REALLY Non-Rail Related.....

[Ken Hamilton]

Here's one of the things that kept me away from the lumber stacker - a Non-Rail
AND Non-Vehicle project. A friend asked me to put together a doll house kit for his
daughter.  It turned out to be quite a crappy kit - the cheap wood was crushed by
the stamping process and most of it couldn't be used.  I ended up just using the walls
& roof sections...



Long story short: with scratchbuilt foundation, doors, windows, deck, copper roof and
1500+ hand-cut shingles....



Toggle switches for the lights (one for each floor) are at the bottom of the chimney:



Thanks for indulging such a WAY-off-topic build.  Just thought you might like to see it......

[lab-dad]

Nice!
That must be a good friend!
The lights & switches are cool!
I designed and built one for my daughter several years ago.
Even matched the wallpaper in her room to one of the rooms.
-Marty

[finescalerr]

Not so far off. Years ago I considered building custom dollhouses for a living. Then I discovered there was much more demand for furniture. Then I found out the real money was in importing mass produced Asian furniture. Then I abandoned the whole idea.

The only difference between a typical dollhouse and a scale structure is the proportions. And I have seen some scale dollhouses that were utterly incredible. The topic is not out of place here.

Russ

[RoughboyModelworks]

Nicely done Ken. Hopefully your friend's daughter will treasure this, I'm sure her parents will.

Though these could hardly be called doll houses, the architectural miniature work of Mulvany & Rogers is very impressive. Remind me of the Thorne Miniature Rooms at the Chicago Art Institute. If you're in the area and haven't seen them, they're well worth the trip, assuming that is, that they are still on display. Last saw them about 19 years ago.

Paul

[Frederic Testard]

The work displayed in these two sites is really wonderful, Paul.
And yours is great, Ken. The large scale allows great modelling, but it is yet another way to spend hours and hours...

[Carlo]

For another take on "dollhouses", check out Karin Corbin, who is in Seattle. I think she builds "typical" houses more like what we do here, with lots of attention to detail, but with a certain style. There are also some great SBS's in this blog...     http://karincorbin.blogspot.com/
Carlo

[JohnP]

Not rail related but certainly modeling in a sense. I have no photo handy but I built one with my wife for a friend a while ago- wood shingles, copper flashing, clapboards, four colors for the painted lady look, etc. It was fun and a good alternative to the 1:160 modeling I was doing then. I'm now building a 1:13.7 (7/8ths) outdoor railway, close to dollhouse scale.  I like the big scale as an alternative to counting bridge rivets in 1:48.

I think modelers of all types benefit from building in a much different scale sometimes for a change of perspective, technique and precision.

John

[Ray Dunakin]

Very nice!