Wassen Church Chapel

Actually I don't know what the species name is for this little domed dell outside the church door, but it is quite distinctive and had to be added.

Since the Coronawar lockdown ended in New Zealand a few weeks ago, I've only made rare visits to the train room, and none has been terribly productive. But I've contemplated this wee structure for some time and finally bit the bullet yesterday.

A a short piece of white plastic tube was earmarked for the job a year or two ago (and indeed it is probably visible perched forlornly on the landscape next to the church in various pictures that appear amongst the bloggage here).

To make some progress though, a roof was needed and it's a difficult shape. The original idea was to use the rounded top of an old BIC ballpoint pen, but that didn't eventuate, so yesterday I built up a rough knob of plastic stacked up on top of the tube. Starting with a thick plate cut into a rough circle and a few tubes stacked on top, with a square rod sticking out the top.

That didn't look terribly attractive, but was a start. The knob was stuck into a drill and lathed into shape over various visits with a little filler in between.

This turned out ok, so it was hurriedly painted up and glued into place thusly:

Yes this roof is round rather than having flat faces (which I suppose I could have filed into it) but this is close enough from a distance.

Wassen Church Update

I made some clock faces for the church.

Well, I cheated a little, as they were 'borrowed' from a picture of the actual church on the interweb, which was photoshopped a little, printed out in multiple, and glued on with PVA. The printer at the local printshop has a different colour red to that on my screen of course, but it's close enough - and on the plus side they are quite nicely detailed, being scaled down reproductions of the real thing.

The real church doesn't have a clock face on the end facing the motorway, but fearing that might make it look like one of my model ones had fallen off, I've got all four sides of the tower covered in clock faces.

They were printed on white paper, and I cut out squares rather than trying to cut circles around the black faces. That white background is a slightly different colour to my creme coloured church, but it's not really noticeable, even in these pictures, which tend to show all the other glaring faults.

Such as, for example, I have no main windows on this rear side which faces the backdrop.....

Nor is there likely to ever be a proper tunnel portal down there - I'd rather be able to stick my hands in there for track cleaning within the tunnel

Wassen Church - 4 - Details and Knobs.

More churching...

Windows were added behind the open cutouts. I darkened some styrene with a black marker, scored appropriately (which revealed the white styrene underneath) and attached these in the window openings.

Also visible on the tower are some shutter-like openings which were made from grilles off an N scale US EMD diesel shell.

My second attempt on the roof dome was layers of styrene. The centre stick was used to hold it while the shaping took place.

Shaped with knife, files, and sandpaper after a little Squadron putty was used as a filler where required. I eventually got to be OK with the shape and attached it.

And with a little paint it's almost looking passable as a copper knob. The roof tiles were painted brown (similar to their original embossed styrene colour), and the walls a slight off-white (white with a tiny touch of brown) .

Wassen Church - 3 - Tower

Work on the church continued with the creation of its tower based on the VGB Gotthard book picture that is serving as my 'plan'. After looking around for an appropriately 7mm square piece of suitable plastic, I just made up a long box of thick and thin plasticard thus:

The ugly innards. This image is unlikely to appear in the Oxford English Dictionary beneath the definition for "Right Angle".

But it looks OK from the outside. As you can see, I had a go at rough forming the square-onion dome that goes on top of the tower from FIMO with the intent of shaping it properly with files after it had set.

Alas I found the below in the toaster oven later. Hmmmm.

How deflating.

Wassen Church - 2 - Roof

So with a recharged phone battery, here is where I left things yesterday, having assembled the side piece and plonked it on the hill to have a look at the scale. Overall I think its not too bad. Probably could have been a tad smaller, but it will do.

Back on the workbench, I finished off the eastern end with its bevelled walls, and started on the roof. 

The main roof was fairly easy to place, even with the links which were scored and folded to minimise joins. Material was an embossed styrene with a random brick/stone work pattern originally intended to be the sides of the big viaduct, but it looks ok here.

The beveled end's roof was far more tricky. I started with the end section.....

 And then filled in the gaps.

This might look less than precise in these closeups, but it looks pretty decent from a proper viewing distance it looks ok.

The last major component still to be added is the tower.

Not too bad though.

Wassen Church - 1 - Walls

Visible from all around the area, the signature building in Wassen has to be its baroque catholic church - St Gallus.

As seen during my final visit in August 2018...

Built in 1734 (yes, it is almost 300 years old), it is probably the most famous church in Switzerland, being visible three times on an ascent of the Gotthard Pass north ramp by train.  You see it above-back on your right as you skirt the Reuss River after exiting the Kirchberg tunnel on the lower level, then again below you on the right as you cross the big viaduct on the middle level, and lastly on your left from the upper level as you trundle past the command post.

On the layout, employing a form of forced perspective (except that the trains don't get smaller when further away on the layout), I need to make it a little smaller than scale size as otherwise it would overpower the scenes.

And obviously, me being me, I don't have any plans or measurements to work from.

However there are a vast number of pictures that cover the three sides of the church that are easily visible to photographers, and despite Google's unusually-intermittent coverage of Wassen, street view does provide views of the fourth side from the motorway.

Having debated this sizing and placement in my head for some time, I figured that making a model using the telephoto side view in VGB's excellent Gotthard book as a 'plan' should look about right. I'm hoping it won't be too big to overpower the scene, but not too small either when a train passes behind it on the middle level.

So  start was made per the above, cutting out some sides in plasticard. I used 1mm thick sheet because the walls are quite thick as you can see looking at the church windows in the picture.

After some marking out, the round windows were drilled out, and the tall ones drilled and then shaped with a sharp modeling knife.

As the side (with the tower) in the book photo won't really be visible on my layout, I decided to spend more time on the 'other' side first while my Enthusiasm Tank was fairly full. The well-known 'front' was also built and the front door portal arches are being cut out from the lower-left piece of plastic in the picture above.

So it looks like it's all coming together reasonably well. Now to belatedly put it on the layout to see what the sizing is like. It was here that my phone ran out of batteries, so that will have to wait for a later instalment!