More East African Construction

As a part of the WWI in East Africa project I need to make a number of buildings. The first of these, the railway station is complete, but there are eleven more to go. In progress is the hotel and general store that will go with the railway station, and a wireless station.

The idea for the hotel came after watching the film "A United Kingdom". It is a fairly straightforward structure, which will have a corrugated iron roof and a verandah across the front. Here is the basic form. 

The next phase is to put the windows in place before the  verandah can be put into position.

The second structure on the working table is the wireless station, which consists of a simple square building and the wireless tower. I chose this image of 1914 wireless station (not necessarily in Africa) as the model for construction.

I chose to construct the tower entirely from plasticard, using 2.5 mm angled pieces for the outer beams and the horizontal bracing. The cross bracing uses 1.5 mm angled pieces.

First thing to do was to sketch out a template on a piece of cardboard. I wanted it to stand 150mm tall with a base of 45mm and a top of 12mm. But when I sketched it out the base was too wide so I reduced it to 30mm.

The next step was to build the basic frame for two sides. For this I cut four pieces of 2.5mm angled plasticard to 150mm. With a small spot of PVA glue at the ends of these pieces I attached the strips to the cardboard template. When the glue was set I cut and fixed the 2.5mm horizontal braces between the two uprights. 

When the glue on the horizontal bracing was well and truly set I cut and glued the 1.5mm cross braces in place and let the glue set. The finished side was then removed from the template and the second side constructed in the same way.

Next the two sides had to be fastened together. Again I used the template to get the angles correct.

The basic assembly completed I started on the fiddly bit - fitting the horizontal and cross bracing. That task took longer than the construction of the two sides.

The final painted item is below. 

The final task was to build the wireless station building. This was a pretty basic whitewashed stone structure with a corrugated iron roof.

And the completed pairing.