Wichendon Machine Shop (restart)

[deemery]

The boiler house and main shop will have to be attached when I put the whole thing on the layout.  (I've done test-fits.)  There's not enough gluing surface on the boiler shop for it to hold to the machine shop and stay attached when I lift the whole assembly up.  Thus I've had to do a lot of figuring out how to slide the machine shop into position for final installation (which will be a bit awkward given its location.  Final installation will have to wait until I get the backdrop installed behind it, and then scenery.

The boiler room roof will have to slide over the forge smokestack and the 'stud' for the boiler smokestack.  The boiler smokestack is the same diameter the whole length, but the forge smokestack has pieces at top that are larger diameter than the stack.  So after the roof is installed, I'll have to finagle flashing to cover that hole.  Flashing for the boiler smokestack will be a lot easier. 

The last (?) decision I need to make is whether I install guy wires for the boiler smokestack.  At this point, I may not bother, I'm getting burned out on this project (once again :-) )  I do want it done by the end of the year.

By the way, the boiler is semi-scratchbuilt.  It's patterned after the SS Ltd kit, but a bit smaller, to make use of some old cast parts (Wabash Valley?  Red Ball?) I found in my parts box.  Those parts included the front and back, plus the smokestack ring.  I added a dome from a locomotive(?) casting, including pop valves and whistle from brass steam parts.  The sides are SS Ltd brick paper, with Plastruct channels., and the top is SS Ltd metal panel paper.  There's an injector on the side from a brass loco part, a single (should be 3) valve casting, and the steam gauge.  The steam gauge was bashed from an insulin pen needle cover, a little piece of reuse I'm particularly proud of.

dave

[elwoodblues]

Dave,

You are making great progress on the machine shop, your modeling is incredible.

[Jerry]

Looks great Dave, it sure will be a focal point on the layout.

Jerry

[deemery]

Now the boiler room -should be square-, but it got skewed during assembly.  I first cut and fit paper templates, then I transferred that to a piece of 'recycled' clear styrene (not sure where I got this piece, but I often use the clear covers from packages of Christmas Cards.).  I trimmed that to fit:


The roofing material for the boiler room is (metallic) corrugated metal.  I'll cut those into correctly sized sheets (4 x 8 ) weather, and then glue the sheets to the clear plastic.  Finally I'll trim the holes for the two smokestacks.  At least that's the plan for tomorrow.

dave

[deemery]

Here's a link pointing to some great information on mill building and corrugated iron:  https://www.narrowgaugechaos.com/ER/ER_CorrugatedIron.html  The two points of interest for me are (1) sheet sizes tended to vary, but 9' x 28" seems to be a typical mid range value.  (2) the sheets were painted at the factory.

dave

[Philip]

Looks just a tad bit out of square. Nice fixture from that link!

Back when I research corregated roofing they had around 20 lands and grooves per sheet at 26" width. But width vary. My personal favorite is the 5V roofing.

Philip

[deemery]

The corrugated iron roof is done.  Remember, these were attacked to a clear styrene subroof ('ciear' to make sure I cut out the holes for the smoke stacks correctly.)

I built a little jig to make sure each segment was cut from the corrugated stock the same size.  This is a scrap piece of styrene with a smaller piece cut as a stop.  I made sure the stop was parallel to the edge of the jig.  I aligned the material with the jig, pushed the two up to the end of the paper cutter, double-checked the material was square to the blade (pushed against the stop at the back of the paper cutter), and chopped...


Previously I had primed the corrugated material a medium-dark neutral grey.  I touched up the bright spots where the paint flaked off, then applied 3 layers of Pan Pastels.  The first is extra dark, to catch shadows.  The second is lighter grey, for highlights, and the third was a very light coat of rust.


And the result, in position:


With this, I declare this structure complete! It was quite a long project, but I'm glad to finish it this year.  Still lots of work to do backdrop, scenery, on-location details, etc.

One more, on location:


The first post in this thread was May 12, nearly 8 months ago...

dave

[ACL1504]

Dave,

The overall look is fantastic. I also like the brick boiler. Coming along nicely

The roof on the boiler house/shed looks natural.

Tom

[PRR Modeler]

Looks great Dave.

[jbvb]

Looks good, Dave.

I'm free of the Trolley Museum for a couple of months; if there's anything on your to-do list that takes more than 2 hands, let me know.

[Larry C]

Dave fantastic job the the Shop all the way around and looks great set in place.

[elwoodblues]

Dave,

The time and effort you put into this build was well worth it.  That is a great build you have there.

[friscomike]

Howdy Dave,

What a journey.  Thank you for sharing the Foundry Chronicle with us. The structure is constructed well and features many unique and interesting additions.

Have fun,
mike

[deemery]

Looks good, Dave.

I'm free of the Trolley Museum for a couple of months; if there's anything on your to-do list that takes more than 2 hands, let me know.

It'll have to wait until the driveway is safe to walk on.  Right now it's a sheet of ice 

dave

[Ensign]

Dave, it's a wonderful looking structure, both inside & Out!
You should be very proud of yourself with this one.

Greg