illinois Central Chicago District - Monee Rebuild

[vinceg]

Looking really good, Vince.

I'm enjoying following along and appreciate your thought process as things develop.  I think too many of us are scare to show how our ideas 'grow', but it is such an important part of the journey.

Might I suggest that you go to the trouble of making some quick mock-ups of the Queens City Coal structures to put in position, and also mock up the land-form (with scraps of polystyrene or even scrunched up paper) before the retaining walls and raised flat site were put there.  I think it will be important to show some of this gradual elevation change, and it will help you visualize what the land looked like before man decided to build there.

Cheers, Mark.

Thanks, Mark. Yes, I hope to mock up the buildings. Bar Mills gives you lots of to-scale drawings. Easy enough to photocopy and tape together. I will want to do that so that I can work on the interfaces to the diorama and work on them independently while I work on the actual dio. And I did rough in some landform shapes using paper wads,  foam scraps, little bottles, and crumpled paper. That's how I got to the decision of retaining walls and entering Queen City Coal from the back. Originally I played with a lot of examples that had an access road coming up from Rte 50. None of them appealed to me. I do still need more work on the north/left side of the dio as you can see.

[vinceg]

Thank you Janbouli, Bob, Karl, and Curt. Appreciate it.

[vinceg]

OK, my second favorite part of any build - putting the walls together so that all the pre-work starts to look like something (my favorite part is when the structure is finished so that I can look at it). Because the outside walls have so much texture (signs, windows, doors), I use the machining square on the inside. In a couple of places, I glued in some extra bracing fragments to make it easy to butt up against the angles. I did two sets of two walls at once to save a little time.



More shortly....

[vinceg]

Walls are together - next step is to insert the rafter combs.



There's not "just one place" the combs fit. As you can see, the rafter tails are quite long. You can slide the combs up and down along the roof line quite a bit, at your discretion. The end result is that you just have more or less rafter tail to snip off. I slid mine up toward the apex a bit to just give me a little more support for the side walls.

More shortly.....

[vinceg]

Here's a full-on shot of the front wall (whatever front means for a building like this):



I haven't yet said anything about the wood slats that cover the foundation. These are pretty interesting, too. Should have taken a pic before installing. This is really another kind of comb. Kindof like their insta-fence. Imagine a thin wooden sprue that runs along the bottom of these slats, connecting them all. You glue the slats to the wood foundation (that you saw earlier). Then, when it's dried, you just clip off the sprue and however much slat you need to clip off to be flush with the ground. Bar Mills suggests you use cuticle scissors. That works. So do Xuron tools such as sprue cutters or rail nippers. Once the glue dried, I just stained them. I actually don't remember what kind of stain I used. It was either inkahol or some Hunterline Creosote Black stain. Very similar, of course.

More shortly....

[vinceg]

Here's a view from the shed side. It's not particularly interesting except that I wanted to show the very small clearance between the shed roof and the main roof. Not much at all. Certainly not enough for the 2x6 trim piece. Because of this, I made sure to install the shed roof first and put on the tar paper before doing the main roof.



More shortly....

[vinceg]

Not much more in the way of interim pics. Here is the finished structure from the front:



The roof is on now. Bar Mills gives you some of their own paper but I just used some of my own stock I had lying around. You can see the loading dock is in place now with all of the planking. The cross braces that you see underneath are not part of the kit or the instructions. I added them myself using 2x6 strip wood.

The Homer Paint Co sign is interesting. The horizontal supports you see are actually one single laser cut piece. Then, for the 3D look of the lettering, there are two more sets of lettering that you glue on top of that. The net effect is that it appears that big 3D letters have been attached to the sign backing.

The chimney is a resin casting. The pitch of the roof is VERY shallow. So, no cutting or sanding was necessary to get it vertical. I just held it in place for a few seconds while the Canopy glue set up and it was good. I painted the chimney by first spray painting the casting white. Followed then by dry brushing on the brick red, staying out of the grout lines. A little concrete colored paint on the protruding outline of the chimney at the top and then black on top and inside. Finish off with some black chalk scrubbed into the top third-ish or so of the chimney.

The ladder you see is one of a few laser-cut details they give you on one of the sheets. Not super detailed since it's completely flat, but still contributes, I think.

This picture really highlights the crummy job I did with the open window on the shed at the right. Many attempts to get that right. I'm not exactly sure how I made it so much harder than it really is.

More shortly.....

[vinceg]

A view from the loading dock side. I left the door a little open to expose a barrel with a little splash of color.

[vinceg]

The back:



Something I didn't mention before. When I placed the loading dock up against the building, the planking didn't touch the building. I solved this by using a 2x4 wood strip as the last piece next to all of the 2x8s. You can see it pretty clearly in this pic.

I also didn't say anything about the rotting wood effect. That is just PanPastel chalks used at the bottom of the siding just above the wood slats.

[vinceg]

Here's an angled shot to show the steps from the back:



If you look at the landing by the door, notice the joists that support it. This is another example of one of their "combs." In reality, that is a piece that looks just like the rafter combs do. Again, a nice time saver. Because this platform is so small, I didn't think it needed diagonal cross braces. Wonder what I would have done in real life.

[vinceg]

Last pic - one more angle:



That's it for Homer. There are many more detail parts that came with it. I am holding off  placing them for now as I want to see how and where I situate the buildings and parking lots before deciding how to use them.

Old Dominion building coming up next.

Cheers.

[Zephyrus52246]

Great looking structure, though I'd think a paint company could afford to paint their building once in a while.   


Jeff

[Mark Dalrymple]

That came up very nicely, Vince.

I think in reality the small deck would be fixed to the side of the building and the posts concreted into the ground - so no diagonals would be necessary.

Would it be possible for others building this structure to trim the foundation a bit on the small addition in order to drop the roof line and make the change more of a feature?  ie is there scope to do this with the kit?  Obviously it would mean an internal level change, but might be worth considering.

I mocked up my Potters Pub trio by copying the plans, cutting them out, and gluing them to blocks of polystyrene cut to the right size and shape.  Very quick and easy and they look rather good for a mock-up.  I agree that Bar Mills plans are very good.  I wish all kit producers included a full set of elevations and a plan view.

Cheers, Mark.

[tom.boyd.125]

Vince,
Your Bar Mills Homer Paint build came out looking great !
Wish they were the low bidder for my house repaint this year, but my son won the job offer from his parents...
Tommy

[Janbouli]

Great looking structure, though I'd think a paint company could afford to paint their building once in a while.   


Jeff

I was thinking quite the same , on the other hand there's no money to be made painting your own building 

Great job  Vince , I really like the weathering job , especially the wood border underneath the walls.