illinois Central Chicago District - Monee Rebuild

[vinceg]

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.

Me, three. I chuckled more than once about a paint building whose paint looked so bad (which means good for us, no?)

[vinceg]

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.

Thanks for justifying my laziness, Mark. You are a true friend, indeed 

Your suggestion on lowering the addition is a great one. Would not be difficult at all. The foundation extension pieces and the walls have tabs that fit into slots in the main building that would have to be modified or trimmed away but that should be no problem. Also, the wall on the main building to which the extension attaches would have be be scribed at the top since now some of it would be exposed and you would want it to match the siding next to it. The basic piece comes as smooth wood there. Again, very doable.

It is always amazing to me how something that never even would have occurred to me is immediately imagined by others. Hoping I'll pick some of that over time.

[vinceg]

Thanks Tom and Jeff. I really like the uniqueness of the building -- quite different from other things I have built and have yet to build.

It was a fun little structure to build. Only took about four days. I wanted a quick win after slogging thru Bandit's Roost for three months.

[vinceg]

OK, Old Dominion up now. This is the other structure that comes with the Homer Kit. This building has also be finished for a while. And, I have far fewer pics of my steps along the way but I will share what I have along with a few observations that might be useful for any future builders.

You already saw the boxes before - here are the walls, braced per instructions:



A few things to point out here. First, see how cleverly I chose to show you the clapboard side of the wall at the bottom. Not a big loss, of course. You can probably imagine that the bracing doesn't look radically different from Wall 1 above it. And, bracing is a yawner anyway, I guess.

Second, look at wall 8. The hole in the lower left (will be lower right when you're looking at the building) is where an overhead door will go. The instructions seem to imply that you will only use the usual 1/16" square strip from the top of the wall to the bottom of the door there. That is supposed to represent both the corner trim for that part of the building and also the support for what will be the right side of the garage door. I didn't think that was right. If you do that and hold the door in place, there were gaps for me that looked too conspicuous. So, I ended up adding a second piece of 1/16" square strip just inside of it that runs the height of the garage door. I think we will see what that looks like in an upcoming picture.

Finally, take a look at walls 2 and 4 in the upper right. Difficult to see here but the bracing diagram has you run the bracing all the way to the top of the wall. That ends up creating some interference as you will see shortly.

[vinceg]

Last one I'll do this morning -- need to get to work (which involves rotating my office chair 90 degrees). My next picture fast forwards to the finished walls.



Things to note here:

I used Crafts Mart Ivory color here for the walls. In person, it looks a little more depot buffy than you see here.

I renamed the building. The signs that came with it seemed to be of an awkward size and didn't seem to look good against the building (at least to my eye). So, I named the building after a railroading buddy of mine.

At the top you can see the foundation for this structure. Different style than Homer. This one is a stone foundation that is simulated by laser etched task board. We'll get a closer look at that later. There is also the etched floor for the receiving area.

If you look at the middle left you can see the wall with the overhead door we were just talking about. It is not real clear but perhaps you can see the second piece of 1/16 wood to the right of the door, inside the longer piece of corner trim.

Look at the second story door in the back wall in the middle right of the picture. That is actually a plastic door that was left over from the Homer build. It doesn't match the door in the instructions and does not match the size of the opening that is pre-cut. Rather than get all scratch buildy and trying to do something that fit, I just increased the height of the hole and used the spare door. I guess that transom looks a little funny for a door in this application but I can live with it. This door won't be seen after the structure is placed, anyway.

If you look at the small wall in the lower right, you will see a lot of room on the right side of the two windows where there is nothing but clapboard. The kit gives you one of those storm cellar door castings for this area. The only trick is that that casting will get glued onto this wall right here. However, when we are finished we will have this building sitting on the foundation that will raise it off the ground significantly. For that reason, the terrain will have to  rise on this side of the building for the math to work out. When I finally decide where to site the building, I'll see if this side will be visible. If so, I'll make the terrain work. If not, I'll save the casting for another time.

Finally, in the upper left you see a wall where the bracing is on the clapboard side. This is not a mistake. This wall is in the middle of the building and basically seals off the receiving area from that big hole you see in the flooring. Those braces help support the slanted roof in that area. In reality, it is impossible to get this right at this point in the build. I ended up putting some horizontal pieces to support the roof when that time came. Anyone building the kit should be sure to do a lot of test fitting here before committing to glue. Trimming bracing stock after it's in place is a bummer as I have come to know (on several occasions).

No more for now -- I'll try to post some more if I can get a chance over lunch. Will be finished for sure by tonight and then get going on Queen City Coal.

[postalkarl]

Hey Vince:

Just went through all 9 pages of this. Everything looks just great. Beautiful layout.

Karl

[Oldguy]

I've liked what you have done. 

[vinceg]

Thanks for the kind words Bob and Karl.

[vinceg]

Here's the interference I referred to earlier.



The walls 2 and 4 that we saw earlier are the left and right walls here. The bracing diagrams show that the wood continues to the top of the wall. But, you see the rafter comb here that also needs to be flush with the top of the wall and that causes interference. As you can see in the picture, the interference is solved pretty easily by notching each of the corners of the comb. Fortunately, there are no rafter tails on the ends. That would have made the task a little more work.

On the subject of rafters, you can also see in this picture slots in the top of the tall wall to which this extension is attached. Interestingly, there are no roof combs for this or any other location in the kit. Seemed odd to me that you would do combs for all of Homer and this one small addition but not the rest of the building. It's not a problem - there is plenty of 2x6 stock to do the work. Just odd.

[vinceg]

Another fast forward - the walls are all assembled and the structure is attached to the foundation.



Here you get a good look at the foundation. In general, I don't think is looks very realistic. The stones are obviously flat and somewhat uniform. You can even see a few are starting to flake off on the bottom - I should have started by painting it with a glue wash. What you see is the result after using Rustoleum rattle can primer. I thought about painting individual stones but decided that this will be buried enough in dirt that the effort would not be worth it. I also considered covering it with chipboard or wood or styrene and going for a poured concrete look but then the foundation would be thicker and not very recessed with respect to the platform right above it. If I were to do this again, I think I would glue them on backwards so that the back (smooth side) was showing and the stones were glued to the inside frame. As it is, I do hit it with some chalk later to dull down the look. It will be good enough.

The other thing I notice is that double door on the second floor above the loading dock door. Not sure how things get in there without some kind of hoist above it (not included). Maybe somebody can help me on this one. Are there upper floor doors like this that don't have hoists? If so, what are they used for? If the hoist is required, I am guessing that I will scratch build something that will take the place of the vent that is currently there.

I'll finish this piece of the thread off tonight.

Cheers.

[Mark Dalrymple]

Looking really nice, Vince.

The colour scheme works very well.

When scratch-building, I'm always trimming off corners of things for bracing in the way!  Was just doing some of that last night when I decided a central gutter would be a good idea.  It might have been - but it was a lot of extra work!

Funny - I was looking at the picture above for about two minutes, trying to decide whether to give my opinion about the foundation or not.  I then scroll down and see you've given it for me!  One could fill the grout lines with spackle and then paint on rough cast.  Of course, turning the foundation inside out is a better remedy.  As you say, you can always make the undergrowth high around the structure, or plant a flower garden or...  the options are endless.

Cheers, Mark.

[PRR Modeler]

Very nice modeling Vince. I really like the freight door and hardware.

[vinceg]

Thanks, Mark. Yeah, I had that thought, too. I could spackle in the laser cuts and turn it into a concrete foundation. I might still do that. But as you said -- other options, too.

[vinceg]

Very nice modeling Vince. I really like the freight door and hardware.

Thanks, Bob. I like that sliding door effect, also. Looks pretty decent considering it's just a square piece of wood.

Since I did this, and also the same sort of thing on Homer, I have noticed on the Sierra West site a few modelers that have similar doors that have small, rusty metal supports holding up the rail the door slides on. It's a little thing but I like the additional detail and realism. I am guessing one might do that with a very small wisp of a piece of paper or perhaps a skinny sliver of a toothpick. I think I will try that next time around. I doubt I will go back and do anything additional here.

[vinceg]

Last time warp. Here's the final kit - at least the state it's in now. First the front:



I threw one of the detail castings in there just for fun. I overdid the dry brushing -- will need to go back and fix that. A few other things to note:

I threw some PanPastels at the foundation. Darker seems better. I still expect to cover it up.

Added some more weathering now.

Looking in the window above the sign I can see straight through the building. in the future, I am going to have to think more about view blocks.

The roof was a different experience. It is just chipboard with peel-and-stick battens. The chipboard is laser etched to help you place the battens. Once the battens were applied, I sprayed it directly with Rustoleum 2X gray primer. Then I went back and brush pained the battens with a wood color (Apple Barrel Barn Wood, I think). Then chalks. No tar paper. Nice. A really nicely engineered product. The roof vent and the chimney are resin castings. Had to cut in the angles to match the roof myself. Again, looking at that vent over the 2nd story freight door and thinking I need to put a hoist in. We'll see.

This would have been a nice model to illuminate. Could have filled the inside with a lot of detail castings. I may go back and do that later, depending on how close to the viewer this model ends up being. As it is, I think this will be in the background somewhat -- east side of the tracks. Maybe not, though. We'll see. Plus, if I'm going to do that, I will want to take more time to start thinking about routing a DC power bus around the layout to power lights and single-board computers so that I can starting writing some interesting software to do more elaborate animations. Not ready for that, yet.

More shortly....