Building a Yardmaster Tower

[nycjeff]

Since the forum is back up and running, I thought that I would start a build thread for one of my scratchbuilds.I'm still trying to figure out how the new system works, so my apologies in advance for any mistakes,

When I bought this magazine an article by Jim Kelly about a yard tower that he built caught my eye.





Here is a picture of Jim's tower.





The third picture shows the article.







The fouth picture shows a closeup of the walls of the tower.




In my next post I will start the construction of my version of this tower. Sorry if my formatting and spacing is irregular, I'm still figuring out how to work the new system.

[GPdemayo]

Neat tower.....I'll be looking in Jeff. 

[nycjeff]

Hello Greg, thanks for looking in. I think that it's a nice looking tower as well. Very railroady. Plus, the Big Four in the New York Central Ohio division which is the road that I model had yard and switch towers built on framed steel bases similiar to this one. So even though this tower was actually a California area prototype I feel that it has enough in common with my area that I can make it fit on my layout.

[nycjeff]

So, continuing on...

My first step was to make drawings of the walls of the tower. Using the dimensions from the magazine article I drew wall designs using the door and window placements seen in the article. I almost always use Tichy doors and windows for my scratchbuilds. They have a great assortment available, at reasonable prices and they ship quickly. After laying the doors and windows on the drawings, I decided that I liked the look of the arrangement.



I cut the walls from Northeastern Scale Lumber 1/16 clapboard material and laid out the window openings. Again, I use Northeastern for good availabilty, pricing and timely shipping.



It may be hard to see, but I drill small holes at the four corners of the opening with my pin vise before cutting the opening with my hobby knife. I find the the corner holes help me to make the knife cuts easily and cleanly.



Here I flipped one of the walls over to more clearly see the corner holes that I make with the pin vise. I usually make about five cuts with the hobby knife to finish each side cut. It's not advisable to try to make the cut with fewer strokes by pressing down harder with the knife. By using light pressure with more strokes you get a cleaner cut with fewer mistakes, a lesson that I learned from experience.



Here you can see that I used 1/8 square wood for bracing the walls. Notice that on two of the walls the bracing is right on the edge of the walls. The other two walls have the side bracing moved 1/8 inch in from the edge. This allows the walls to fit together snugly when gluing them together. I will add more bracing along the top and botttom of each wall as well. You can see from the picture that I label each wall and also mark the top with an arrow. I usually brace the front and rear walls right on the edge and the side walls with the bracing moved the 1/8 inch in. This helps me remember what I'm doing and avoids confusion for me.

That's it for now, more later.

[Keep It Rusty]

Looking forward to this one, Jeff. Interesting little structure.

[ACL1504]

Jeff,

Me three, I've got a seat in the front row and looking forward to the build.

Tom 

[nycjeff]

Thank you Craig and Tom for looking in. I had a lot of fun building this tower and am very pleased with the final result. Sometimes when you see a particular structure it just speaks to you and you have to have it on your layout. This happened to me with this tower. Jim Kelly did a great job with the original and the magazine article I referenced also has a couple of pics of the prototype. I'm hoping to do it justice with this build thread.

As an aside, It took me some trial and error to figure out the new system, but it seems to be working pretty well for me now. Once I attached a picture to my work in progress post it took me a while to figure out the blue insert arrow. I resize all of my pictures to 750 x 500 pixels (?) and I like how they look when inserted into the post. Good job Craig.

[nycjeff]

Continuing on...



Here I have already used my AI solution on the walls and drybrushed a coat of light grey craft paint to the two walls on the right. AI solution is a mix of 70% alcohol and a small amount of India Ink. The more ink you add to the alcohol the darker the mix, be careful, it's much easier to add the ink a little at a time to get a solution that's right for you. Staining the wood wall material with the AI gives the walls a weathered look that I like.



Here are the craft paint colors that I used on my tower walls. New York Central, the railroad that I am modeling, liked to use a two tone grey color scheme on its railside structures. I used the lighter grey for the wall material and the darker grey on the doors, windows and trim.



Jumping ahead a little. I've glued the walls together and here I've added a cardboard bottom floor to the tower. I used some of the 1/8 square bracing material to provide a gluing surface for the floor. This also adds extra stability to the walls.



Here I've added the second story floor to the tower. Again I glued some bracing material to the walls at the correct height and glued in a piece of cardboard.

In the two previous pictures if you look at the wall corners you can see how the vertical wall bracing that I mentioned earlier fit together. Bracing your walls in this manner gives a lot of gluing surface when assembling the walls and helps make a square and tightly fitted together building.

Looking real closely at the wall corners you can see the tops of the 1/16 wood corner trim pieces. When you brace the walls the way I explained you get an open space at the wall corners that the 1/16 square wood fits perfectly.

This thread is moving along quickly because I did this build last year during the dark time when we did not have the forum.

That's it for now, more later.

[nycjeff]

Continuing on...



The walls have been assembled, the doors and windows installed, signs applied and corner trim pieces attached. I used acetate from my stash for the window glass. I use Aileen's Tacky Glue to attach the glass and any window shades which I usually make from colored construction paper.
Most of the signs come from FOS kits. I think that FOS has the best signs in the hobby and I always make extra copies of sign sheets that come with their kits.







Here are views of the rest of the assembled walls.

[nycjeff]

Next was the tower roof. I used cardboard for the roof. First I made paper templates to determine the best size and height. I went through several different variations before finding one that suited me. I then cut the four roof pieces and taped them together with blue painters tape. I then painted the underside of the eaves.



I used colored construction paper cut into 3/8 inch wide strips for the roofing material. After the four main sides were done I cut thinner strips for the seams and glued them on. I use full strength white glue for the roofing strips. I then applied some light weathering chalks.



Here I've applied the rafter tails. This is always tedious work, but it's worth it in the end. The rafter tails are always a notable detail on finished builds. I cut them longer than needed for application and then let the glue dry overnight and then trim them to size the next day.

Next will be the construction of the steel framed base for the tower. In this case it means switching from wood material to styrene.

That's it for now, more later

[nycjeff]

Here are the different styrene shapes that I used for the base of the tower.



I guess that I forgot to take pictures while building the base or I somehow lost them. I know that I first made scale drawings and then cut the styrene pieces to fit. I used super glue for the assembly. After assembly was complete I sprayed the base with rattle can primer grey.





Two more pics off the completed base.

[nycjeff]

Next up is the fun part of the build- the wood landings and the stairways.



Stairways can be intimidating unless you buy pre made stringers and use a jig. This one comes from Rail Scale Models, but I know that several other companies sell them as well.



Here is what comes in the package. You get enough for several sets of stairs and the price is reasonable.



Here is the jig I used. This one comes from KC's Workshop another company that sells stair kits. The long thin cutouts in the jig are for placing the stringers. You can make several different widths of stairs. I usually tape the stringers in place before gluing any treads on, it just makes it easier if things aren't moving around on you.

Using these stair kits makes an otherwise daunting task much simpler. If you haven't tried one of these I definitly recommend it. They are worth their weight in gold.



Before building the stairs you first have to have a place for them to go. Here are scale drawings for the three landings that I needed to get from the ground to the top of the tower.
The short lines are marks for where the stairs will attach to the landings.
To make sure that everything fits together when done you have to make careful measurements at this point. To help myself, I made cardboard templates of the landings and held them in place against the tower to make sure that they fit right and looked good.
Next time we start on building the landings.

That's it for now, more later

[nycjeff]

To build the landings I first constructed a frame with 3/32 square wood and then glued 2x6 wood around the perimeter. The 2x6 is taller than the 3/32, this allows me to use 2x6 floorboards that are even with the top of the perimeter boards. All of the wood used here was pre-stained with my AI solution.



Two completed landings with railings made from 2x4 wood are shown here. This picture also shows the scale drawing for one of the stair railings, also made from 2x4 wood.



The other two stair railings are being built here. The picture also shows one of the completed stairways.



This picture shows the styrene piece that the competed tower will be attached too. I laid out the four legs of the steel frame tower base and one stairway support post. I taped off these areas so that I could put paint and scenery material on the styrene and leave a clean spot for the legs to be glued to the styrene.

[nycjeff]

I made "concrete" bases for the legs from some larger pieces of wood. I cut the wood square and then rounded the edges with a file. After this, I painted the wood with a dark grey concrete color. The rectangular piece at the lower right is a landing for the bottom stairway.
You can see that I have glued the first landing to the steel framed tower base and installed a wood support post. Nothing is glued at this point. I wanted to make sure that everything fit before applying any scenic materials.



I painted the styrene with a tan colored paint and while still wet I sprinkled on some of my base scenery dirt. I then glued the tower base to the styrene and installed the first stairway.

 

This picture shows the styrene shapes I used for the window awnings. Again, I experimented with paper templates before cutting any styrene. This method makes any adjustments easy to make.
I went online for awning styles and printed out one that I was happy with. I then cut the paper awnings to fit the styrene and glued them together.



Here's a closer look at the bottom portion of the structure. I've added a few scenic detail castings. You can also see the second stairway leading up to the second landing.

That's it for now, more later.

[Mark Dalrymple]

You're modelling up a storm there, Jeff.

Great progress.

Cheers, Mark.