Yesterday afternoon and early evening I did a little more to the Signal Box for Modbury. The work was to get the steps and landing completed.

Firstly the steps. I have no idea how everyone else makes their steps in 2mm scale, so as is my want I went my own way. To start with a support jig to hold everything in place was made; the height of the landing and the distance the steps projected ground wards was plotted onto a scrap of foam board, and a diagonal marked for the angle of the steps. Then I cut slits into the foam board at 1.5mm intervals across the markings out that I had previously made. This allowed me to push steps of 6mm long 0.015" plastic strip into these slits, aligning them with the diagonal. Hopefully the photo below will explain better than my words.

A pair of strips of 0.020" were cut for the steps support (stringer?), and one of these was welded to the ends of the steps in the jig.

The support jig was then sacrificed to get the steps out of the slits without breaking the bonds between step and stringer!

And the stringer on the other side of the steps was also welded in place

The resulting set of steps had the ends of the stringers cut off so that the steps fitted properly against both the ground and the landing.

Short lengths of 0.040" square rod were cut to size for the newel posts at top and bottom of the steps and the handrail post at the outer corner of the landing. Similar "half-posts" were cut from 0.020" and secured against the upper part of the 'box.

Finally strips of 0.040" x 0.020" formed the handrails themselves. Hopefully once fully dry the whole assembly will be strong enough.

The next step will be to add the gutters and down pipes, and some rudimentary internal detail will also be required.

Ian