Third Structure

Including a cattle pen on the Z Scale Gorre & Daphetid was something of a no-brainer. I'd originally planned on building just one, but John Allen variously had one or two on his layout, and having changed the industrial siding to create more space, I decided to split the difference—in a manner of speaking—by combining the two Micro Trains livestock pen kits, 799-90-903 and 799-90-905. One has a single pen, the other has two; when merged together, they make a three-pen, two-ramp structure that fits nicely on the layout without consuming too much space. (Just don't tell anyone that you can't spot two cattle cars next to it!)

My first order of business was trimming the two base parts so that they merged seamlessly. I then bonded these parts to a slab of thick sheet styrene, and applied modeling putty around the edges. The idea behind this was to provide a larger edge that could be blended into the surrounding scenery. When the putty dried, I sanded everything smooth, and sprayed it with a few coats of Valspar Tan Suede paint to give it an earth texture.

The rest of the assembly process was pretty much per the kit instructions. After staining all of the fencing parts, I cut them from the frets and test-fit them on the new base. Some parts had to be trimmed to accommodate the fact that the two kits were physically combined, and not just butted together. One issue that emerged during kit-blending was that the ramp post caps were styled differently between the two kits, so I had to modify all of them to look the same, which wasn't fun. Some powdered chalk weathering completed the project.

Original Gorre & Daphetid images courtesy of Peter T. Prunka.

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