jeff train: Scratchbuilding

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fimmtudagur, 26. mars 2015

Progress Report

They say there's nothing like an open house or a visit from some fellow modelers to really kick things into gear. I hadn't really been all that motivated to do a lot of modeling in January and February. I'd say it was more "puttering" than progress. But when I learned that two of my good friends and great New England modelers were going to venture forth from their winter hideaways to visit several layouts in the DC area, including mine, I figured it was time to get my you-know-what in gear again!
The blog has also suffered from a lack of progress posts except for a couple of "wordless Wednesdays." What do you want from me - to make progress and then have time to actually blog about it????

So what has been going on:
1. These visitor preps always seem to start with cleaning up - the layout had gotten littered with "stuff" again. Actually just getting the surface of the railroad cleared off can be a huge motivator.
2. I engaged the services of Rich Cobb to build a couple more White River Junction structures to go along with the station he completed for me a couple of years ago. This meant getting Rich photos, footprints and other bits and pieces.
3. Bernie came out here and we "swung for the fence" with an attempt to fix the issues with the "black hole of White River. You can see what our plan was here. The result, still very much under construction, can be seen below:

Rich came through in record time with the White River Junction ball signal (Rich delivered the models painted but unweathered - the final finishing is on me):

Yes, I consider myself blessed to have great friends and talented modelers who are willing to help me out with this project, but ultimately it's my railroad � which means I should probably do something�.

I did get the WRJ station platforms completed - by far the largest paved area I've ever in one sitting. I think I'll save the specifics on that for it's own blog post, but you can see the platforms behind the E7 in the photo above.

There was the unfinished river scene north of White River Junction that needed a little something. Last weekend was spent patching the sub terrain, adding the "dirt" texture layer and painting the backdrop. I'm still getting my sea legs under me with the painting, but I do enjoy it! A couple of evenings to prep a couple of boxes of Super trees, and another evening spent flocking and "planting" them. A quick coat of fresh black paint will double as the water surface for the time being. Yes, the bank still needs vegetation, and track needs some ballasting. Overall, I think this will be a nice photo spot on the railroad - I know I'd certainly wait for a train here, and would be sure to frame the picture with that "electric maple" on the right:

A few weeks ago I did a post about the Derby & Ball building in Waterbury. Just to show I actually do things other than redo track and make trees, here's the progress shot of the Derby & Ball building (obviously still under construction!) I couldn't determine how the prototype was painted in my era, but I kind of liked the colors it's painted now, so I went with those. Very New England color palette.

One last thing - just tonight (so Jim and Randy just missed it) I got the Twin State Fruit Company building for WRJ from Rich. So out with this stylish mockup -

And the "official" structure awaits signage, weathering, and details:

Sorry for such a long post - I'll try to keep future posts shorter and more frequent!

But there's been a lot going on (some things I'm keeping close to the vest for the time being!) and wanted to catch you up!

fimmtudagur, 26. febrúar 2015

Derby & Ball Co. - 3

Quick update.
I've been making some progress on the Derby & Ball Co. complex - as you can see, the basic walls of the "main" building are assembled and have been primed. The building is resting on the "plans" for the woodworking shop portion of the complex.

mánudagur, 9. febrúar 2015

Derby & Ball

Derby and Ball wood shop is visible to the left side of this Phil Hastings photo. The smoke is obscuring everything but the smokestack on the remainder of the complex.

Bernie is coming out here in a few weeks and we'll either resolve the White River Junction issues or break out the saws-all and fix it the fun (albeit messy) way.
In the meantime I decided to focus my attention on a few more of the Waterbury structures.
First up on the docket is the Derby and Ball Co. building complex.
This includes a long two story structure and a one-story building that was likely used as a wood shop.

You can see the basic outline of the main building in this mockup, which is nothing more than a piece of newsprint cut to fit the layout with rough sketches of the window and door locations.

The footprints of the Derby and Ball buildings to the left of the mainline.

I'd already done some mockups of the structure - my models will be fairly large as model railroad structures go but won't be scale size - I simply don't the have length. But I should be able to capture the spirit of the complex.
The smoke from the locomotive in the Phil Hasting's photo is obscuring the two-story buildings - here's how they look today - like many of the older trackside buildings in Vermont they've been renovated and altered slightly over the years, but the basic "bones" are still there - I have to thank George Dutka for these shots which he was kind enough to lend me (and they're published here with his permission):

George Dutka photo shows the Derby and Ball main building. The white "garage" in the background is the old woodworking shop.

Sanborn Insurance Map closeup of the Derby & Ball complex.

Another photo from George. This shot of the shorter building in the two-story complex reveals the gable roof was different at one point. I plan to build my model following the lower gable trim since I think the resulting model will be a little more interesting.

George even found an "earlier era" picture of the complex - I'll be using this shot to backdate my model in some places - there's room for artistic interpretation even in prototype modeling!

At this point the model isn't much to look at since I've been laying out the doors and windows on the sub wall - more updates to follow.
(I have to add after building the last three or four structures from wood it's really, really nice to be working with styrene on this one!)

mánudagur, 8. september 2014

Mocking up Waterbury

I've decided to focus my modeling efforts on the Waterbury "front door" scene until it looks "done." Key to this project is scratchbuilding a number of structures that are based on specific prototypes. I've already completed the Seabury Feed Mill and the old two-story freight house. Before I got too far ahead of myself it seemed to make sense to nail down the dimensions and locations of the other structures. The first building I turned my attention to was Demeritt Cannery, which is located alongside a dedicated spur within thetrack that circles the end of the peninsula. I started by scaling the basic dimensions from a Sanborn Map

to create an outline of the building. It quickly became obvious a "full size" building wasn't going to fit, and even if it did it would overwhelm the scene.

From the prototype photos of the building (above) I know basically what the structure looked like. It has four "sections"
1. The one story section with the covered truck dump
2. A three-story section
3. A two story section
4. A gambrel roof can warehouse

I figured as long as I capture these sections the resulting model will look "right" even if it compressed from the extremely long prototype.

I adjusted the mockup - it's much easier to use tape, scissors, and scraps of paper now than to make changes to an under-construction styrene model later! One change I made was to move the truck dump to the left to clear the track. It's a minor change that also allows the other end of the structure to be placed further than the curved mainline track. You'll also note I didn't mockup all the other lumbersheds and other buildings - there's plenty of room to add them on to the layout, and they'll be scaled to the "main" building so mocking them up isn't as critical.
Once I had the final footprint for Demeritt I turned my attention to the Derby & Ball complex.

This structure will be located across the tracks from Demeritt between the edge of the layout and mainline. Since it's a foreground structure I went a step further and drew plans (I use the term loosely!) for the walls on a piece of paper to check access points and viewing angles.

I started with the building scale width, but quickly found the resulting model would have completely filled the space between the siding and fascia - no "breathing" room. I checked various widths by simply folding the paper mockup until I had a width that would allow me to include the correct number and placement of windows (I may use windows smaller than the prototype to keep the proportions correct).

I'll use the resulting mockup to create the outline of the walls and windows directly on the .060" styrene subwalls. But that's another story.
Is the time I spent (roughly 2-3 hours while watching/listening to football games on TV) worth the effort? I think so - I can proceed forward with this section of the layout confident that the buildings will fit and will look right.

mánudagur, 1. september 2014

Waterbury Freight House 4: Two story "old" freight house

Completed basic construction of the two story "old" freight house in Waterbury. Next step will be to complete the single story "new" freight house and then the Shelby Coal sheds. I used basswood for this one - never going to use it again! This project only confirmed how much I prefer styrene for scratch building structures.

þriðjudagur, 19. ágúst 2014

Waterbury Freight House: 3 - Staining the "old" freight house walls

I got the one-story freight house primed last night. While it was drying I turned my attention to the two-story section of the building. In later prototype photos this structure had plywood sheathing added to the first story section on the track side of the building. I was going to do my model that way until I came across a photo Frank Quinn photo from the December 1990 issue of Trains* from my modeling era that confirms (1) the clapboards extended all the way to the ground, no plywood sheathing, (2) the building was in dire need of a paint job and (3) there were a couple of small freight doors on the side of the building (these were covered over when the plywood sheathing was installed.
I decided to build this portion of the building from basswood clapboard (Albert Scale Lumber, 4" HO clapboards). I spent some time last night with Hunterline stains of various colors trying to match the overall appearance and coloration of the building in the prototype picture. I think I'm getting pretty close. I find the wood stains hard to control since the wood grain plays tricks with the coloration. I think using styrene with brush-painted colors would have been easier.
*The article indicates the location is "unknown" but it's pretty obvious to anyone who has been to Waterbury or looked at photos taken in the steam era that the photographer was standing between the station and the foundry building. You can see Frank looking out from one of the window openings!

sunnudagur, 17. ágúst 2014

Waterbury Freight House: 2 - One story "new" freight house

I've gotten the basic styrene shell assembled for the one-story "new" freight house at Waterbury. The sub walls are .060" with .040" Evergreen clapboard siding on the exterior. Before installing the clapboard I run a piece of fine grit sandpaper over it in the direction of the clapboard. This "breaks" the surface, adds some fine "wood texture" and seems to make the paint adhere better since the surface has some tooth.
Here's a couple of pictures of progress. Next step is to get the first coat of paint on the styrene.

The freight house with the basic door and window openings in place on the layout.

The building won't have a full interior, but I wanted to include a suggestion of the freight agent's office since it would be visible through the windows and the partially opened freight door. I also plan to add some simple interior lighting to this building. I attached the agent's office walls to the sub roof, added a door and some wainscoting. The interior detail here will be simple shapes to suggest a desk, file cabinet, and shelves, and perhaps a figure.

The floor is scribed styrene sheet (scribing is on the other side in this view). The floor will not only be visible inside one or to of the open doors, it also acts as a brace, stiffening the entire structure. To get the floor at the correct level, and to further stiffen the floor, I used strips of .060" styrene.

þriðjudagur, 26. nóvember 2013

Building Waterbury 3: Progress on Feed Mill - Haze Gray�..

Tonight I put the finishing touches on the basic walls and roof for the Waterbury feed mill. The model is entirely scratch built from various Evergreen styrene sheets and shapes. The building is going to be a very, very light gray (almost white). I've found that light paints, especially white and yellow can be problematic when applied over raw styrene so I fired up my airbrush and gave the entire building a base coat of US Navy hull gray.
At this point it looks more like a destroyer than a building - at least the Haze Gray offers a relatively even coat for the finish paint.
I still need to decide what color to paint the roof. It likely should be very weathered galvenized panels, but I can't find a picture that confirms the color of the roof in 1954. I'm leaning toward very weathered red just to give some pop to the scene.

fimmtudagur, 24. október 2013

Building Waterbury 2: Feed Mill - Walls and window openings

This view shows the street side wall of the building and the addition that was on the rear of the structure.

Since the model was originally built for a narrow shelf layout I never bothered adding clapboard to the wall away from the tracks. In fact, this was all that was visible, so it's all I modeled. This time the building can be viewed (from a distance) from the other side of the peninsula so I needed to add clapboards and the rest of the addition to this side.

At this point I've added the new walls to the street side of the building. The angled wall was originally used to accommodate a siding that once wrapped around this side of the building. By my era the track was no longer in use. NOTE: For this photo the building has been moved from it's planned location on the layout.

Since this building was started well before I began this blog, I don't have photos of the earliest stages of construction. Basically, I built an inner shell of plain styrene (usually .030" or .040"). After locating the window and door openings, I used the well known scribe and snap method to create the window and door openings. After the sub walls were reassembled, I applied the outer layer of Evergreen .040" scribed clapboard siding. Once that's dried, I cut the window and door openings in the clapboard from the back (using the openings in the subwall as a guide).

Next steps on this building....foundation and roofs.....

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