I've been having fun rehabbing old plastic kit-built structures from long-forgotten model show junk tables or long-gone layouts, and this one has been waiting its turn in a corner of the blast furnace complex on my Path Valley Lines HO layout.
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The Machine Shop is one of many European-made small industrial structure kits imported for the U.S. market a variety of familiar companies, with Tyco and IHC (International Hobby Corp.) the two most recent ones. Pola, a German firm, seems to have been the manufacturer.
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It has a small footprint, making it an ideal auxiliary building for the blast furnace complex, where space is at a premium but there is just enough room to shoe-horn in a repair facility next to the blast engine house and the water tank.
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As a product intended - let's face it - for the toy train-to-model railroad transitional segment of our hobby, it is not much more complicated than the old snap-fit Plasticville kits; it's certainly not engineered to retrofit a detailed interior, and the blank space for a big sign above the entrance and large holes for signposts and vents/chimneys cast in the roof have to be dealt with.
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But, I have a bunch of detail parts and scale lumber that have been occupying space for longer, even, than this old structure.
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But, while a detailed interior is definitely in the evolving plan, the appurtenances of an early-twentieth century belt-driven machine shop are not among my collection of stuff. Therefore, I think I'll focus on the shell.
The overall planning process for this project is organic, so I don't know exactly how it will turn out.
First steps:
1) Try, without breaking anything, to remove the windows and door from the walls and remove the clear plastic "glass" from the frames of windows, door, and skylights. Window openings to be filled with MicroClear (probably clear sheet styrene for skylights).
2) Discard the base, with what looks like empty steel beer kegs embedded in mud, and replace with stone foundation footing, maybe not as high off the ground.
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3) I have some research to do on small machine shops ...
Stay tuned,
Vagel
I'll be following although I've given away to other modlers the ones I still had.
This looks like it will be an interesting project, will be following along.
Vagel interesting rebuild; I'll be keeping my eye on your progress.
I'm going to follow along as well. Interesting project you've undertaken.
Count me in. This should be really interesting.
Jerry
Howdy Vagel,
I love kitbashing, and this project looks to be a lot of fun. I like your call to dump the funky base.
Have fun,
mike
Today I started the disassembly process.
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The base didn't survive intact, but it's a discard, anyway. The windows and door are a series of one-piece panels with clear plastic "glass" laminated onto them and then glued into the wall openings. There was some residual base material welded to the bottom of one side wall, which I took care of with a few careful srokes of the miniature miter saw.
By the way, I'm impressed that our friends at Pola actually included brick detail on the backs of the front and rear facades that are visible above the roof. Nice touch.
The trick was to separate the door/window panel assemblies from the interior walls, and then do the same with "glass" laminate without rendering the actual windows and door unusable in the reassembled structure.
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After a tough start I dug out the Xacto No. 17 chisel, became a little bit more carefu, and ended up with the door and all but one window intact enough to be reused. That remaining flash around them will be trimmed to "Grandt Line" standards before they go back into place somewhere down the road.
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After working with Xacto blades (especially the No. 17 chisel) for a little over an hour with no accidents, I decided to call in the dogs and quit while I was ahead.
I'll start the next work session with skylight disassembly and nipping off the guide nubs on the inside corners of the wall units.
Vagel,
I'm surprised you were able to save as much as you did, your patience paid off.
I'm with Ron on this one great patience!!
Jerry
Patience didn't work so well with the "glass" inserts for the skylights. The inserts were neatly cemented in place along the ridges of the skylights; there was no bleed-over onto the plastic "glass" within the window frames. But ... they were so solidly cemented it proved impossible to tease the inserts from the roof. For whatever reason, clear plastic is very brittle; the first insert snapped into several pieces as I gently pried, and one of those pieces took a piece of the frame with it. I was able to fit and cement it back into place from the inside (right hand arrow). The left hand arrow points to a frame that I boogered up from the inside with my No. 17 blade. So, the inserts will remain in place, and I'll just have to mask them when the time comes for priming and painting. Oh, and no visitors will be allowed to look at the inside of the roof, where they'll notice those nasty inserts still inplace ... not to mention the scar from where I nipped-off that big piece of something sticking down from the middle skylight.
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Otherwise, I removed the assembly guide tabs on the inside wall corners with a nipper and sanded the scars flat; I'll leave the cast-in numbers alone for the time being, but they'll eventually have to be chiseled and sanded flat to allow for an interior brick wall to be laminated. I think Plastruct brick sheet will do the trick - its bricks are close enough to the kit's exterior bricks that I don't think it'll be noticeable - although I'll need to buy another sheet; my remnant from last year's blast house interior project isn't going to be enough.
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I'm still in the thinking phase of planning. It's obvious that this building's footprint is too small for a major machine shop, so I'm downsizing my vision to more of a light repair shop, with a drill press, a lathe, some work benches around the walls, and - somewhere - a small smithy's forge and anvil. Lo, and behold, as I was turning to go from my workbench some relics from the 2-stall engine house on my first layout, now lying in peaceful repose behind the Chambersburg roundhouse, caught my eye. One of those smoke jacks would be great for projecting up through the roof from the hood of a small forge.
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So, now the disassembly process is done, and the parts have been washed and dried for the next steps. I'll be working on a floor plan for a while, and in the meantime I think I'll put some bricks on the inside walls, then build the foundation from some foam core random stone (I think its a Noch product), maybe add a front porch ... and what are we going to do with that big bare rectangle on the front facade!?
Great job so far Vagel.
Thanks, Curt. You and some others following this build probably recall my pig casting machine and blast house interior projects that evolved organically on RR-line, and this one is starting to look like it will follow the same wandering path. I was going through my backlog of never gonna get used stuff to donate for door prizes or put on the white elephant table at our NMRA Keystone Division's upcoming Jamboree in April, and discovered a Pola Railway Repair Facility that I probably thought I would someday give the Dean Freytag treatment as part of MY blast furnace complex. Hmmm, thought I ... maybe this could be bashed with the Machine Shop.
An L-shaped shop would fit in the space available, and that huge clear glass second story would be ideal for viewing into and would complement the blast engine house interior that I finished about this time last year ...
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... and, oops! I got the end wall on that repair building inside out! The low-slung portals in the Railway Repair Facility end walls and the small gantry crane included in the kit would be ideal for a narrow gauge tram for rail carts coming from the blast furnace, boiler house and blast house with heavy stuff for repair or for fabrication and/or repairs. And that corner lot to the left gets me thinking of all the posh junk that used to populate the back lot behind the the East Broad Top's machine shop complex in photos ... tons (literally) of possibilities.
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So, I'm thinking about it. Finding the right kinds of machinery to put in there would be a challenge. I know Sierra West has a number of machine shop tools in the development stage, but so far I see nothing changed on their website.
Anyway, I've started to add brick to the interior walls of the current project structure, using JTT Project Sheets from our "local" hobby express. I cut a piece to fit the rear wall, and brushed some Plastruct cement onto the inner surface, sanded smooth before hand. I thought I'd have a second or two to align the pieces, but wham! the thin brick sheet was fixed in place as soon as it touched the cement. Good thing I was careful (that is to say, lucky).
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I cleaned out the window openings from the outside with an Xacto No. 11 blade, then used the same blade, with a lot of very light passes, to remove all of the mounting panel material from around the window frame. Because the interior brick wall is about as thick as that mounting panel, I had to do that in order for the window frame to not be too far inset from the outside. A lot of sanding & test fitting later, and I have two good windows and one of the damaged ones friction-fitted in place ...
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The back wall won't be visible from the aisle, and it might not even be used as is if I follow through with the potential kitbash idea, but it was a good practice exercise, nevertheless. That damaged window can be used elsewhere, with the open space boarded up with, maybe, a ventilation fan or something.
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So, that's where it stands for now. Any thoughts, suggestions are welcome, and directions to potential sources of machine tools would be appreciated, as well.
I like the idea of bricking in windows. It helps to give the feel of age.
Quote from: PRR Modeler on February 04, 2026, 06:23:04 AMI like the idea of bricking in windows. It helps to give the feel of age.
I meant the open space in the frame, but I see your point about bricking up an entire opening. Something to consider.
Howdy Vagel,
Bricking the interior walls is brilliant and adds a lot of character to the build.
Have fun,
mike
I remember building that IHC 'car repair shop' with the tall windows as a kid. I didn't get the Machine Shop kit, but the two significantly different architectural styles should look good together. And with those tall windows, doing the interior walls is definitely worth seeing. (pun intended)
dave
Off to a good start< Vagel.
Vagel,
Great job on rehabing the old structure. Nice job on the new wall.
Tom
Thanks for the encouraging words! I've got all four interior walls cemented in place, and spent some therapeutic time cutting out the window openings, trimming flash from the salvaged window frames, doing the sand-test fit-sand-test fit, etc. routine and the results so far are pretty good. Following up on the bricked-up window opening suggestion, I tried it out with a couple of blanks, and. It worked OK, but it got a thumb-down from Wifey, who thought it looked too much like urban decay "and, besides, they need all the natural light they can get in a machine shop, don't they?"
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It does add some variety, but in the interest of household harmony I don't think we'll be bricking up any window openings in the repair shop. ;D
Great idea!
Call Brett if you're interested.
Best to hear it from the horses mouth.
MJinTN
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I decided to go ahead with the expanded project and bash the Rwy Repair structure and the Machine Shop into an "L" shaped shop, because it gets away (slightly) from the "everyone else has one of those" factor. This requires the elimination the rear wall of the Machine Shop so its roof will butt flush against the Rwy Repair Facility, which takes care of the problem caused by losing the window frames from damage during disassembly. But, it also means more prep work removing lumps and bumps from the casting process on the inside of the walls.
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Also, note in the mock-up images that the folks at Pola used the same mold (one end and one side wall) for all four walls, so the cargo and man doors on the long sides are asymmetrically oriented. I find this weird, but maybe that's the way it was on the prototype. Or maybe it's a metric thing <J>.
Whatever the case, I came up with a configuration that suggests a "history" of expansion from an original repair shop (ca. 1910) in the one-story brick structure with a recent addition (ca. 1935) with a concrete block first story. It allows for a narrow gauge tram line to carry heavy machine parts into the new addition from some "imagineered" location (apologies to Walt Disney) hidden in the nooks and crannies between the blast house, boiler house, and furnace stack. The tram comes from the right in the top image, and from the left in the one below.
There's some kind of outdoor A-frame gantry crane in the kit, which I might be able to re-use inside. We'll see.
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I had the idea to fill the blank void in the dormers on the end walls with Evergreen "metal siding.
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And take note that the folks at Pola took the trouble to make sure that the masonry blocks on the walls of the Rwy Repair Facility are noticeably larger than the bricks on their Machine Shop. So, it was back to the hobby shop, where I was fortunate to find that Plastruct's HO concrete block sheet is a spot-on match. Yay!
The second story window frames fit the openings in the walls with very little sanding after trimming off the cast-on inset frame intended for gluing them to the interior walls per the kit's design. Filling all those panes is going to be interesting; I'm going to experiment with Microscale Krystal Clear, but those openings might be just a bit too large. Again, we'll see.
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I'm off to the the E.B.T.'s "Winter Spectacular" and some time as a volunteer helping to inventory and catalog things in the Archives. I'll pick up sometime after I return.
Neat project, Vagel.
It's coming on very well. Cool design.
Cheers, Mark.
Great looking progress. The L shape building has more character than 2 rectangles.
Vagel,
This is looking great. Great kit bashing for a grand machine shop.
Tom
Vagel,
With the addition, the machine shop will have a completely different look to it. The build is looking great.
Echoing what other fellow members said, great kitbash and following with interest!
Yannis
Thanks, as always, for the nice comments. Back from the E.B.T. and at the workbench ...
I added block and cut out windows and man door for one of the long walls in the extension this afternoon. The other wall has it's interior block "blank" cut and glued in, as well, but I only did the openings in one. I find that I start to get sloppy and heavy-handed after an hour or so of careful scribing and cutting the openings, so I let the other one lie 'til next session.
Here are outside and inside shots of an end and side:
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My eyes don't always show me all the glitches anymore, so you and I are all seeing things the camera picks up for the first time. There's still some sand-fit-sand, rinse, repeat work to do on a couple of the small windows, and a little fiddlybit cleaning to do on the big celestory frames, as well. One thing I did notice with the nekkid eye is the inside of the man door being blank (as is also the case with the cargo doors). So, they will have to be replaced with scratch-built substitutes ... oh, well ... some kit-bashes are more involved than others.
After doing the other side wall and trimming/fitting the remaining window/door castings, I think I'll move back to the older building to prime and paint the walls and work on inside framing for all those windows and front door.
QuoteOne thing I did notice with the nekkid eye is the inside of the man door being blank (as is also the case with the cargo doors). So, they will have to be replaced with scratch-built substitutes ... oh, well ... some kit-bashes are more involved than others.
You could scribe 'board joints' into the plastic inside and then glue two cross-boards by the hinges and an angled brace between them. May not match the exterior, but nobody's going to see both sides at once.
Quote from: jbvb on February 16, 2026, 08:10:30 PMQuoteOne thing I did notice with the nekkid eye is the inside of the man door being blank (as is also the case with the cargo doors). So, they will have to be replaced with scratch-built substitutes ... oh, well ... some kit-bashes are more involved than others.
You could scribe 'board joints' into the plastic inside and then glue two cross-boards by the hinges and an angled brace between them. May not match the exterior, but nobody's going to see both sides at once.
🤔😃👍
You're doing a great job completely changing the look of the old building.
Well, I did something a little off-script. While sorting thru the kit boxes getting ready to cut out the openings in the interior of the wall of the Railway Repair Facility wing that will face the front of the L-shaped structure (facing the layout aisle), I spied a Grandt Line station door and frame in the spare parts box. As an indication of how long it has been lying around, the price for the pack of two was $2.50!
So, this session got spent enlarging the man door opening and trimming it with some Evergreen styrene .060" channel to fit the frame snugly. The kit's man doors are quite low, IMHO, plus this gives the German-designed structure a more "North American" look. In the picture, the frame and door are not glued in yet; the door is held in place with a piece of blue masking tape from behind, which is why it's a little cattywompus.
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The cargo door opening and the two small windows above it on this wall will have to be altered, as well, to make larger opening leading from the rear of the Machine Shop structure into this "expansion wing", so the discontinuity in heights won't be an issue in the final result.
I did something similar on my BEST farmhouse. I wanted a door where there was a window. In my stash, I found a Tichy Masonry door that was wide and tall enough. I added some 1x6 styrene strip to create the door framing, and .015 x .030 as a threshold. A full set of Evergreen strips is a great investment.
dave
All interior walls have been bricked or blocked according to their exteriors, window and door openings cut out, trimmed, and sanded to fit the frames that will go in them. One of the window openings in the wall of the Rwy Repair Facility, which faces the interior of the Machine Shop structure, has been blocked up, as well.
I decided to start the next phase by building a foundation and sub-floor for the Machine Shop building. Because the Rwy Repair Facility wing will sit on the ground, the final structure will be split-level, so I cut out a ramp leading from one to the other.
The foundation is fabricated from Evergreen .125" x .250" strips on edges, cross-braced by strips of the same dimensions on lying flat.
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The sub-floor consists of a sheet of Evergreen .030 underlying another sheet .040 thick. This leaves just enough space for a wood floor of 2"-thick planks of Northeast Scale lumber. I sketched outlines for a shop office and a store room up front.
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Right now I think the flooring in the office will be uniform 2x6's, with random 2x6, 2x8, 2x10, and 2x12's for the rest of this wing. I'm also going to try my hand at framing 2x4 partition walls.
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You might also note that I shortened the ramp during the process of laminating the two styrene sheets. And I got a little careless with measuring and marking the sub-floor sheet; not to worry - the corners of the foundation are square.
While lining up the Rwy Repair Facility wall with the Machine Shop foundation assembly I noticed the former was bowed. Notice the shadow in the left-hand corner between the sub-floor and wall in the top photo. It's also noticeable in the inset at right in the photo below. Phooey! I attribute this to a reaction of different kinds of plastic being laminated by plastic cement. It has also happened to the side walls of the Machine Shop, but fortunately not to the front wall, as can also be seen in the photo below; note the fairly prominent overhang of the center buttress and slightly less prominent overhangs in those to either side, while the corners are lined up.
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I think I can remove the curvature on the Machine Shop walls by clamping them against some temporary cross-bracing before cementing the bottoms of the walls to the .125 x .250's. I don't want to have any anachronistic cross-bracing. That step is going to be "interesting."
Great looking progress Vagel. The Evergreen foundation looks like it came with the original kit.
Thanks, Curt.
It's gonna be a dandy!
Nice work!
Echoing what others said, great work Vagel! (mind me asking, that is a lower case L at the end of the name right? reminded me the Greek name Vagelis)
Vagel,
Looks good so far. Kitbashing done right is not for the faint hearted.
Mike
Thanks, guys. Yannis, you are correct ... my paternal grand father came from Mytilene, by way of an uncle's farm on Sicily, ca. 1914. He changed his name to Charles Keller and shortened his middle name to Vagel, which he passed to his first son, born in America. I'm Vagel, Jr.
Today I finally got back to work on the project and decided to start the floor in the Machine Shop building. I stained some scale lumber the other day, using the ol' tried and true diluted dirty paint thinner. I trimmed some 2x6, 2x8 & 2x10's to lengths of 8 and 4 feet with a NWSL Chopper. Excuse the low res due to a screw-up in image editing.
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I started with the office space, using 2x6's for uniformity. They're glued to the styrene sub-floor with a thin coat of Aleene's Tacky Glue; this pic shows the results as far as I got before the glue was too dry to hold anything down. The rest of the space ... storage room and shop floor ... will be random boards.
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I came back from the privvy to find my HO scale alter ego arranging furniture ... I hope he's not being premature!
The walls are just tacked in place with a couple dabs of Aleene's. Note the warpage in the long wall ... maybe use some wire pins between the base of the wall and the .125x.250 foundation? The front and rear walls are, fortunately, not warped, "so I got that goin' for me."
I sure hope I don't have to plus-up the dosage of my BP meds, Mike!
Could you use a piece of brass angle epoxied to the top of the warped piece to keep it straight?
dave
Quote from: deemery on March 06, 2026, 07:16:18 PMCould you use a piece of brass angle epoxied to the top of the warped piece to keep it straight?
Hmmm
Vagel,
Just catching up on your build, you're making great progress, the wooden floor will look great when finished.
Howdy Vagel,
The wood floor looks terrific. Will you cover the whole structure's floor with wood? BTW, the warp doesn't appear to be bad. You could probably hide it by snugging the wood flooring against the wall...
Have fun,
mike
The floor really pops.
Nice story Vagel, thanks for sharing and great job on the progress for the machine shop!
Vagel,
Great thread and love the story. Another shelf orphan save and reconfigured.
Well done..
Tom
The floor looks good, Vagel.
Mike
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Thanks, so much, for all your encouraging words. Here's progress so far.
I find I can get ~ 3 sq in's of flooring fitted before the Aleene's loses its adhesion, and that's also about as much as my hand-eye coordination with tweezers can stand before I must run a train or two to relax 🤪.
But I'm liking the results ... the randomness isn't as obvious as I thought it would be, but there are equal numbers of 2x10 & 2x8, with some 2x6 (and a few 2x4 fillers) in there. I used 2x12 along the edges and here and there among the others.
This is the result of 4 x 1-hr sessions. I think this might be pushing the envelope as far as "kit-bashing" goes.
The flooring really changes the building's look.
Looks great! 8)
Very nice flooring. Are you leaving that color or making it darker??
Jerry
Well, I finished the floor in the Machine Shop wing.
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Jerry, I'm going to leave the floor color as is, with some boards showing more grime than others, except in the office (upper, right), where I'm thinking about a painted or stained planking where it's uniform 2x6's.
I experimented with framing the interior side of those flat window castings with 2x4's ... prototypically the framing should be only 1" thick, but I'm not displeased with the outcome. I lightly sanded the pre-painted wood after framing the window in place to give it some age.
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Next step: painting the brick exterior before re-assembling the walls. Note that the warping issue is resolved ... I was able to eliminate it by gentle flexing. Whoopeee!
Vagel very nice job on the floor.
Vagel,
The floor looks great as does the window trim.
Great work. I like how you did the windows also.
Jerry
Thanks. Had occasion to spend most of the day in the layout room today ... so was able to get the brick work done on all three exterior walls, using water-soluable artists acrylics.
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Start w/ base coat of dry brushed Barn Red, two passes to get good coverage of the gray primer (mortar). Then Apple Cider & Crimson dabbed on individual, or small patches of 3-5, bricks. I use the same fine details brush for both colors, go back and forth between the Apple Cider & Crimson, & don't wait for everything to dry after the dry brushing or when changing changing colors. It goes pretty fast - the whole job took about 1-1/2 hours.
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I had a sign for that big blank space to show you, but I tore it while cutting it from the printer paper, so it'll have wait for a future post.
With time to burn, I looked thru my stockpile of scale lumber & discovered some 1x4's! So ... I'm gonna frame windows & doors with that & 1x2's razor-trimmed from them here'n'there. Framed the windows & door on the front wall with them today, and I think you'll agree it's a big improvement on the 2x4 result from the last update.
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Couldn't resist a bit of whimsy in that third pic.
Outstanding work Vagel.
The interior trim looks good, but I'm not sure about the "passive air conditioning" on the left side. Did you resolve the wall warp?
dave
Dave, I was able to correct the warp by gentle flexing. I believe the laminated inner brick sheet was causing the issue.
Quote from: VagelK on March 14, 2026, 11:41:12 AMDave, I was able to correct the warp by gentle flexing. I believe the laminated inner brick sheet was causing the issue.
Good to hear!
dave
Quote from: deemery on March 14, 2026, 08:36:00 AMThe interior trim looks good, but I'm not sure about the "passive air conditioning" on the left side.
Chuckle! The rest of the windows will come in time; Micro Crystal Clear panes. In the description of framing, I didn't mention that I removed some of the mullions from the transom and windows in the door to give a bit more of a N. American look.
BeforeDoor_IMG_8309.jpg. AfterDoor_IMG_8612.jpg
Got the front porch done. Fabricated the sidewalk, walls & deck from .030" styrene sheet and built up stairs with .060" square styrene rod. Railing from a Central Valley stairs & railing set.
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I put it back on the layout to clear work bench space for working on the RR Repair Facility wing, and it looks forlorn tucked away in that corner ... oh, well.
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Great looking model!
Got diverted for a while running trains ...
I've made a start on the exterior and interior walls of the railway repair facility/shop extension wing by drybrushing "old concrete" over the primed and dullcoated walls. When Floquil became a 'dot.gone' I took a sample of Polly-S "Old Concrete" to Home Despot and bought a sample size jar of Glidden custom blended interior latex paint, which is what I used here.
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I'm continuing to use TrueScale "brushable roof brown" for the window frames and what I'm assuming to be a structural steel upper story. I'm thinking of taping off and spray painting the interior upper story walls, as the results with the brush painting so far are a bit uneven (which can be dealt with by weathering on the exterior, but not so much on the inside).
There's some warping of the long walls on this kit, too, which I'll fix by cementing to a base of .030" sheet styrene when the time comes.
Great job re-purposing these structures.
Thanks, Curt. I've got the walls of the Railway Repair Facility kit painted and assembled to the .030" styrene sub-floor; the windows are painted, too. I did go with masking & spray painting the upper story and window frames; Tamiya "NATO Brown" (in aerosol can) is a very close match to the TrueScale "brushable Roof Brown" I had been using on the Machine Shop structure window frames and door, as well as so far on this building.
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The stages of assembly were to first to assemble two pairs of end and side walls upright on on a sheet of glass, then to assemble the pairs into a rectangle, then to cement the rectangle to the base, which was primed (with an unpainted strip of bare styrene around the perimeter for cementing).
Here's a shot of the project structure in its current state and in context with the blast furnace complex:
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I getting close to running out of "next steps" for a while, I think. I'm going to add some random plank flooring in the "new wing" in the area around the end of the ramp down from the "old machine shop," and insert (without cementing) the window frames in the openings. The corrugated metal roof halves are primed and ready for steel color and weathering, so they'll get made into a removable one-piece. All that can be done in time for an up-coming layout open house for the local NMRA division later this month, and that's probably where I'll let things lie for a while.
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I'd like to get the office space in the right-front corner of "old" building partitioned off by then, as well, but a major ballasting project in the narrow gauge's Richmond Furnace yard (off scene, lower left of the middle picture) is going to take priority of time. Beyond that, plans are "fuzzy." I think this is going to be an electrified machine shop, which may be powered by a dynamo in the "new" wing using steam piped from the boiler house (in the shadows to the right of the water tower). Alexander Scale Models' website has inexpensive, one-piece machine tool castings for a small shop like this one, and they'll fit neatly in the rear of the "old" building. A large, belt-driven engine lathe (FOScale) might possibly be purchased "second-hand" by the furnace company and installed with a dedicated electric motor to drive its belt and pulleys near the foot of ramp in the "new" wing. That part of the finished structure will definitely have a 3' gauge tram entering from the shadows between those two brick structures to the right (which is "back stage" out of sight from the aisle) and probably/possibly a traveling crane cobbled together from the outdoor A-frame gantry crane provided in the kit and various styrene structural shapes.
Besides the lathe, you'll want a drill press, and maybe a grinder wheel. Don't forget to weather/stain underneath the machines. And of course some workbenches and stock storage. Mine Mount Models has a nice metal rack kit for storing lumber or steel strips. I took some Evergreen/Plastruct strips and angles and painted them steel and light rust colors for my rack. An outside forge might also be a good addition, Sierra Scale Models has a great forge kit. (Not cheap, but up to Brett's exacting standards.)
dave
The complex looks very good.
Quote from: deemery on April 04, 2026, 02:17:22 PMBesides the lathe, you'll want a drill press, and maybe a grinder wheel.
dave
Alexander Scale Models has those ... a forge would be great, too.
Serious looking group of buildings, Vagel.
3-ft gauge tram from the scrap box, with some wooden flooring installed at the foot of the ramp on the machine shop side.
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Nice job Vagel.
Vagel, the complex is coming along nicely.