Bar Mills Queen City Coal

[vinceg]

Some of you may have seen that in my Monee Rebuild thread, I referenced that I would be starting Queen City Coal. This is the thread that I will use for that build. For reference, here is the finished diorama used by Bar Mills to sell the kit prior to this last Christmas:



And here is the area in which the diorama will be installed (the raised black foam panel):



This build will be particularly important to me. A couple of years ago I had the good fortune of meeting Seth Puffer and seeing his beautiful railroad during the layout tours at the National Narrow Gauge Convention in the Twin Cities. Seth and I followed up a couple of times by phone after that and in our discussions he mentioned that he once asked George Sellios how you build a large, museum-quality layout. George's response was "one square foot at a time." (By the way, am I the only guy on the forum that doesn't regularly have discussions with George? I did something wrong somewhere along the way...)

The comment left an impression on me. I have zero scenery now. Anyone who looked at the Monee thread saw that I had a little terrain in place but ended up ripping it up...wasn't any good. I have built a few structures and dioramas, but none are part of my layout. This will be my first "square foot." Time to deal with backdrop horizons, my I-don't-know-how-many-year-old static grass applicator and bags of Sculptamold, and other goodies. Once this diorama is finished and installed, my plan is to continue to build to the south (to the right in this picture) until all of Monee is finished. Along the way I will be able to integrate a couple of the South River kits I have built. There are places in the benchwork waiting for them.

OK, enough. Time to start the build.

More shortly.

[vinceg]

THE BOX

Here's the box. This was this year's Christmas present. Almost as exciting as the Red and Yellow Boxes I used to get, but still good.



I again have to confess that I did some preliminary building before sitting down to work on the thread. I have finished the Yard Office (small green building in the foreground) as I am writing this. Hope to do a better job of posting along the way for the next two buildings.

More shortly.

[vinceg]

Open the box and here's what you see.



A couple of interesting things to note.

As usual, a package of resin and and package of metal detail parts. Also, becoming common with the high-end Bar Mills kits, there are Woodland Scenics figures and vehicles. One of the resin castings is a large solid block that is the first floor of the Yard Office. It's a beautiful casting as you can see in the foreground. Will be nice to not have to work on mating corners of individual walls.

The wood is packaged by building. Convenient to keep the pieces together as you are building. The kit also includes a lot of material for building a large cyclone fence that surrounds the facility.

Finally, if you look in the box, you can see part of a coupon that is included for a discount on GatorFoam. 20% off your purchase. I haven't done that yet but I plan to.

More shortly.

[vinceg]

The kit comes with five manuals:



On the left is "The Book of Photos" - several pages of color pics along with some descriptive text with modeling tips. Right under it is a small pamphlet with some general modeling tips. A small subset of the document you can download from the Bar Mills web site at no charge.

Finally, there are three more manuals - one for each major structure in the kit.

One small bummer - the kit contains a note saying that not all of the resin castings were included because of supplier delays. They hoped to get them out soon. This was before Christmas. I never received anything so I called up Art. He connected me with one of his operations folks who got my info and promised to send the missing pieces out. I decided to take advantage of the situation to buy some additional detail parts from them. The package should have gone out yesterday. With Priority Mail, the package will hopefully arrive before the long Memorial Day modeling weekend.

More shortly.

[PRR Modeler]

That is going to be great looking. I'll be following Vince.

[vinceg]

Thanks, Curt. I am looking forward to this. Several new things for me modeling-wise.

[Oldguy]

Ooooh, this is going to be good.

[vinceg]

Jumping ahead past some of the mundane steps. Here are the walls, painted and windows installed:



This is the back wall of the casting - it won't be seen. So, I thought I would experiment a bit and try the technique explained in Sierra West's Morton's Foundry kit. First, the stone casting is primed with Rustoleum Khaki paint from their Camouflage rattle can series. Then, after thoroughly drying, you hit it with the ink/alcohol wash. Once that is dry, each individual stone is color with a wash of chalk and alcohol. For the chalks, scrape some powder off a few different Rembrandt earth tone and gray pastel sticks. I used about six colors and a small palette plate. Then, with a little pool of alcohol, dip a paint brush into the alcohol and then pick up one of the chalk colors. Apply to some random stones. Switch colors and do it again. Don't worry about cleaning the brush. Repeat until all stones are colored. You see the result above. I painted the brick by lightly dry brushing some art store acrylic brick red on.

I think the effect isn't bad but at first it looked a little too rainbowy to me. I later went back over it with more alcohol to blend the colors a little more. You'll see the results shortly. The nice thing about the technique is that it is fairly easy to rework. Because the casting is not porous, the pastel suspension is not soaked in. But, it does stick well. I didn't note anything coming off as I handled the casting. I think this technique is fairly similar to what John Siekirk is doing with his G Wilikers build.

The walls are fairly conventionally treated. After bracing I stained them with a wash of medium gray acrylic paint. For the green, I mixed some Leaf Green acrylic with Hunter Green. The initial result was a little too yellow so I went over it again with a light wash of straight Hunter Green. Sorry I didn't capture any pictures of that interim result. The fading/peeling effect is just painted by hand. The green paint is also thinned with water from time to time to lessen the intensity. In general, I just tried painting things like I used to in third grade. What used to look lousy is now "weathered." Who knew?  When the green had dried, I hit it with the inkahol wash. No nail holes this time around. Trim and windows are acrylic white.

The windows are laser cut wood. I am just blown away at the incredibly fine detail they can achieve with laser cutting. Those mullions are really fine but the wood stands up to the laser. Also, Bar Mills supplies laser-cut acetate glazing as well. I'm trying to keep control of my impatience this time and use the glazing rather than just gluing in the panes as I have been lately. They do really look good. The window sashes are peel-and-stick on the back. Pull off the paper backing and apply the glazing. The fit is excellent. Not so easy to get the panes to line up with the glazing when you stick them down, tho. It's not easy to move the "glass" around with those very fine mullions. I never did come up with a sure-fire method. I just ended up trying to be as careful as possible. Worked out mostly OK.

[vinceg]

Bar Mills gives you lots of "rafter combs" to simplify the addition of rafters to their roofs. I love them. They look good and really make the job easier. Wish they would brace walls for me, too. But, I made a mistake here - if you follow their bracing diagram exactly, you end up making the bracing on the gabled walls a little too high and the bracing gets in the way of the end two rafters. Perhaps I missed something in the instructions that told me not to do that. But, no matter -- I goofed. I decided the best way to handle this would be to cut the rafter combs short -- cutting off the end two rafter tails. Then, put in the comb and glue in the end two rafters separately. Here's the pic of the interference:



The photo is a little blurry but you can see the brace directly behind the slot in the wall where the last rafter tail goes. Same thing on the other side and also the wall on the other side that you see the back of.

Here are the four walls glued together and the two modified combs inserted:



More shortly.

[vinceg]

Bar Mills also uses the comb idea for wood decks as well. The comb's fingers serve as joists for the flooring. here are the two main parts for the deck outside the second floor door:

[Oldguy]

What % alcohol do you use? I've tried 90+% and it evaporated in seconds.  Those stones look fabulous.

[vinceg]

I also like how they handle big staircases. This is the thing they did for the back stairs in the Old Dominion kit that I just finished. I neglected to get a picture of it that time but I did capture it here:



You can see that they give you a spacer, surprisingly labeled "STAIR SPACER" (which made it nearly Vince-proof). You can also see the stringers have a wooden "sprue" under them. You glue those sprues to the spacer and then glue the treads to the stringers. When finished, I used my sprue cutters to trim the finished staircase free. Pretty handy.

[vinceg]

I painted the rest of the stone casting. Same technique. Still haven't done any blending and so the coloring still looks a little stark. My overhead shop light is definitely making the picture look more harsh than it is in person, but it does still need to be toned down.

Doors are hand-painted with Vallejo Signal Green and then dry brushed with white.



More shortly

[vinceg]

So, really jumping ahead now. I put on the card stock for the roof and apply the rolled roofing. Bar Mills give you several sheets of self-stick, pre-cut tar paper. I first sprayed it with Rustoleum 2X primer -- it's a darker formula than their other gray primer. After that I just glued it down and apply white, black, gray, and rust colored chalks.

I frequently have trouble with piping coming up out of roofs. Hard to see if they're really perpendicular. So, I use a steel square placed behind the building and then get down to building level and sight the piping against the square in the background. Here's a pic:



Same thing with chimneys. Of course you still have to look at it from a 90-degree rotate position also (front or back). Seems to work OK.

Final pics shortly.

[vinceg]

OK. Here are the [mostly] finished pics.









Here you see I toned down the stone color variable somewhat. I do like the effect better. Weather along the wood edges done with Burnt Umber PanPastels.

Same technique for the chimney here that I used in the Homer kit. Start by spray painting flat white (rattle can). Then, dry brush on brick red. Gray to represent concrete at the top and then lots of black chalk.

There are no outside lamps here. There were none with the kit. I think I have some leftovers somewhere in the basement - I will dig them out and apply them before putting the final diorama in place.

This was a fun little structure. Took just a few days. I like the unique style - probably why Bar Mills made a separate kit offering out of it (The "Tower at Cranberry Yard").

Thursday night I will try to get started on the next building - the main office building. Very interesting building with a stucco finish and a unique footprint. That building as well as the coal bunker need castings that were not originally shipped with the kit. As I said a few messages ago, I am hoping to receive them by the end of this week. I plan to take Friday off to have a long modeling weekend. We'll see.

I'll also try [again] to do a better job of posting progress along the way rather than after the fact this time.

Back soon.