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!