Freight Car Siding (1,0 x 0,95)

A pattern taken from the wall of a covered freight car

The scribing imitates the vertical boarding of a railroad freight car, where the boards are laid tightly side by side and the joint between them is deep but narrow. A spacing of just under a millimeter is therefore designed so that in ordinary modeling scales a readable, dense pattern arises without the lines merging. The carrier sheet is a millimeter thick, which, unlike the thinner variants, means that the sheet holds its shape on its own and does not have to be glued to a frame over its whole surface.

Joining two parts at a corner

The corner is where the quality of a build shows. Butting two sheets together shows a white end strip and the pattern breaks at the corner. A cleaner result comes from one of two procedures. Either both edges are sanded to an angle of forty-five degrees and glued together in a miter, which calls for accuracy but gives a sharp corner with no visible thickness. Or a corner strip of L profile is used, covering the joint and at the same time standing in for the corner post that a real building has anyway. The second route is more durable, because the strip stiffens the structure from the inside. In both cases it is a good idea to support the corner with a short piece of square rod until the glue hardens.

Typical use

Besides freight cars it serves well for storage sheds, wooden lean-tos, fences and the side walls of trailers. In 1:72 scale the spacing corresponds to a board just under seven centimeters wide, and in 1:120 scale to almost twelve. A millimeter of sheet thickness meanwhile allows parts to be cut with a sharp edge and built into a shell that does without internal stiffening.