Building an REA Freight House

[nycjeff]

For some time I've wanted to try my hand at a large structure scratch-build. To this point I have built several smaller structures and enjoyed doing them. I have done several larger craftsman kits and I now have the confidence to try a larger scratch-built structure. I have long admired the Foscale REA Freight House kit, so I am going to try to build my version of that type of kit. I have copied some pictures of that kit from the web and the forum to use  for my build. As per my usual scratch-build process, I first draw out some scale drawings using doors and windows as a guide for wall size and overall look.



The basic materials for any scratch-build are wall materials and doors and windows. I buy my wood wall material from Northeastern and the doors and windows from Tichy. The wood clapboard wall material comes in 4 x 24 inch pieces as shown and Tichy has an entire catalog of choices for doors, windows and other structure parts. This material is reasonably priced and both companies ship orders in a very timely fashion.



Shown are some of the windows I plan on using for this build. Most of these windows come 12 to a pack and they are the same windows that many kit manufacturers use in their kits.



This is the most common window for my build.



This is the first wall. It is made up of two pieces of 1/8 clapboard siding and one piece of board and batten siding for the peak area. I placed the windows in their locations and drew an outline of each on the front side of the wall material. Cutting out the window openings requires a sharp Exacto knife with a new #11 blade.



This is the backside of the first wall. You can see that I used blue painters tape to join the two wall pieces together. I then use my pin vise to drill small holes at the corners of the window openings as shown in the picture. The holes in the corners gives me a starting and ending point for my cuts. I find that this is very helpful.



Here are the two opposing large walls for the first structure of the complex. When cutting out the second wall to match the first remember to place the material with the outside surface of each wall facing out and the inside surfaces of each wall touching. Don't place one wall on top of the other with both outside surfaces pointing up. If you do this you will not get a true mirror image of each wall. Don't ask how I know this. The vertical wood bracing holds the wall sections together and you can see that I used a wider piece of bracing to attach the peak area to the main wall. This wider material gives me more of a gluing surface to work with. More in a minute.

[nycjeff]

Continuing on...



I've placed the windows in the openings of one wall and drawn the openings for the other main wall.



Here are the two main walls with the window openings cut out and the peak areas added. Remember what I said about tracing wall pieces with the inside surfaces together ? Well, when you don't, you have to add a small piece to the top of one to get the true mirror image as you can see in the picture. I was planning on some trim pieces at the tops of the gable ends anyway, so I'm hoping they will cover up my mistake. The house-like outline on the wall is there to help locate a smaller sub-assembly that will attach to the larger wall.



Here are both main walls with bracing installed. Notice that the end vertical pieces have been placed right at the edge of the walls. I like to use a lot of bracing to prevent any wall warping problems and I always place bracing along the roof lines for more of a gluing surface when applying the roof cards.



Here are the two side walls with the window and door openings laid out.



The openings have been cut out. I find that cutting the openings a little smaller than necessary helps to achieve a good final fit. You can always cut a little more and it's not very easy to add material to an opening that is too big.



The bracing has been added. I use 1/8 square strip-wood for all of my bracing. You can see that the vertical pieces on the ends of the walls is indented. This is done so that when gluing the walls together I have more gluing surface to hold them together. On the larger front and rear walls the end vertical pieces are glued right at the ends of the walls. This means that when the wall pieces are placed together, the end vertical pieces fit together snugly. That's it for now, more later.

[GPdemayo]

Great start Jeff.....I'll be looking in. 

[Jerry]

Looking forward to your build.


Jerry

[tom.boyd.125]

Jeff,
Looking forward to your scratch build of this REA freight house.
Will follow along.
Tommy

[ReadingBob]

Jeff,

Looking forward to this one as well.  Always admired the kit.  If it helps here are some pictures I took of Doug's pilot model when I was at the EXPO in Altoona a few years back. 




 

[ACL1504]

Jeff,

I'll be following along on this adventure as well. I have this kit and do plan on building it one of these days. It will fit on the Summit level of the Atlantic a\and Southern RrR.

Oh yes, great start.

Tom 

[Mark Dalrymple]

You are off to a good start, Jeff.

A couple of things I noticed.  For your future larger scratchbuilds Northeastern Scale lumber also does 6" wide boards which would make spicing in this case unnecessary.

Secondly, I would suggest you buy yourself a good .5mm clutch pencil.  I find with this I can get my window and door openings very accurate and then there is usually no need to enlarge my openings.  Likewise I very seldomly find I have made then too large.

Do you plan on changing up some of the roofing material?  There is a lot of tar paper in this kit.

Cheers, Mark.

[postalkarl]

Hey Jeff:

Looks great so far. Will be following along.

Karl S

[BandOGuy]

In awe of your workmanship. Thanks for the running narrative and lessons.
Just one small "nit" if I can. You have a first floor door that sits off to the left of the windows above it. From an architectural and engineering point, the left side of that door frame would be in a direct line with the left side of the windows above it unless there's a major interior reason for them to not line up. The stress of the windows above and their framing would not be placed off center on a door frame unless absolutely necessary.
Trying to be constructive, not critical.

[Bernd]

Great. Another how to project to study and see how it's done.

I'll be following along.

Bernd

[postalkarl]

Hey Jeff:

I actually built that kit A while back. It's A great building. I'll be following your build.

[nycjeff]

Great start Jeff.....I'll be looking in. 

Hello Greg, thanks for looking in.

Looking forward to your build.


Jerry

Hey Jerry, I'm looking forward to it as well. I've wanted to do a build of this kit for a while. Doug at Foscale really hit it out of the park with this one.

Jeff,
Looking forward to your scratch build of this REA freight house.
Will follow along.
Tommy

Hello Tommy, appreciate you following along. I haven't attempted this large of a scratch-build as of yet and I'm enjoying the experience.

Jeff,

Looking forward to this one as well.  Always admired the kit.  If it helps here are some pictures I took of Doug's pilot model when I was at the EXPO in Altoona a few years back. 




 

Hello Bob, thank you so much for the pictures, every little bit helps. It always seems that when I look at a new picture I see something that I've missed before.

Jeff,

I'll be following along on this adventure as well. I have this kit and do plan on building it one of these days. It will fit on the Summit level of the Atlantic a\and Southern RrR.

Oh yes, great start.

Tom 

Hello Tom, thanks for looking in. I look forward to your build of the kit. I know it will look great on your railroad.

You are off to a good start, Jeff.

A couple of things I noticed.  For your future larger scratchbuilds Northeastern Scale lumber also does 6" wide boards which would make spicing in this case unnecessary.

Secondly, I would suggest you buy yourself a good .5mm clutch pencil.  I find with this I can get my window and door openings very accurate and then there is usually no need to enlarge my openings.  Likewise I very seldomly find I have made then too large.

Do you plan on changing up some of the roofing material?  There is a lot of tar paper in this kit.

Cheers, Mark.

Hey Mark, thanks for the good information. I will have to check out the 6 inch siding for future builds. I will also check out the clutch pencil. Does Michael's have those ? I do plan on changing the roofing material along with some other things. As good as Doug's kit is, I don't want to try to duplicate it. I have to make it my own.

Hey Jeff:

Looks great so far. Will be following along.

Karl S

Hi Karl, I'm glad you are looking in. I looked at the build thread you did of this kit back in 2016 and your pictures and narrative are proving to be a big help, thank you.

In awe of your workmanship. Thanks for the running narrative and lessons.
Just one small "nit" if I can. You have a first floor door that sits off to the left of the windows above it. From an architectural and engineering point, the left side of that door frame would be in a direct line with the left side of the windows above it unless there's a major interior reason for them to not line up. The stress of the windows above and their framing would not be placed off center on a door frame unless absolutely necessary.
Trying to be constructive, not critical.

Thank you BandOGuy for your input. I never take anything as critical, I appreciate all the help I can get.

Great. Another how to project to study and see how it's done.

I'll be following along.

Bernd

Hey Bernd, I hope that you can get something from my build. I know that I have learned a great deal from many of the members of the forum.

Continuing on...



Now that all of the walls have been assembled and braced, I sprayed them all with rattle can dark grey primer, both back and front. Next I taped off the bottom portion of the walls and dry-brushed some craft paint red on the siding.



These are the base colors I am going to use for this build. I think that they come close to the red and green of the railway express agency colors.



Here are the front and rear walls with the red in place top and bottom.



Here are all four walls with both the red and green color in place. I plan on doing some more weathering when the walls are assembled.



This is the rear wall after some of the trim has been added. I used 1/16 square strip-wood for the corner trim pieces and 2x4 for the horizontal trim. The windows have been glued in with Aileen's tacky glue and I also added some acetate for the window glass. I downloaded some venetian blind window treatments from the web and used them on the window openings.



This is the front wall with trim and windows installed. I also used the 2x4 strip-wood for the horizontal trim piece at the color break on the walls. I really liked the rea sign that Doug used on his kit, so I made one on my computer. More in a minute.

[nycjeff]

Hey Jeff:

I actually built that kit A while back. It's A great building. I'll be following your build.

Hello Karl, I know that you built the kit. I'm using your build thread as one of my main reference points for my build. I can only hope to do as good a job as you do.

Continuing on...



This is a picture of the two side walls after trim has been added. The three large freight doors are made with the backside of some clapboard siding facing out. I primed them with the dark grey spray paint and then painted them with the red trim color. The hinges are from Tichy and I painted them silver. I trimmed the perimeter of the doors with 2x4 strip-wood. I looked up images of REA wall signs on the web and after sizing one down, I printed it out and placed it on the wall.



These are the walls for two sub-assemblies. One goes on the front and the other goes on the rear. The longer one uses the 1/16 clapboard siding and the smaller one uses the board and batten siding



The sub-assembly walls have been braced and are now ready for paint. You can see the end vertical pieces on the front pieces are placed right on the edge of the walls and the end vertical pieces on the side walls are indented the size of the wood bracing, so that when the walls are glued together, you get a secure gluing surface.



The rear sub-assembly has been glued together and additional bracing has been placed across the top and bottom of the rear. You can see the window treatments have also been installed.



This is a view of the front of the rear sub-assembly. The vertical corner trim has been glued on and the horizontal trim also put in place. I got the signs from the web and resized them for my needs and glued them on. I spread full strength wood glue on the back of the signs and then place them in position on the wall. I then use my fingernail to press the sign against the clapboard siding for that painted on look.



This is the front sub-assembly. Sorry for the fuzzy look. The man door is from Tichy and I scratch-built the large freight doors the same way as the freight doors on the side wall from before. I used some more Tichy hinges here as well. I modeled the large doors in the open position for an interior view. I built a small platform for the floor. That's it for now, more later.

[postalkarl]

Hey Jeff.

Glad my build helped. Yours is looking good.

Karl