FSM JS16 Jamestown Water Stop

[halrey]

Nice work Jaime!
Hal

[gnatshop]

Jaime, you do darn good work for a good-ole Southern boy!! 

Do you reckon that Ralphie uses one of them yeller Papermate pencils to do
them high dollar tax returns for his Yankee clients?   

[S&S RR]

Looking great Jaime - modeling time with 12 hour work days has to be keeping you very busy

[NEMMRRC]

April 3rd is fast approaching. I need to start wrapping it up.

Jaime

[GPdemayo]

Great job Jaime, I'll be following along.

[S&S RR]

Jaime

Great to see you back at the modeling - I hope the major project at work is wrapped up along with the 12 hours + days. We have been busy here while you work away making a living.

[NEMMRRC]

I'm installing lighting for this kit courtesy of Microlumina.





Bill Sartore sent me a customized set of instructions, a card with the lighting controls to fit under the water tank and 2 lamps. One lamp goes in the pump house and the second goes above the side door by the water tank.


And now for how the pump house and water tank look so far.





None of this stuff is glued together yet.





You can see below how I've stored the corrugated roofing, the bottom section of the tower, the rafter tails, the trusses for the pump house roof and some other castings for the pump house in small little cups. It helps me keep it all sorted out.






I measured the available space for the lighting monkeyworks and had to trim that a wee bit. It turns out that was a good thing 'cause I ended up using the trimmings to prop up the lighting card inside the water tank's shed. I've decided not to glue this together yet until I am certain the lighting is going to work out ok.


So here is how the lighting card ended up fitting.





I made sure the 9 volt battery could be hooked up and fit inside the shed.





Notice that beam in the middle of the pump house? That is what the lamp in the pump house will be attached to. I came up with this arrangement after help from the fine folks at Microlumina which are supplying the lighting rig.


By the way, is there some gizmo that can be attached to all this to turn on and off the power supply? I am sure the 9 volt battery will last a long time (so far I've had the battery running the lighting for 3 weeks straight and it is all working OK) but the only way to interrupt the power supply is to disconnect the battery and well, that can be a tricky affair when the battery is inside the built-up structure.


One more look at how it will all end up. The lighting works is all inside and it all goes together fine.





Here is how the lamp in the pump house gets installed. I will glue the wires on top of the beam and along the tops of the wall.





And here is how it looks on the other side of the middle wall.





One last look at the lighting instructions to make sure it is all going to work ok. I need to test the LEDs will work.





One look at how the lamp will end up inside the pump house. The LED is not hooked up to power yet two that is why it is still dark.





And you can see here the wires sticking out from under the structure. That is not how it will all end up in the end but for the test I needed the lighting card outside of the structure.










Lisa took the photo above as I was too busy holding on to the teeny tiny wires to make sure the LED would stay lit.


I must confess, after many attempts to get the thing to light up before mounting the lamp above I accidentally touched one of the wires on the second lamp (gooseneck lamp that will go above side door) to the wrong strip on the lighting card. You guesses it. Bzzzzzzzz... Zappp!         


I caught a whiff of the magic smoke in the LED. Rats!


It turns out the lighting card was designed so the LEDs hook up in series.I did not realize this. Therefore, both LEDs have to be hooked up as designed for the circuit to work. I was only trying out one LED at a time so nothing was working. It was during all that I accidentally touched one of the gooseneck lamp's wires to the wrong place. There is a current limiter in the lighting circuit and well, that teeny wire touched the one spot where the current limiter is outside of the circuit. Poof! Bye-bye LED.


I consulted with the lighting experts at Microlumina and I was set on the straight and narrow going forward. So, to make sure I did not repeat the same stupid mistake a second time, I covered the offending strip with Canopy Glue so the troublesome strip would no longer make contact with my teeny tiny LED wiring.





Thanks everyone for your feedback so far. .


Jaime

[NEMMRRC]

Here is what I did to install the lamp in the pump house.


I painted the lamp green.





I tested it.











That was easier than I thought...


There is one more lamp that goes on the outside of the building. I am not sure when I'll get to it so when that is done I'll come back and update the build.


Jaime

[NEMMRRC]

I thought I'd throw in this stray photo as a bonus....



I can only surmise that I wanted to show off my paint stirrer gadget I got from Micro-Mark a long long time ago. It works great and mixed up my rust paint really well. I do recall my father having one of these gadgets to stir up his drinks back when I was a wee child. But, my dad's gadget had a broader blade and it fit into a mixing vase. Anyway, I rusted up the roof for the pump house and finally got to use the paint stirring gadget. Go get you one.


Following along with the water tank I needed to add the hoops around the tank. These hoops are cut out from a card included in the kit and then rusted up.





The kit includes a template to mark the location of the hoops around the tank.





I carefully wrapped each hoop around the tank after the rust job was dry.








I am now in uncharted territory. I am to fit a cone-shaped roof to the water tank. There is a template included in the kit to accomplish this. Once is to cut out the roof card and glue the cone together.





Postalkarl referenced gluing shingles individually. I was planning to do that. However, I was not going to use what came with the kit. I decided to use real individual cedar shingles. I've discussed how I first experimented with that here:
http://www.kitforums.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=8236#p147555


So, I already had the individual cedar shingles all cut up so I was halfway there. I must inform you all that the shingle material included in the kit is quite effective when done right. George Sellios included in this kit some of his original paper shingles sheets. These were used in the first FSM kits. I used them once when I built Jacob's Fuel for the rebel alliance. I liked them. They are tedious though. But, they are very effective and look great. Nevertheless, I wanted to use individual cedar shingles for the roof on my water tank. Like this:





I know. I'm nuts. This is going to take 10 forevers. But I already knew this hobby requires the patience of a saint.


So I first made me 4 batches of shingles so I could stain them different shades with the black alcohol stain.





The first batch got stained for one minute. I then doubled the stain time for each subsequent batch so I had batches of:
- 1 minute
- 2 minutes
- 4 minutes
- 8 minutes


The batches above are from right to left in the order I just described.


And here I have all I need to start gluing individual cedar shingles one-by-one on the roof. Or at least I am practicing to do that.





Note on the left of the photo above is a sheet of the old-time FSM paper shingle paper included in the kit. Underneath it all is the template one must follow to cut up the paper sheet into shingles. But. I did not do that since I am using the cedar grilling wrap shingles.

I need to glue up the roof into a cone though. The instructions direct the modeler to use cellophane tape to hold the roof cone into shape while the glue used to glue it together sets.


I fiddled around with that roof and the tape to try to get it to stay in the shape it needed to be. It was not cooperating. Somehow I stumbled upon the idea to tape the roof to my plate of glass to make it keep its shape while the glue set. It worked.





Once the glue was set I tested out the roof card on my water tank.





And then I began to glue each individual cedar grilling wrap shingle one-at-a-time.





I wanted to see how it would look once I layered on each course.





I was satisfied with the outcome so I proceeded.





Since what I was doing was not part of the instructions, I had to make up my own way to do all this. I was not ready for this.





Because of the thickness of each shingle, as I was layering each subsequent course of shingles they were no longer laying flat against the roof card. I ended up with an increasing gap between the shingles and the roof card as I worked my way up the roof. I was basically gluing my roof to itself. I was not sure it would all work out in the end.


Here is a photo of a water tank I used as a reference.





I found this photo out on the internet. I failed to note down where I got it from.


When I was almost to the top of the roof I had to make it look like the reference photo. The kit includes a finial to go on the top of the roof. Also, the kit directs the modeler to put down battens on the roof. I skipped those two. I decided to place a beam in the middle of the tank as the reference photo.








You can see how I truly had to "wing it" here 'cause it was not going at all like FSM intended.


But in the end it worked out.











Somewhere along the way I added the rafter tails called for to the water tank.


Does anyone know the purpose of that beam sticking up in the middle of the water tank? Other than to make it easy to shingle the roof, that is.


Jaime

[NEMMRRC]

Here is how the lighting turned out.





I want to give a huge thanks to Bill Sartore at Microlumina for helping me sort of the lighting. It works!


Jaime

[NEMMRRC]

In instruction sheet D George Sellios explains the following regarding the box car shed:

The inspiration for this model came from one of my boy-hood heroes, Jack Work. In the 1950s and early 60s he wrote some great articles in Model Railroader. From what I know, he was one of the first to introduce delicate, fine-scale HO modeling.

I decided to work through as much of the boxcar and not dwell on taking a lot of photos of the progress. I'll describe how the boxcar shed is built as I post the photos below. All the construction is pretty straight forward. The techniques needed are not a big mystery and have been described elsewhere along this build or any other FSM build. There is however one new technique introduced and that is owed to Jack Work's influence on Sellios.


Sellios describes how Jack Work used acrylic boxcar red paint and diluted it with alcohol to give the boxcar a faded look. One dips a brush in alcohol and then the boxcar red paint. If the result is not faded enough one uses more alcohol and vice versa. Once the boxcar shed is painted the modeler is to emphasize further distressing and weathering by taking a cotton swab, dipping it in the alcohol and rubbing vertically on the desired areas of the boxcar that require further distressing. This rubs off some of the paint on the boxcar exposing the bare wood.


I will point out that all of the surrounding wood framework on the boxcar shed (except the cribbing underneath) is painted using this diluted alcohol/paint technique. The cribbing is painted with black alcohol stain and rust paint to simulate creosote.


I followed the instructions on Jack Work's technique for weathering the boxcar shed. There are laser cut scribed basswood sheets provided in the kit for the shed's 4 walls as well as a floor for the shed. I did not photograph any of that so all I have is the shed's walls all glued together with the corresponding windows and doors in place.





And here is the front of the shed.





And this is the back.





There is a sheet of cardstock for the roof and some paper used to simulate tar paper roofing included in the kit. This is the standard FSM fare and there is nothing esoteric about building the roof for this shed. I have yet to glue the roof on because I need to put some details inside the shed since I chose to model the doors open. In the instructions Sellios discusses briefly the option to provide lighting for inside the shed.


The boxcar rests on some cribbing made from creosoted timbers. There is a crib underneath the boxcar where the trucks would go. The timbers are weathered to simulate creosote by mixing black alcohol stain and rust paint.











And here is the end result.





Next I built a canopy for the shed's entrance using some stripwood and the corrugated metal roofing according to the instructions.





Then I built a trash bin next to the shed according to the instructions. The bin's walls are 2 metal castings.





Before gluing the boxcar shed to the diorama base one is to prepare the scenery dirt underneath the boxcar. I chose to experiment with sanded grout as my dirt. I've read where some have had success using sanded grout to simulate dirt. Well, after having tried it myself I gotta tell you I am not part of the club that was successful at the sanded grout gig. I suck at scenery... still.


Nevertheless, here are the photos.


I followed the instructions for the dirt except I used sanded grout instead of dirt. First I masked off the area under the boxcar shed.





I then applied the grout. However, my wet water was not wet enough and none of the grout stuck. So, I used hairspray instead (as suggested to me by Groovey Jeff) to affix the grout.





It worked for the most part.








Once that was done I began working on the loading platform in front of the boxcar shed.


The platform's construction was very straightforward. Nothing out of the ordinary here.











Somewhere along the way I built the roof for the boxcar shed. I did not glue it down though.





Guess what, more dirting is required under the platform. My results were as dismal as those when dirting under the shed.








And here is a look at how all that ended up.





Jaime

[NEMMRRC]

I reached the point where I had enough glued down to the diorama base that I could add the track and some scenery.


It should be noted that track is just as much a model as the structures on your layout. George Sellios has some great guidance on how to weather commercial lengths of flex track. Once done the track looks nothing like the commercial track it is.


I ended up using some Shinohara bend track for my diorama. This track was given to me by a fellow modeler and I am not even sure if it is even made anymore. I call it bend track 'cause it does not flex. One can shape it at will and it stays there. Thus, I had to make sure the track was really straight before gluing it down.


First one takes some rail nippers and nips off some of the tie ends on the length of track to be used. Don't go crazy here if your track is going to be on the main line. I like to spray the track with cheap gray spray paint before gluing the track to the diorama base. I have gotten to like Beacon 3-in-1 adhesive to glue the track down. Dave Frary recommends it. Beacon adhesive has the consistency of clear silicone caulk with the properties of hot glue. You need to be careful not to get adhesive strings on your structures as you glue down the track. Beacon grabs instantly and still gives you time to work with the track. I normally apply the adhesive every 3rd tie or so. I weigh down the track overnight before proceeding to give the adhesive enough time to cure.





Then one can begin to paint the track after it is glued down well. FSM suggests the following:
- rail brown for the track and the ties
- rust, railroad tie brown and roof brown for the ties





I apply the paint with some MicroMark micro brushes. These are neat brushes and they are disposable so no cleaning is required. I first paint the track. Don't worry about being too neat here. If you get some rail brown on the ties it is no biggie. It all will blend together once the ballast and further weathering is on. I then paint the ties randomly with each of the paint colors. I do all the rail brown ties, then the railroad tie brown ties, then the roof brown ties and then the rust ties. You can mix the order around. There is no written rule about this. Just be sure to paint the ties randomly. I leave some of the ties in the gray primer color to vary it even further. There is no need to be super neat here. However, make sure you paint the ties' ends. Try not too get to much of the ties' paint on the rail but don't worry if you stray every so often.





The track will look a hot mess at this point. Don't worry. Once the ballast and further weathering is down it will all blend together.


I then tried the sanded grout for dirt trick. It did not go much better than the last time but I eventually got the dirt on.








Jaime

[bparrish]

Jaime........

Just great.......

Now I under stand where canopy glue comes from. It's for covering things  up and keeping the magic smoke inside the electrical stuff.

Thanx
Bob

[NEMMRRC]

This is as far as I've gotten.


I suspect these updates ought to satisfy the set-by-step requirements of the contest. My spare time has been very scarce lately. I have lots of catching up to do. I can either tell you about it or I can get it done. Given the contest deadline is fast approaching, I'm going to shut up and spend the remainder of the time left before the deadline at the workbench.


I'll follow up with the required final photos in time for the deadline.


Thanks for following along and all the feedback.


Jaime

[Jerry]

Jaime I'm impressed that's a very nice build.

Jerry