I’d like an American style water tower for my layout but the kit I brought didn’t look quite right.

Plan B – make one myself.

I brought some bass wood (lime) and cut the pieces to size.

Then I painted some Grandt Line bolts a nice rusty colour.

I aged the wood with grey paint and black ink and joined the pieces together.

A paper template with lines marked at 90 degree angles helped me position the pieces correctly. Holes were drilled for the bolts and everything was glued together with very small quantities of PVA (white glue).

I repeated the process to make two (almost) identical parts. The short pieces of brass rod in the bottom of each upright will help hold them in position.

The uprights were inserted into a wooden base and the two sides were joined together with more cross pieces.

I used some engineers squares to check everything was square and lots of blu-tack to keep the parts in place while the glue dried.

While the glue dried it looked like something Heath Robinson would create but the end result was fine 🙂

Next more horizontal and diagonal pieces were added.

Then I cut, scribed and aged a single piece of bass wood (lime) to make a platform.

I added some pieces of wood to the underside to help locate the platform on the top of the tower.

The underside looks different because I stained it with the black ink, but didn’t dry brush it with grey paint. It wont be visible but it’s interesting to see how much better the wood looks when the grey paint is applied.

The platform was placed on the uprights.

So far so good.

Next I need to create the water reservoir….