The Modeler's Forum

Here's my first build thread on the Modelers Forum.   :D  I'm building this for Cuse (John Mancuso).  John set aside space for it on his HO narrow gauge layout Backwoods NE in Florida (http://modelersforum.com/layout-tours/backwoods-ne-in-florida/).  Well, actually he set aside just enough space for the Engine House and has requested that the machine shop not be attached to the main structure so I'll be building that part as a stand alone structure.

Here are some photos of the kit contents starting with the a scan of a card included in the kit that has a great color photo of the finished model on it.  That'll be a handy reference for me during the build and a great source of motivation.  I sure hope Doug doesn't mind my scanning and posting the card.  Our mantra at work is it's better to ask forgiveness than beg permission.   :D

The instructions (see photo number 005) also have some color pictures of the finished model on them.  Personally I really like when there are color photo's included in a kit.

Continued in a moment.

 

I began by separating all the parts from their carriers, whether it be the plastic parts or the laser cut parts, and cleaning them up a bit.

For the plastic parts I use a sprue cutter (a very handy tool to have on the work bench) to cut the parts from the sprue and an emery board to touch up the edges.  Some modelers prefer to leave them on the sprue and paint them first.  My preference is to separate them and clean them up prior to painting so I don't have to go back and touch up the edges later on.

For the metal parts I use a set of small files to file away any irregularities.  Sometimes I'll use an old pair of rail nippers to cut off a piece if it's really big but I didn't need to do that for this kit.   :D

Next I tired something I saw on the Tips for Building Contest Quality Structures with Bob Mitchell DVD produced by FOS.  I bought a plastic tray and poured my stain (in this case Hunterline Light Grey) into the tray.  Then I gave all of the strip wood a bath in the stain.  As I removed each piece I propped it up in an old kit box and let them dry.  I used to stain them by dipping them in the bottle or brushing on the stain.  This was faster and easier.  The only issue I ran into was getting the stain out of the tray and back into the bottle when I was finished.  This tray was really built to pour things out of.  I got the job done but need to think about a better way to do it the next time I try this.   ???

Finally, we're at the point I'm at right now.  Attaching the bracing to the main walls (I haven't stained them yet).  I use Pink Flamingo glue to glue the bracing in place and a new single edge razor blade to trim it to fit after the glue has set.  I start every build with new blades in most of my tools (occasionally a step calls for a dull blade so an extra handle with a not so new blade in comes in handy).

I weight the walls down using blocks of marble salvaged from old bowling trophies. 

That's where I'm at for now.  More to come in the future as I progress.   ;)

Nice indepth start Bob, I will be following along.



8)

Bob,
Take a look at the soak tank that I built many years ago.
I slotted a piece of 3" PVC pipe.
Glued on the ends.
Drilled and tapped one of the ends for a threaded plug so I could empty and recapture the leftover stain.
Then made a cradle for it.
(https://modelersforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.thewhistlepost.com%2Fforums%2Fgallery%2Fdata%2F500%2Fmedium%2FDSCN3349.JPG&hash=d870d92503075cc3e7aad6344ea3816d5eaa4271)
Jack

I like that Jack. Super easy to use.



8)

That's a pretty slick setup Jack.  I'll have to look into making one of those.  Thanks for sharing!   :D

Thanks for following along Jack and Andy.

I am w/ Bob

Need to make me one of those!!!!

I'm with the rest of the guys regarding the soak tank. It sure beats painting each individual board. I am building a kit that has over 800 pieces of lumber that i hand painted, one at a time, wiping them one at a time with three coats of stain. That's 2700 coats of pigment!!! Where was this device when i needed it!!!

Frank / Erieman

I'm off to buy some PVC pipe.  Great idea. Jim

Neat building Bob, it's going to look great on John's layout.

I'll keep an eye on the build.   :)

Now that I picked up a great idea for a soak tank from Jack I'll move forward with this build.  First things first though, thanks to everyone who's following along and sharing ideas.

Attachment 1: Saturday, after I finished bracing the walls I stained them with the same Hunterline Light Gray stain I dipped the strip wood in.  After that dried I then brushed them with Polly Scale Reefer White.  More on that when I get back to the walls in a future post.   :D

Yesterday I painted the doors and windows with my airbrush.  Here's a quick summary of the steps I take.  Using strips of blue painters tape that are taped upside down (sticky side up) onto some old jelly roll pans I laid out the parts to be painted.  These pans are oft times incorrectly referred to as cookie sheets by most of us - jelly roll pans have a raised edge which comes in handy to keep loose parts from rolling off or blowing off.

When the trays were ready I started prepping my paint.

Attachment 2: I mix the paint with my handy dandy little electric paint stirrer.  Make sure to mix it really well and, even more important - turn off the stirrer before lifting it out of the bottle.   ::) 

Attachment 3: When the paint was well mixed I used an eye dropper and to transfer three eye droppers full of the paint into a stainless steel measuring cup I keep on the work bench for this purpose.  Sometimes I'll use and old piece of nylon as a strainer to make sure I don't have any crud in the paint that may clog up the airbrush but yesterday I was feeling lucky and skipped that somewhat messy step.

Attachment 4: Next I added on eye dropper full of thinner.  That gave me the recommended (Floquil) 75% to 25% mix of paint to thinner.

Attachment 5: Using my mixer I carefully gave the paint and thinner a quick mix.

Attachment 6: Next I poured the mixture into my airbrush.  As you can see the cup on mine is on the top.  That scared me when I first got it but I'm long since over that.   :D

A little more in a moment.   

Okay, the first two attachments are really, really bad pictures.  Sorry about that but they'll do for the narrative.

Attachment 1: I spray the parts from left to right.  I don't worry about getting full coverage on the first pass.  I just want to hit the top, inside edges of any thing that's raised and get a light base coat started.

Attachment 2: After the first light spray I rotate the tray one quarter turn and repeat the process.  I do this two more times to make sure all the inside edges have been painted.  Then I check for anything I may have missed (it really stinks when you find something that wasn't completely painted after you've cleaned up).

After the paint has dried to the point where it can be touched (working the Florida sun speeds the process up a bit, I'll just set the tray on the top of my van in the driveway and they dry really quick). I flip over any parts that need to be painted on the reverse side.  I even do doors and windows that won't be seen from the inside.  Don't know why.  I just do.   :o

Attachment 3: When I'm finished the next step is the most important step in using a airbrush - cleaning that sucker out so it'll work well the next time you pick it up.  I break mine down almost completely and drop the parts into my little metal up which I've since wiped out and put a little clean thinner in.  You didn't see me do that did you?  The only part I don't disassemble is the air valve that the trigger presses down on.

Attachment 4:  After wiping the needle with a paper towel with a little thinner on it I use a pipe cleaner dipped in thinner to clean out the tip.  I check, using the needle, to make sure the pipe cleaner didn't leave any little bits of fuzz behind inside the tip.

Attachment 5: I then run the pipe cleaner through the body of the airbrush and also wash it out using thinner and my eye dropper.  Once everything has been cleaned I reassemble the airbrush and it's ready to go the next time I need it.

Final note - I keep a small metal garage can with a metal lid next to my work bench.  The thinner soaked paper towels and pipe cleaners go in there until it's time to empty it and take out the trash.  I feel a little bit safer that way.

That's all for now!

Pretty brave using the stirrer with that little cup.  I'd have paint everywhere!  You should try airbrushing outside here in below zero weather!   ;D

Jeff

Quote from: Zephyrus52246 on February 11, 2014, 06:18:43 PM
Pretty brave using the stirrer with that little cup.  I'd have paint everywhere!  You should try airbrushing outside here in below zero weather!   ;D

Jeff

;D  If I'm really careful it doesn't splatter.  It's a good idea to clear the work bench of any that may not look good speckled though, like structures, detail parts, etc. 

I'll take a pass on airbrushing outside in below zero weather thank you very much.   8)

Bob,
Great build thread!  You're doing a really nice job on this kit, and I'm picking up lots of excellent information.  Keep it coming.

Quote from: MAP on February 12, 2014, 12:40:11 PM
Bob,
Great build thread!  You're doing a really nice job on this kit, and I'm picking up lots of excellent information.  Keep it coming.

Thanks Mark!  I really appreciate the feedback.  It helps keep me motivated.   ;D

Great, educational thread as always Bob. Reads and looks like a great instructional book from Kalmbach.

I'm really excited about this structure!

John

Quote from: ReadingBob on February 13, 2014, 07:49:54 AM
It helps ;D keep me motivated.   ;D 

Me and The SBG thought Smokey Bones was your motivation!  ;D ;D ;D

Another great FOS kit, and a super thread!  I've got this kit as well and intend to build it for the club. Already did one of the little companion structures, the Yard Office, and it was a gem to build.

http://foslimited.com//index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=1&products_id=37&zenid=dd0095845f2638f2470d2e0963a29924 (http://foslimited.com//index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=1&products_id=37&zenid=dd0095845f2638f2470d2e0963a29924)

Always enjoy your threads...thanks!

Thanks John, Gnat and Dave,

I spent a lot of time on this today (gotta get things moving so I can clear off the old work bench to get ready for the contest build ya' know).

Attachment 1:  John thought he'd like a green band around the bottom of the structure kind of like I'm doing with another build I'm finishing up for Tom so I started by masking off the walls where I want the band to end.  Really I just picked the bottom of the smaller window at the rear of the wall and used that as a guide.  I could do this free hand buy picking a clapboard to use as a guide and being really careful but the tape saves me the trouble of trying to remember which clapboard I picked.   :D

Attachment 2: With some Polly Scale Dark Green I painted the band on the bottom of the engine house walls.

Attachment 3:  Now it's time to beat the walls up and get that peeling paint effect going.  I'm doing this kind of in reverse.  I painted the walls there finish color first and now I'm going to dab on paint to simulate the paint beneath showing through.  I started with a craft paint that's close to an Earth color.  This really stands out on the walls.  I put some on a sponge and then got most of it off the sponge before I started dabbing the sponge on the walls.  Kind of 'dry sponging' if you will.  I just want speckles of the paint on the walls.

Attachment 4:  I followed up the earth color paint with a light grey color.  This covers up most of the earth color and blends in with the Reefer White I originally used to paint the walls so it's difficult to see in the pictures and in person but it really does tone things down and adds to that 'primer is showing through where the paint peeled off' effect.

Attachment 5: Now it's time to really beat up the walls.  Using a chisel blade in an X-Acto handle I carefully (well sorta) started cutting underneath the clapboards and 'lifting' them.  On a few I even twisted the blade a little to splinter the wood.  This adds another layer of texture to the walls.  I did more than usual on this particular kit.  I really want the walls to look old and beat up.

Attachment 6: I'm not sure how well this shot will show the difference between a wall that I really beat up (top) and one I've just started on (bottom) but here it is.

More in a moment...

     

Okay, continuing on....

Attachment 1: I painted the inside of the walls black to help prevent them from 'glowing' if I light up the interior.  For the engine house portion of the structure I later went back and painted over the black with a light gray since the inside walls may be visible.  I also washed the outside of the walls with my A&i wash to tone everything down.

Attachment 2:  Using my ponce wheel and a square I added nail holes on roughly a 24" spacing and around door and window openings.  I don't worry too much about prototypical accuracy cuz, well...., I don't know any better and they look good to me.   ;D

Attachment 3:  I added a little detail, just here and there, by using razor blade to cut through a single clapboard along one or the rows of nail holes.

Attachment 4: I then added nail holes next to both sides of the cut with a pointy tool I have in my arsenal of tools.   :D 

Attachment 5:  The finished 'joint'.  I don't worry about adding too many of these.  Just enough so nobody really notices that there are some single clapboards over 80' long in some places.   :o

Attachment 6:  I then glued on the corner trim to the walls as per the instructions.  I glue it on longer than needed and trim it to length after the fact.

I have one more picture showing the trim being cut to length but I'll save that for the next time I do an update. 

Thanks for following along!

Looking good Bob.  I appreciate the time you're taking with the detailed how-to and all the pictures.  It certainly adds time to the build for you, but helps us out a bunch!

Thanks Bob for the in depth detail of your build. The amount of time it takes to cover the things that are needed in order do a build thread like this is highly appreciated by myself and the other forum members. Thanks for the extra added detail and time you have put into this build thread. Looks GREAT.................

MAP and Bart,

Thank you both very much for the kind comments!

I know I repeat a lot of stuff from one thread to the next but I figure there's always the chance there might be someone new reading one of my threads for the first time or I came across something like a new product or something I forgot to document previously.

Quote from: ReadingBob on February 16, 2014, 08:14:12 PM
  I don't worry too much about prototypical accuracy cuz, well...., I don't know any better and they look good to me.   ;D

My sentiments exactly!  Just for fun, shall we resurrect the "Great Nailholes Debate"?  8)

Quote from: Dave K. on February 23, 2014, 08:46:15 AMMy sentiments exactly!  Just for fun, shall we resurrect the "Great Nailholes Debate"?  8)

Uh-oh!   :o  Dave K. wants to start the "Great Nailholes Debate" again.  This reminds me of a line from one of my favorite movies "The Big Chill".  After getting the group all riled up with some pretty caustic observations Nick (William Hurt) says "I was just trying to keep the conversation lively." 

Very nice job as usual Bob.
here's a pics about the nailholes debat and reflect my posiyion about them....
Sorry Bob for posting a pic on your thread.
Eric Québec city

Quote from: EricQuebec on February 23, 2014, 11:39:43 AM
Very nice job as usual Bob.
here's a pics about the nailholes debat and reflect my posiyion about them....
Sorry Bob for posting a pic on your thread.
Eric Québec city

Thanks Eric.  You never have to apologize for posting a pic in one of my threads.  Your contributions are always welcome!   :D

Okay, now that it's the weekend I'm back at it!

Attachment #1: After the glue has set enough to hold the corner trim in place I use a single edge razor blade to trim it to length.  This makes it easier to match the angle of the peaked wall too when there is one.

Attachment #2: The large windows in the engine house are made up of three pieces layered on top of each other.  These weren't too difficult to assemble but you do need to use care to line everything up.  This picture shows the middle layer being positioned over the bottom piece (which includes the mullions).

Attachment #3: Here the top layer is being glued in place over the middle and bottom layer.  Note that I had painted and weather the pieces individually prior to assembling them.  I guess you go assemble them first and then paint and weather them but I find it easier, when using the sponge method for peeling paint, to do them as individual pieces.

Attachment #4:  An assembled window.  There are six of these big guys to put together.

Attachment #5: Painting the glass.  Yes, you heard me.  Painting the glass.  I used a couple of drops of Floquil Grimy Black mixed a bottle of thinner to create a wash to use to give the windows a slightly dirty look.  Hey, this is a backwoods engine house on John's layout and he wants it looking really beat up.  Ya' think his crew is going to bother washing the windows?   ;D

Attachment #6:  The glazing (some was laser cut for the large windows) was cut to size to fit the windows and doors and I glued it in place using Krystal Kleer which is what I normally use to create glazing.  It also works fine as a glue to hold acetate in place.   ;D

More some other time.  It's time to go bowling.   :o

 

Outstanding work and tutorial on the build!  :thumbsup:

Quote from: PHQRR on March 06, 2014, 07:47:56 PM
Outstanding work and tutorial on the build!  :thumbsup:

Thanks Al!  I really appreciate you following along and the nice comments.  I hope to post an update to this thread by the end of the weekend.

Bob


Just read through the thread - your doing a great job as usual. I will be following along.

Thanks John!  Much appreciated!

Let's see...where was I...I've got two builds going so keeping tabs on both of them is a bit of a chore.  Oh yeah!  Now I remember... ;D

Attachment 1: It's finally time to start gluing some walls together.  Like any structure I start by gluing the front wall to one side wall and the rear wall to the other side wall to make two halves of the structure.  I try to make sure everything is square and clamp the parts until the glue sets.  Then the two halves get glued together.

Attachment 2: The structure bases and walkways are supposed to be concrete.  I sprayed them with a rattle can flat white primer first and left them dry.  Then I started applying very thing washes of Burnt Umber, Raw Umber, Burnt Sienna, Raw Sienna and Wrought Iron Black (all cheap craft store acrylics) until I had what to me appears to be an old concrete tint.  You need to make sure that these parts are really sealed by the primer (I has also primed them with Floquil Primer prior to the rattle can white) because they're made out of some kind of pressed paper material and the washes, which are basically water, can seep in and cause the layers to swell.

Attachment 3: Here are the walkways that go inside the engine house setting on my sidewalk.  Close enough for my tastes.   :D  It also tells me it's past due time to break out my pressure washer and do the sidewalks.   :o

Attachment 4: There's small structure that consists only of two side walls, a base and a roof that goes between the engine house and the machine shop.  To build this the walls are glued to the base using the roof to determine how far apart the two should be (the base is actually wider as part of it extends outside of the structure to form a sidewalk or platform.

Attachment 5:  I'm making sure the wall is square to the base as the glue dries.

Attachment 6: The machine shop interior will be visible through the front doors (if you opt to leave them open as I have) so I gave interior walls a quick paint job of light gray with a green border and a green trim piece separating the two.

More in a moment...

Attachment 1: Here are the machine shop walls assemble into two halves with the interior walls sparsely decorated.  I actually had to go back and 'unweather' the two freight doors.  I didn't realize when I weather everything that these two represented interior doors.  I also quickly glazed the windows to these doors using Microscale Kystal Klear.

Attachment 2: Time to start assembling the smaller additions that attach the machine shop.  All of these get glued onto a base. 

Attachment 3: The machine shop will get sided with corrugated siding when I get to that step.  For now the walls are bare.

That's all for now!  I'm going to get back to this one later today when the NASCAR boys are running around in circles out in California.   8)

Good work Bob.


I like the 2 toned interior walls, reminds me of commercial styles from years ago.


Watched any good Bogart movies lately?

Bob,

Fantastic build and of course one of your wonderful tutorials as well. Very well done. Did I say how much I like those colors?

Tom ;D

Thanks Greg and Tom!

We now return to our regularly scheduled build (after a brief interruption for wrapping up the contest build).

Attachment 1: I dabbed the corrugated panels with a sponge that had just a trace amount of paint on it.  Sort of "dry-sponging" if you will.  First I used a gray color to represents spots where the white paint had flaked off and reveled the primer or metal underneath.  Next I alternated between some Burnt Umber and Burnt Sienna to represent spots that were rusty.  I may add further 'rust' details after the walls are assembled.  It depends on how it looks to me at that point.

Attachment 2: I started gluing the panels in place.  I did the lower course first and followed by the upper course which overlaps the lower course.  Of course.   :D  Around openings and along the roof line I made marks with a pencil where the panels needed to be cut and then cut them on my cutting mat prior to gluing them in place.

Attachment 3: Whenever possible I like to make the roofs removable.  I haven't decided whether or not I'm going to light up this particular portion of the structure because John may not use it (did you hear that Tom?).  John's interested in the engine house itself.  If I, or someone down the road, decide to light it up having the roof removable makes adding lighting or maintaining the lights a lot easier.  I start by crafting some roof trusses that match the pitch of the walls.  These are not glued to the walls.  I'm just cutting and fitting them and matching them the walls at this point.

Attachment 4: After I constructed two trusses I held them up side by side and figured out how long to cut some additional strips that will be added between them.  I left a little tiny bit of wiggle room.

Attachment 5: I glued the trusses in place on the roof card with an equal amount of overhang on each end.  Then I test fitted it while the glue wasn't quite set to ensure I had a snug fit.  If necessary they can be pulled apart and 'tweaked' a bit with a judicious trim here and there.

Attachment 6: Now that my removable roof was assembled it was time to apply some roofing material.  I covered the roof with 3M Transfer Tape and trimmed it to fit using a sharp pair of scissors.

More in a moment...

Final two pictures for today...

Attachment 1: Peeling the backing off of the 3M Transfer tapes leaves you with a sticky surface on the roof card.  Perfect for applying rolled roofing or shingles.

Attachment 2: For rolled roofing I used some very fine grit wet/dry sandpaper that I cut into scale 3' width strips and airbrushed with various blacks.  I try to make a bunch of this stuff at one time and keep it handy at the workbench for projects like this one.  The kit includes a sheet of paper lined to be cut into strips after painting it your preferred color(s).  I used a mix of black and gray strips to represent sections that had been replaced (as recommended in the instructions and done on the demo build).

That's all for now!   :D

Looking good Bob! I love the heavily weathered reddish wall (corrugated material). Coming along nicely!


John

Looks great Bob !! I love following your builds I always learn something along the way !!

Thanks John and Ken!   :D   I really appreciate the comments.

I'm working on the roofs for the engine house and the little add-ons such as the coal bin and materials rack.  I also have quite a few detail parts to paint and weather but it's all coming together now.  Hopefully I'll have more updates this weekend.

Hi,
thank your for that fine step by step instructions on your build....there are some tips I´ll use for my structure builds...
Great work.

Regards,Chris

Hi Chris,

Thanks for the comments.  I hope to wrap this one up real soon.  I'm busy painting the detail castings and putting the finishing touches on the structures.  My last step will be to add some lights to the engine house.  I'll cover that in a future post. 

Hi Bob:

I built one of those when it came out. I liked the kit. Yours is looking good.

Karl

Quote from: postalkarl on May 21, 2014, 07:47:43 AM
Hi Bob:

I built one of those when it came out. I liked the kit. Yours is looking good.

Karl

Hi Karl,

Thanks!  I have to do a good job on this one.  It'll be just across the aisle from that beautiful Red Hook Wharf II build you did.  That's some tough competition it has to measure up to.   :D

Okay, back at it.  I finished this one up today.  It took me a longer than I had anticipated.  Partly because I got side tracked with the contest build and some because of various other things like not feeling well at times, etc.  Anyway, here's the final few posts.   :D

Attachment 1: To construct the coal bin I used my chopper to cut the boards to length.  I really shouldn't have bothered though, it looks a little better when the ends are uneven so I went back later on and trimmed a few of them to various lengths.

Attachment 2: The coal bin walls are constructed right on the template.  There's a back wall and two side walls to build.

Attachment 3: After the walls were constructed I glued them together and used a tiny machinist square to keep them square to one another.

Attachment 4: The final touch was to add some rusted corrugated roof panels over the roof (which was made out of strip wood.

Attachment 5:  There are two stacks that go on each end of the peak of the engine house roof.  To mount this I first filed a flat spot in the peak where I wanted the stack to go.

Attachment 6:  Next I used a small drill to drill a hole in the flat spot to glue the pin on the stack in.  Later on I glued the stacks in place an then applied some pitch around the base.

More in a moment...

Attachment 1:  The smoke stack that goes over the boiler room section of the engine house is constructed from a piece of a drinking straw (included in the kit), a few narrow strips of masking tape, some wire and a round 'cap'.  The hardest part was getting the cap on reasonably level.  It took a few tries until I was happy with it.

Attachment 2: I wanted to light the engine house for John.  I'm using LED's which means it's important to keep track of which side is positive and which is negative.  To help me remember I color one side of the positive wire coming out of the LED (or current limiter with a red sharpie.

Attachment 3: I had a couple of teeny, tiny LED's prewired in my drawer.  I'll use these for the exterior lights over the two doors.  Soldering leads to these is a real challenge and not for the faint of heart.   :o

Attachment 4: I start by drilling two very small holes in the plastic lampshades.  These are spaced roughly the same distance apart as the two leads on the LED's.  I want them to come out as close as possible to the part of the lampshade that the conduit will be glued in.

Attachment 5:  I run the wires from the LED's through the two holes I drilled and then pull them through until the LED is almost in the lampshade.  A tiny drop of ACC is applied to the back of the LED and then I pull the rest of the leads through and make sure the LED is glued as close to the center and square as possible.

Attachment 6:  Oop... basically the same picture as before.  Sorry about that.   :-[

Attachment 1:  I take the two wires (these are very, very fine wires) and use ACC to glue them, a little bit at a time, to the brass wire that makes up the conduit.  Once they're glued in place I paint the conduit (and the wires) flat black and go back and touch up the lampshade where the wires come through (and the wires) with dark green.  I can barely tell they're there.  I know Slim offers a hollow tube like material that the wire can be run through but I've been happy with the method.

Attachment 2:  Here's a finished exterior light.  I test them to make sure they still work after handling the LED's so much during this process.

Attachment 3: I cut two pieces of a stiff material (sorry, I forget what it's called, I picked it up an art supply store) to use as interior ceiling to mount some 5mm LED's and current limiters to.  I marked where I wanted the LED's to go and, as you might be able to see, which side is positive and which is negative.  I drilled holes mounted the LED's and then soldered wires to them.  The current limiter (in the lower right corner) takes 3 volts and is the first thing the positive wire coming into the circuit attaches to.  From there the negative lead of the current limiter jumped to the positive lead of the nearest LED'.  Then it's negative to positive again to continue the circuit until all three LED's are wired.  The negative lead from the last LED exist the structure and completes the circuit.

Attachment 4:  With three LED's @ 3v each and one current limiter at 3v the circuit takes just a wee bit more than 9v battery has to offer.  To test it I just touched the wires to the plug of the wall wart that came with my Digitrax Zephyr DCC system.  The inside of the plug is positive and the outside is negative.  Everything worked on the first try.  Woo-hoo!  I really need to take an old wall wart (I have tons of 'em), cut of the plug and attach some alligator clips to wire to have a test tool handy at the work bench.

Attachment 5: The second circuit in the structure consisted of one interior LED and the two exterior LED's.  Those were wired, with a current limiter, the same way I showed previously. 

Attachment 6: Here's what the wiring looks like before the roof were attached.  The main roof is removable but I sparingly glued the lower roof in place since it would contain the large smoke stack and support wires.

Finals photo's in a moment...

Here it is finished.   :D  I pushed the two structures together for the photo's but they're not really attached.  John only has a place for the engine house itself.  I build the rest, well, because it was there.   ;D

Hopefully John will add a few shots of the engine house in it's final home once he gets it in place on his layout.  They'll probably look better than my photo's of it sitting on the kitchen counter.   8)

Thanks for following along!  This was a fun kit to build and appreciate John giving me the opportunity to build it for him.   :D

Really nice, Bob.  The buildings look great together.


Jeff

Bob...

The rust on the corrugated iron is just great.

Thanx
Bob

Well, chit - Li'l ReadingBob has done gone and impressed me again!  ;D ;D ;D
The pressure is on John now to locate it in a scene that is deserving of it!

John, don't waffle under the pressure and challenges that li'l Bobby has thrown out!   8) 8) 8)
We'll be waitin' on more pitures!  ;D ;D ;D 

Fantastic! I can't wait to place it. I've been holding off on final track position and, obviously, some scenic decisions for the area where it will be. This will be the center of one of the few scenes I planned the whole layout around. I really want to surround it with natural view blocks and clutter. The intended effect will be that of a little jewel of a scene that you need to work a little to see all of.


Bob, it's awesome. I love the idea of lighting too. Thanks-hope to see you soon!  :D


John

Great job Bob, can't wait to see it on John's layout.

Thanks gang!  I really appreciate the kind words coming from such a talented group of modelers.  This one was a lot of fun to build.  It's another winner from Doug for sure.

P.S. - Just give me a buzz when you want me to bring it over or you want to pick it up John.  Other than my daily cubicle confinement my schedule is pretty wide open at the moment.   :D

Hi Bob:

Great job. Looks wonderful as usual.

Karl