HO Scale - Award-winning Scratch-built Buildings

    Ken Twombly met Joe Albano, President of the Dry Hill Model Railroad Club, several years ago after Ken's wife and son, Kathy and Adam, met him while railfanning. Joe was working for the Pioneer Valley Railroad, and invited them to come visit at the club layout at the Amherst Railway Society Hobby Show. Soon afterward, all 3 were members. Joe had a lot of work to do on the layout and Ken offered to build a "couple of buildings". Impressed with Ken's work, the "couple" soon turned into many. (Joe has since bestowed the title of "supervisor of bridges and buildings" on Ken.)

    For several years, the club had cardboard mockups of two very large buildings designed by member Larry Krusz. They were made up of Woodland Scenics design module panels that were downloaded and copied and put on foam board. But it was finally time to get these buildings built!

    The Budweiser brewery is actually 3 sided as it conceals the program track/wheel cleaning facility. It is a scale 320' wide, 101' deep, and 10 stories high. There are over 750 individual parts and 173 windows and doors. Being only 3 sided incurred its own difficulties. How to reinforce the open side? The answer was about 35' of aluminum angle epoxied and pop riveted in place. One other trick was in the sanding the edges of panels this long. How to keep them squared up? In this case, a 1" wide sanding belt was rubber cemented to a 2' level, the panels laid flat on the table, and the level was run across both top and bottom edges to keep them square. Finally, sheer size made it quite a challenge to handle. This building is HUGE! Hope you all enjoy it.

    Ken also built City Power and Light building from Woodland Scenics modular parts. Ken made the two stacks from a couple of table legs.