Walkways and Stairs

One of today's projects is connecting the Bunker with it's own Transfer House. Both were built some time ago, and while the old House is not up to the same standards as the newly constructed one,  after adding a base and concrete piers, I feel it is good enough for this location. I also moved it closer to the Bunker. Actually these two had been connected by a walkway and stairs, but I didn't like the way they looked, so I removed them. If you look closely, you may see evidence of where they had been.

I started by gluing two pieces of .030 x.030 stock level and square around the corner of the House. This would anchor the walkway level and true. Whew, dusty!  Must have been the maid's day off.

The original walkway was a  molded strip of textured plastic, which looked too thick once I put it up. Also, I had to 'cut it and butt it' to go around corners. This meant the molded-in pattern didn't match up through the joint. Now I like to use Plastruct's tread plate sheet, which like most of their textured sheet plastic is vacuformed, making it very thin. And since it comes in a 11" x 7" size, I don't have to worry about mismatched joint lines. Here is the piece that will wrap around the corner. You can see where I've scored the outside of this piece. That is where I will scrape off the texture with my knife, giving  a flat surface to glue the hand railings to. (BTW, every line you see in this photo is a straight one. The macro likes to distort the shot.)

These railings are also made by Plastruct. They have some peculiar mold artifacts, requiring some filing to remove, but otherwise are easy to work with.

Here the platform is glued to the .030 x .030 ledger boards.

Here I've added a stairway and a railing to the Bunker's upper platform. I should point out the House's walkway is not attached to the Bunker, and the stairway is not attached to the walkway, but merely sits upon it. This allows the Transfer House to be moved out of the way during further construction.

A view from directly overhead.

Here you can see I finally got around to adding the left post to the railing between the buildings.

Now on to the other side of the Bunker for more stairways. Next time, Don