illinois Central Chicago District - Monee Rebuild

Started by vinceg, September 10, 2018, 10:46:43 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

vinceg

#210
Hi all - back to [modeling] work, I hope. So, this is my second week of retirement. I would have expected zillions of free hours to work on the railroad but so far, not so much. (I sense some chuckling going on out there.) Anyway, I have done some basement cleaning -- more to do but good progress in organizing a good chunk of my supplies and tools. We'll see how that goes.

Thanks to Mark, Greg, Tom L, Craig, Tom B, Doug, Dave, and Karl for your unwavering support and kind words.

More to follow in a few minutes.
Vince

Protolancing the Illinois Central Chicago District from Chicago to Kankakee

vinceg

Quote from: Mark Dalrymple on August 02, 2021, 11:25:52 PM
Your diorama looks fantastic, Vince!

I really enjoyed looking through your pictures.

You mentioned having trouble using Campbells shingles (as others have done in the past).  I find using a combination of double sided tape and canopy glue makes the job easy.  I have copied my step by step instructions from my 2020 cannery and wharf challenge.  Hope this helps.

The shingle wall was quite easy to do, so give it a try.  Here is a quick rundown of my method.  The shingles were Campbells.

* Cut your window and door openings in wall and mark the wall with horizontal lines as a guide for attaching the shingles.
* Cover wall in double sided tape.
* Remove the bottom piece of tape backing and attach the first row of shingles.
* Add a bead of canopy glue to the top of the shingles installed.
* Add the second row of shingles.  Press down every inch onto the double sided tape to fix and line up with your pencil marking.  Press the bottom of the second row of shingles onto the bead of glue.  Remove any ooze. (the aim is to get no ooze so you want a fairly thin bead of glue).
* Continue, covering any openings with shingles.  The wastage is minimal, and I find there is no damage during the painting process.
* When dry, paint, using a soft brush, with a brownish black colour, slightly diluted.  You want to completely cover the shingles.  Angle the brush upwards to get paint under the shingles, so that no bare colour shows through.
* When dry, follow up with a series of dry brushing with paynes grey, light browns and tans.  Dry brush from the top down.  If you go too far, reverse with brownish black.
* When dry, remove shingles from the openings by placing the wall upside down on a cutting mat and using a chisel blade to cut the shingles and double sided tape.  I found this better than a knife for getting a clean cut without damaging any tiny slithers of shingles that resulted.
* Install windows and doors.

Note: the painting method is as described on Troels Kirks DVD.

Cheers, Mark.

Thanks for the tips, Mark. I'll give it a try. The transfer tape is a great idea -- not sure why I didn't think of that already since that's what I use when using other shingles or other roofing materials (rolled tar, e.g.). Should be a lot more stable that the process I was using and help prevent the "smile" shape that I always seem to fight.
Vince

Protolancing the Illinois Central Chicago District from Chicago to Kankakee

vinceg

Quote from: tom.boyd.125 on August 03, 2021, 11:47:09 AM
Vince,
You pulled it off...excellent work on this FSM gem !
It's time to celebrate now on your diorama and structure modeling and then move on to your next project.
Think that when you retire soon, you will really have a lot more time to enjoy the hobby and share your projects with the forum.
Tommy

Thanks, Tom. A lot more time, indeed! I am sure that at least part of this is that, when working a job, I paid more attention to "getting some modeling time in" because time was a very precious commodity. I'm finding that retired days zip by as quickly as working days did. Need to find my new discipline. Clearly, from the results in this forum, everybody else has already figure out how to do that  :)
Vince

Protolancing the Illinois Central Chicago District from Chicago to Kankakee

vinceg

Quote from: NKP768 on August 03, 2021, 04:39:28 PM
Nice job Vince - looks great from every angle - have to agree with Mark - the Campbell shingles used to drive me towards basket weaving as a  hobby (or maybe toll painting) but since I started using the double sided tape it has taken a lot of drama out of this task. I think the stucco turned out awesome on the Jacobs Tire building. As far as the elec. distribution question - transformers are usually sized by what a customer or block of customers would require - tying one transformer drop to another would defeat the purpose of load distribution. By all means tie one pole line to the other but leave it at that. Great work again...

Doug

Doug, thanks for the comments and especially the G2 on the power line configuration. Tying the transformer secondaries together definitely looked fishy. But, all my electrical design experience is low-voltage audio and digital DC circuits and power supplies (plus, I'm primarily a software guy). Commercial power distribution is completely foreign to me. I drove around several neighborhoods and didn't see any comparable examples. Still, I didn't want to make assumptions about something I don't know much about.
Vince

Protolancing the Illinois Central Chicago District from Chicago to Kankakee

vinceg

Quote from: Keep it Rusty on August 03, 2021, 06:02:00 PM
Gonna throw this out there... I ADORE Campbell's shingles!

Then again, I would only ever use them with 3M transfer tape, too.

Thanks, Craig - I like them too. I think they are especially good for shingling walls. My application technique just sucks. Xfer tape will hopefully do the trick.
Vince

Protolancing the Illinois Central Chicago District from Chicago to Kankakee

vinceg

#215
OK, back to starting to scenic Monee. I have a position on the north end of town where a depot will go. Here is the site:



The depot will be placed on the east side, between the tracks and the backdrop. It will be located roughly at or to the right of the insulating rail joiners you see there. I have broken the electrical blocks there so as to facilitate occupancy detection that will support automated running later. Up until now, i have been assuming that I would use a depot that I built a long time ago. It's the old Fallburgh Station from Sequoia models:



As I look at its placement now, it occurs to me that the large, flat platform is not a good fit for the location. I will need to do something unusual with the topography such as a rock face or retaining wall to go from the higher area on the right (where you see just a small slice of the Dexter's diorama I just built) and track level.

Instead, I thought I would take a run at integrating another old kit I have - the Tennessee Pass Depot from Buliders In Scale. The available pictures for that kit show that it is nestled into a hill as you go from front to back. Here is a proto photo that I found on the internet:



So, over the next several posts, I will do a build thread of this kit.

More to follow.
Vince

Protolancing the Illinois Central Chicago District from Chicago to Kankakee

vinceg

To kick it off, here's the kit box:



Wish I could remember how long ago I bought this....maybe 30 years?

The picture on the box is probably the best available with the kit. There are some additional pics in the manual as well, but they are no bigger.

Note that the front wall is all wood. In the picture of the actual depot I included above, the first floor is all brick. In the kit you are given the option to build it either way.

Here is a color pic of the finished model that I found on fsmkits.com. No idea where that came from -- it is not part of the kit:



More shortly....
Vince

Protolancing the Illinois Central Chicago District from Chicago to Kankakee

vinceg

Opening up the box:



Nice collection of parts. Many precut strip wood pieces, three brick wall pieces, a snap-shut plastic container with a nice collection of metal details, two 1:1 scale blueprint sheets, printed roof sheet, manual, and a roll of Campbell shingles.

Interesting wrinkle - the depot is a two-story building. BIS gives you scribed sheet stock for both floors. They also apparently give you the original floor plan for those that want to do detailed interiors. I know I want to do some of that in my modeling - not sure if this is the time to start.

More shortly
Vince

Protolancing the Illinois Central Chicago District from Chicago to Kankakee

vinceg

This is a new experience for me. I now realize how spoiled I have gotten by building modern kits that have all laser-cut pieces and bracing diagrams. For this kit, the instructions are pretty lean and are all textual. Very little in the way of assembly diagrams. You identify pieces by using a ruler and by laying pieces on the blueprint looking for matches in pieces that sometimes differ only slightly. See below:



I believe this is the first kit where the window and door sections are just kerfs that need to be finished by hand. Also, there is some sheet stock that is dimensionally correct in one dimension but needs to be cut on the other dimension. Example are the strips of scribed wood that are A5 and A6 in the picture.

I'm not intending to complain - I am looking forward to the skill stretch. Yes, I know the scratch builders out there are getting a good chuckle.

More shortly.

Vince

Protolancing the Illinois Central Chicago District from Chicago to Kankakee

vinceg

Here an interim working pic:



Nothing too interesting - a couple of windows cut out. Three more yet to be cut. On the left I have a piece of scrap basswood to test some color combinations. I'm going to treat the bare wood with Hunterline Driftwood and then dry brush on some cheap acrylic Ivory paint over that to represent the Depot Buff that the kit instructions request. Depending on how that looks, I might hit the acrylic with another light inkahol wash. I did that on the sample you see here. Have to be careful, though. The acrylics dissolve quickly in the alcohol and then the finish gets to be a little harder to control. Perhaps I could use an oil-based was or a water-based wash and avoid the problem. We'll see what it looks like when I get there.

I also painted a few windows with different shades of brown. Not sure which one I like best, yet.

One issue I am experiencing here is how/when to finish the walls. Usually, it is pretty straightforward to brace all of the walls with the 1/8" stock and then start throwing fluids at it knowing that usually the walls will not warp. Here, because I am not quite sure how the walls go together, I do not yet have a vision for how to brace them so I am afraid of creating interference once assembly starts. As I get a little further into the assembly I am hoping I will be able to better see what is going on.

As a backup, the instructions have you do the FSM old-school method of applying the washes and then letting the wall sit under a heavy book or other weight overnight until it dries. I do remember doing that for the FSM Barongould Tannery many years ago and it worked but I would prefer to proctively brace things instead, if possible. In the end, I assume it will be some combination of bracing, heavy books, and applying wash to both sides of walls to make it work.
Vince

Protolancing the Illinois Central Chicago District from Chicago to Kankakee

vinceg

Another interim working pic - one of the brick side walls:



I primed with flat white rattle can paint. Then, sponged on two different colors of red with acrylics (brick red and terra cotta). Finally, I scraped some light gray dust onto the wall and rubbed it into the mortar lines with my finger.
Vince

Protolancing the Illinois Central Chicago District from Chicago to Kankakee

vinceg

The first floor is a precut sheet of scribed wood that is 1/32" thick. The kit comes with four pieces of 3/32" square strip wood that is perfectly precut to brace the perimeter of the floor. I glued down the bracing to the underside of the floor:



As you can see, it's a lot of unsupported space in the middle and the floor is very thin. But, I tried staining it, anyway. The middle curled up like a fun house mirror. Rookie mistake. So, I ended up flipping the floor over, scribed side down, and filled the middle with weights and let it dry overnight. It was flat again in the morning.
Vince

Protolancing the Illinois Central Chicago District from Chicago to Kankakee

vinceg

#222
Time to assemble the brick walls. There is a recess in the base of all three wall sections that accepts the first floor. When I test fitted the floor with the brick walls snug and square in all directions, the floor stuck out in front of the wall. From the instructions and the blueprints, I wasn't sure if that was normal or not. After trying some test fitting of the front wall pieces I convinced myself that this was incorrect - the floor should be flush. I was able to get it flush with a combination of (1) filing the recess in a little further in the back plaster wall (it had a slight warp in it that was exacerbating the problem), (2) filing the front and back of the floor to skinny it down a bit, and (3) assembling the three masonry walls so that they were not exactly snug.  Here are a couple of pics:





In the second picture, you are looking at the back wall. Note that Builders In Scale cast that wall to match the prototype's actual front wall for those that choose to maintain the historical accuracy. But, BIS recommends using their scribed wood version of the front wall because they believe it looks better (and I agreed). That wall and both rear corners will be under terrain so I am not concerned about whether they are perfectly matched. Not sure why I even painted the back wall at all. We'll see what kind of time bomb I just set for myself in the near future.

That's it for tonight. More tomorrow.

Cheers.
Vince

Protolancing the Illinois Central Chicago District from Chicago to Kankakee

GPdemayo

Can't beat some of those old Builders In Scale Kits.....I'll be looking in at this build Vince.  :)
Gregory P. DeMayo
General Construction Superintendent Emeritus
St. Louis & Denver Railroad
Longwood, FL

ACL1504

Vince,

Excellent start and I'm in on this one for sure.

Tom ;D
"If we are to guard against ignorance and remain free, it is the responsibility of every American to be informed."
Thomas Jefferson

Tom Langford
telsr1@aol.com

Powered by EzPortal