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Reg H
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| Joined: | Sun Oct 19th, 2014 |
| Location: | Shelton, USA |
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Have I mentioned that the Builders in Scale engine house,
is really a craftsman kit with some laser cut parts?
I have? OK. It's the truth.
These are the roof vents, partially fabricated and assembled.
Do not consider this kit unless you have significant craftsman kit experience.
This represents a full afternoon's work.
It is a great kit.
My finished engine house will be a nice addition to the layout.
If someone were to devote a bit more time,
like a year of evenings and weekends, to the kit (I have cut some corners),
they could produce a truly stunning model from just the contents of the box,
plus paint, stain and glue.
The BTS mill challenged my patience with 1,600 laser cut parts.
But all the parts were laser cut.
This engine house is challenging my skill,
where most of the parts have to be fabricated.
Of course, some of my slow progress can be attributed to age.
My eye sight is not what it used to be, nor are my manual dexterity and steadiness.
It just means that I have to jig more things up, and use my magnifier.
Reg
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Reg
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Reg H
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| Joined: | Sun Oct 19th, 2014 |
| Location: | Shelton, USA |
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Returning from the HO/OO page...
I have abandoned the laser kit engine house. It is just too small.
The parts have been carefully stored away for future use.
I may convert it into something else, like a car repair shed, sometime in the future.
In it's place I have opted for the Cornerstone brick two-stall engine house.
I simply did not want to go after an expensive and complex kit again.
I am very anxious to get this logging operation completed.
So far I have given the brick work a wash with my ink/alcohol mix,
painted the window frames white in accordance with HBTCo practice,
and painted all the parts cast in gray plastic grimy black,
after some airbrush adventures detailed elsewhere.
Oh. I also painted the doors tuscan red.
The ink/alcohol wash is very subtle, but the diluted ink gathers in the mortar lines,
creating a shadow effect that helps accentuate the brick work.
The brick work will get a shot of Dull Coat to kill whatever shine is left.
I am rethinking the window frames. I may repaint them tuscan red.
The white just seems to scream "look at me!!".
Not exactly the effect for which I am looking.
I want it to obviously be there,
but I don't want it to detract from the logging operation center of attention, the mill.
Reg
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Reg
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Reg H
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| Joined: | Sun Oct 19th, 2014 |
| Location: | Shelton, USA |
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Here is the Cornerstone engine house essentially complete.
I need to touch up the paint and cut a base.
A little paint did wonders for the basic kit.
The green trim looked positively revolting,
and the gray in which the roof was cast just did not look right.
Once I got my airbrush techniques for the acrylic paint in order,
I was really pleased with the results.
The paint goes on very evenly and lays down nicely.
While this structure doesn't have quite the character a more complex kit might have,
I am confident it will work well on the layout.
The roof (slate is more an "east of the Mississippi" practice. But who will notice?) is removable.
Once it has been on the layout for awhile and collected some dust (I live in a mill town),
I will give it a shot of DullCoat. Lazy man's weathering.
I may do some more weathering, but it will be very light.
From various sources I have acquired an impressive collection,
of barrels, crates, and other oddments & impedimentia.
It will be fun spreading all this around the logging operation.
What is a logging operation without industrial detritus.
Reg
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Reg
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Alan Sewell
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Reg
Engine house looks pretty good,
and to me the roof looks more like metal sheeting than slate
(I would notice that !!).
This side of the pond, slates are normally no bigger than 24”x 14”,
and very often much smaller.
The roofing looks much bigger than that,
but perhaps in Mississippi slates are bigger.
As for the brick, which you know I am not sure of in the PNW (Simpson excluded),
well I would justify it as the mill producing wood “brick-pattern” novelty siding.
I am sure that existed and the engine house is an advert for the company product.
I have a “Sears catalogue house” as the mill office on my layout,
which serves the same purpose.
It is in the background of the attached photo, slightly out of focus, sorry.
Looking forward to seeing the mill site develop.
Best regards
Alan
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Reg H
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| Joined: | Sun Oct 19th, 2014 |
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The idea of a house as a mill office is a good one.
I may steal that idea.
The dispatch office for the railroad operation does not need to be so large.
The office for Simpson (now used by PS&P) is pretty minimal.
I will have some photos of progress a bit later in the day.
All the cork is down and smoothed off. A couple of things were a challenge.
Trackage was not envisioned in the location of the engine house.
So some of the sub-roadbed is a bit rough.
I had to do some shimming and Shurform work on the roadbed.
The log dump is designed for either a deeper pond or higher terrain than the mill.
I built up the road bed using the cork, and then filed it down to a consistent slope.
More progress here depends on the arrival of a shipment from Walthers.
I wish this stuff was available on Amazon Prime.
Getting stuff the day after you order it is the next best thing to a local hobby shop.
I have turnouts and scenery materials coming from Walthers.
I ordered ground throws directly from Caboose Industries.
I learned a lesson. I have always used the same ground throws.
It's been a challenge with MicroEngineering turnouts, because the throw rods are very narrow,
with a very small hole for the connection to whatever will be operating the turnout.
In the past I fashioned a wire rod to connect the Caboose Industries ground throw to the turnout.
It turns out (no pun intended) that Caboose Industries has a set of adapters,
one of which is specifically designed to work with the ME turnouts.
While awaiting supplies I did a little work on the GP-30.
I am very close to having the Kato chassis fit the Bachmann shell.
It looks like one more bit of grinding on the chassis should do it.
But I am taking my time in between cuts to make sure I understand what is going on.
It would help if I had X-ray vision.
It looks like the only remaining challenge is to figure out how to arrange the headlights.
Kato and Bachmann use two very different approaches to mounting the headlights,
and guiding the light to the appropriate location.
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Reg
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Kitbash0n30
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That engine house you are using now,
could be thought of as tying your layout in the here and now to model railroad history,
as it sure reminds me of one offered by the plastic model company Revell before I was born;
think it originated in the 1950s.
Have seen it in 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, model train magazines.
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See y'all later, Forrest.
Screw the rivets, I'm building for atmosphere
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Reg H
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| Joined: | Sun Oct 19th, 2014 |
| Location: | Shelton, USA |
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Yes, indeed.
If Walthers didn't outright purchase the molds for the old Revell engine house,
they sure were working from the same set of plans, or nearly so.
The Revell model has some differences.
Reg
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Reg
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Reg H
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| Joined: | Sun Oct 19th, 2014 |
| Location: | Shelton, USA |
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Well, my box from Walthers arrived yesterday.
I dived down the basement as soon as I got home from work,
with the intention of getting some track laid at the mill site.
Except that I messed up.
I was very careful in reviewing my centerlines to determine the turnouts I needed.
At that time it looked like I needed three left hand turnouts.
Wrong.
I needed two left hand and one right hand.
This trackwork is so tight that three of the five turnouts will need to be built up as a single unit.
That unit will need the right hand turnout. So I am stuck again.
I will be able to use the left over left hand turnout at the woods end of the operation.
I am improving the time by assembling a couple of the kits I acquired from Alan Sewell.
This kit is a simple laser kit that produces two skid shacks.
I am going to use one of the skid shacks as the logging company's railroad operations office.
I am sure I will find some use for the second shack.
I spent a pleasant evening last evening (after kicking myself for mis-counting turnouts)
airbrushing the shack parts.
Thanks to my recent education in the use of acrylic paints, all went well.
I improved the evening further by running a train.
I don't have all my operational facilities completely in place.
So I have a string of cars parked at the west end.
I pull the caboose of the end of those cars, tack it on the other end,
run the train to the east end of the layout, and repeat the process.
It makes for a pleasant 35 to 40 minutes of operation.
I am deeply grateful for the tip about coating rail tops with a very light layer of graphite.
The two previous On30 layouts in this basement were plagued by track cleaning problems.
I have cleaned the track on this layout precisely once in the 2 years of operation.
After I clean rail tops following painting the track,
I run a very hard piece of artist's graphite along the rail tops.
So far I have not needed to clean track, or wheels, since.
Reg
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Reg
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Reg H
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| Joined: | Sun Oct 19th, 2014 |
| Location: | Shelton, USA |
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Some great progress has been made during this Thanksgiving weekend.
All of the Henderson Bay Timber Co. railroad camp and mill trackwork is in place.
The "pigtails" for connection to the main power bus are also all in.
The next step is to crawl under the layout and connect the pigtails to the power bus.
The mill is off to the one side, right side in one photo, left side in the other.
Looking east.
Looking west.
It was a bit tricky fitting in the additional turnout to give me a run-around.
It involved some surgery on one of the turnouts.
But it fits and seems to work just fine.
Reg
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Reg
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