With the landscape contours in place, Pete’s Pumpkins model railroad was finally starting to take shape, thus, it was time to add the barn. Having only previously scratch-built structures in N scale, I wasn’t used to the material needs of a large scale structure ‘ I could build an entire N scale city with the styrene needed to build a 1:32 barn! Thus, I chose to build the barn from foam core, as it was significantly cheaper then styrene, and wouldn’t need internal bracing.

Foam core is a wonderful building material; it cuts cleanly, is quite rigid, lightweight, and has the benefit of not melting under the heat of a glue gun.

Construction went quickly, and in the course of an evening, I was able to build the entire superstructure. The mitres etc. aren’t perfect, but that won’t matter as all of the surfaces will be sheathed in wood siding and metal roofing.

I carved out trenches in the baseboard (another benefit of Styrofoam scenery) and set the barn’s foundations into them so that the rear of the structure was built into the hillside. It was nice to see how the layout will take shape ‘ however I do think that visually things are too heavily weighted to the left side, so I’m going to consider building a smaller building for the rear right corner to help balance everything.