Obere Wattinger Fin

Two outstanding items in the transformed Upper Wattinger corner were some piers/supports for the road bridge, and the little house/track maintainers house/signal house/I'm not sure what these are, but they are littered around the trackage at Wassen.

This hut was made out of some thick white cardboard that was lying around.

A bit of artistic license was employed to have it fit the space available. 

This end (that everyone sees in pictures of the real thing taken from the road) should have a different roof profile and be wider, but had to be condensed to fit the space.

I had a pic of it on my computer and thought it had yellow window shutters and red/orange window sills, so this is what I did, but those bright colours stood out and drew too much attention. 

I pondered this overnight and found another picture with light green shutters and grey sills, so today I recoated these items and it looks a bit more subtle. I don't want any of the horrible bits of the layout (all of it really) to stand out and kick you between the teeth, I'd rather have the trains be the eye-catching elements.

I also painted the 'wooden top floor' parts of the house as it appears in photos. This makes the place look a bit more interesting and less stark white.

As for the bridge piers, I was looking for something with a rectangular cross section to make two columns out of, but unfortunately we don't have a lot of hobby supplies in our town. Then I thought why not use drinking straws. These might have buckled and gotten out of alignment, but even before that fear had entered my tiny mind, I was passing through a local dollar shop when these wooden dowels jumped out at me. Perfect. 

I cut three sections to fit under the road bridge and used two of the (longer) offcuts as spacers between the columns to keep everything separated and parallel while the whole pier was assembled. The three short pieces were glued to a thin strip of card...

And then the card was folded around to form a 'capping' piece. The attaching was done with PVA wood glue, making sure not to get any glue on the spacers. As seen here under a glass of water that was being used to hold the card down while the glue sets: 

The spacers were then pulled out and discarded, and the 'structure' painted with a mix of greys that looked concretey. The piers were glued in and some rocks placed around the base:

The house hasn't been glued down and scenicked yet.