FOS Engine House at Caldwell Junction - Build

[ReadingBob]

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.

[S&S RR]

Bob


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

[ReadingBob]

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...

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.     It also tells me it's past due time to break out my pressure washer and do the sidewalks.   

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...

[ReadingBob]

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.   

[GPdemayo]

Good work Bob.


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


Watched any good Bogart movies lately?

[ACL1504]

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

[ReadingBob]

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.     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...

[ReadingBob]

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!   

[cuse]

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


John

[Amagic41]

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

[ReadingBob]

Thanks John and Ken!      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.

[Twist67]

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

[ReadingBob]

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. 

[postalkarl]

Hi Bob:

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

Karl

[ReadingBob]

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.