markenburg. Dutch brick rather than stucco, but I think it works. And even in Italy, you find brickwork.
And finally a tube to climb through made from a bit of plastic straw and a slide from bits of styrene. Let the children play!
