illinois Central Chicago District - Monee Rebuild

[vinceg]

Angled view, also from the front. Please ignore the tree. A light-hearted attempt to spice up the photo. Weak sauce.



This photo gives you a good look at the design Bar Mills uses for stairways. Lots of laser-cut parts to make the job much easier. Planking under the door into the extension is a thin, etched, peel-and-stick wood part. All very nice engineering. My only complaint is that the instructions call for 2x6 handrails. Now that I see them in a photo, they look too big to me. I think 1x4s would look better. Will try that next time around.

More shortly.

[Janbouli]

Great weathering on those doors , and the overall building is done great.

[vinceg]

A more direct shot of the side wall. Full view of the small billboard sign. I actually spent a fair amount of time trying a lot of different sign designs. Wanted to have something fun here that would be an eye-catching detail. Problem was that the sign is actually pretty small. By the time you put in clip art of various implements they end up being pretty small and the lettering is small and then a little weathering obscures almost everything. The other problem is that I suck at graphic design. The mechanical design is nice, though. Those diagonal braces are single, laser-cut pieces. Look like Lexus logos. They also have tabs that fit into the sign backing. Again, nice engineering -- at least things I haven't seen before although I'm still relatively inexperienced.



More shortly.

[vinceg]

Last picture - the back:



Not much to say. The treads on the stairs are peel-and-stick wood. Sounds like a good idea but it really doesn't hold the the stair assembly together well. I went back with the Canopy glue to solidify it. Also, Bar Mills has a really ingenious way to help assemble the steps. The stringers are attached to a long -- for lack of a better word -- sprue. Then they give you a piece of wood to glue between the two sprues (make sure everything is perpendicular). That holds the stringers in place while you glue down the steps. When it's all cured, you snip off the sprues and you're good to go. Very neat.

Same oversized handrails.

As I mentioned earlier, I used the pre-cut acetate windows here. The windows are wood - more work to assemble but I really like them. I think they look more realistic and because these particular windows didn't do the double-sash thing, it was pretty easy to install the "glass."

Last thing I'll mention. If you look under the rafter tails in this picture, you can see some breaks in the battens in the roof just under them. When I trimmed the tails, I used my sprue cutters and didn't pay attention to how far down I was holding them. Didn't even notice this until later when taking pictures. I once talked to a modeler who told me that it's not that great modelers don't make mistakes. They do make mistakes but know how to hide and fix them. I figure I am halfway there -- definitely crushing it on the make mistakes part.

That's it. My first Bar Mills kit. This building (Old Dominion) took a little more than a week.

In general, I enjoyed building the kit. Instructions are lean (compared to FSM or SRMW) but seemed plenty good enough. Lots of drawings and pictures to get you where you need to go. Some very clever engineering in a lot of place. Combined with ready-access to Art at Bar Mills when I got in trouble (missing sign sheet), it was a really good experience.

[vinceg]

Homer Epilog. I forgot to show you the water tower.



Intended to accompany the Homer Paint Company, the water tower includes a Dutch Boy Paint sign. I am not sure I like using it here. It seems too big for that little building and too small for more general water tower service. At the moment, I have it sitting on top of one of the roofs for the Rugg Mfg build I did a while ago. Adds more character to that building. No need to decide now, though. Plenty of time to think about it.

As you saw a couple of pages ago these buildings won't go here (nor will the trees). Instead, this will be the Callahan Machining building.

I expect to get started on Queen City Coal this evening. I'll try to keep up this time on pics during the build.

Back soon.

Cheers.

[PaulS]

Vince, thanks very much for sharing with us.
You did a terrific job on both buildings and they will sure look good on your IC CD...
Also appreciate you taking the time to give us your thoughts and comments on both builds!  Will come in handy when others go to build their versions of same ...
Great job !!
--Paul

[PRR Modeler]

Great build Vince.

[Oldguy]

Very well done.
For flat stone work finishing, do an image search for giraffe stone.  Typically, they are for the exterior wall finish, but what the hey.  Access to the upper set of doors?  Use a rough terrain fork lift truck.

[vinceg]

Very well done.
For flat stone work finishing, do an image search for giraffe stone.  Typically, they are for the exterior wall finish, but what the hey.  Access to the upper set of doors?  Use a rough terrain fork lift truck.

Thanks, Bob. I had never heard of giraffe stone but it looks like that's a Thing. I still think I want to cover them up -- not very attractive -- especially for a foundation.

Also, thanks for the note about tall fork lift. Now that you mention it, I remember seeing some around. I'll feel better now when I see those elevated loading doors on buildings

[vinceg]

Paul and Curt -- thanks, guys.

[vinceg]

I started on Queen City today. Before I started posting progress here it occurred to me that I probably should be putting it in the kit build forum. At the very least, people could find a specific build more easily (since it would be in the thread title). Then I could come back to this thread when it comes to integrating the completed kit into the layout.

I'll open up a new thread Sunday morning with the kickoff to that thread. If somebody thinks that keeping the thread here would be better, please let me know.

thx,
Vince

[postalkarl]

Hey vince:

Two beautiful buildings. Keep up the great work.

Karl

[GPdemayo]

Great job Vince.....   You're right about the handrails, the 2x6 is a bit overwhelming, a 4" top rail would look more to scale.

[vinceg]

Hi guys,

Been a long while since I posted any modeling. After finishing Queen City, I have been pretty busy with work but did start another kit that will be pretty close to the south side of Queen City. This is Dexter's Dead End from FSM. My intent is to blend all of these together with the connecting terrain to integrate several kits into my first real scene on the railroad. One thing slowing me down is that my back drop, made from Masonite anchored into the concrete foundation of my house, has cracked at the joints. Interestingly, I had subbed out that work because I didn't like my chances of doing the hammer drill work of putting up the furring strips. I had started the work a couple of years back putting up the strips with Liquid Nails only  but it fell off a year later (covered earlier in this thread..or one of my threads somewhere). The interesting part of this is that the joints I did on that section of backdrop did NOT crack at the joints -- even after having fallen off the walls. But, every one of these new joints did. I don't regret getting a pro to do the work -- I never would have succeeded putting up the strips, not to mention holding up the Masonite by myself to fasten it in, but I am going to have to retape and mud all the joints. I'll post some pictures of this shortly.

So, the result of this is that these cracks now stop me from putting the first Monee scenery up because it will make later fixing of the cracks impossible. And, you know how it is when there's a job that you really, really, hate to do ... takes a long time to get to it. At least for me it does.

In the meantime, I'll post some pictures of Dexter's as I am building it. Not a build thread, but maybe a few interesting notes along the way.

[Keep It Rusty]

I look forward to those posts, Vince. Dexter's is a great kit -- and the combination sounds exciting.