A Tale of Two Buildings

It seems that no matter how many structures you build there is always a need for something special, more buildings or just something you want to try.  This is the story of a time when all of those needs popped up.  I have kitbashed a few buildings over the years but never built anything using the modular kits that are available.  Now is the time to push forward.  There were basically two manufacturers that had modular kits available in N Scale, Woodland Scenics and Walthers.  I used both for two different areas I was working in.

Planning

With either of the manufacturers you can print templates of the various modular kits.  It is highly advisable to take these printed templates cut them out and make a rough mock up of the building before actually starting construction.  This gives you the chance to get a feeling for what the building will actually look like in place and make any changes.

Not the best looking thing you can have but it serves it's purpose and gives you an idea of size and fit of the structure. Once the paper mockup is done, and any adjustments made, You will know how many of each piece you are going to need to complete your building project.  This paper mockup was for the Milling and Woodwork building just outside the Jeff City Yard.  For the backdrop structure I did not use a mockup.

 

Milling and Woodwork - Jeff City Yard Area - Walthers Modulars

As with all building projects it always helps to have a sharp hobby knife, plenty of applicators for gluing, decent lighting and a good pair of eyes and a lot of patience.  Well I have 3 of the five anyway.  This structures is actually two buildings connected by an overhead walkway.  It may or may not get the connecting walkway anymore but time will tell. 

For this project I used the Walthers Cornerstomne Modulars  kits, I understand these are no longer available in N Scale.  You have to go back to the planning phase and make sure you have the right quantities of each of the pieces you will need since the kits come in various types.  Kits we used are the;

1) Flat & Peaked Roofs

2)Small Walls, Windows and doors

3)Large Walls and Windows

4)Foundation and Loading Docks

5) Wall Columns and Caps

6) Walls with Vehicle Doors.

 

I laid out the pieces needed for each wall and then proceeded to build each side of the main building with the various pieces in my jig. We have always used MEK for the adhesive in working with plastic models and if you do make sure it is in a well ventilated area.

                         

Once all walls were assembled it was time to begin attaching them together to complete the building.  As you can tell I have already made some changes from the paper mockup.  The truck loading dock is now inset and provided shelter by the 2nd floor.

                         

Assembly of the smaller annex building followed the same procedures and I still haven't decided if I should join them together or not.                              

Finally the ultimate test, how does it look on the layout?

                             

Eventually it will get painted, detailed and weathered when we finish the Yard area but for now we will leave this structure. 

Jeff City - Superior Gear  backdrop structure - Woodland Scenic Modules

For the Backdrop structure used the modules  available from Woodland Scenics.  The modules used were;

1) Two-Story Blank Walls

2) Two-Story 12 Windows

3)Cornice

4) Dock Level Freight Doors

5) Street/Dock level Blank Wall

6) Dock Level Windows

I had the general idea in my mind what I wanted this structure to look like so I skipped the mockup and started laying out the pieces that were going to be used.  This is the area that I was working with, same general area where Stephen provided the large modern concrete warehouse in the last blog. I also took the time to start on the scenery in the same area (Next Blog).

I wanted something a little different than just a flat ground base so I elevated the track a bit using foam board.  The lumber distributor will sit directly in front of this backdrop building.

 

 

 

 

While it is a backdrop structure I didn't want something sitting perfectly flat against the backdrop so the Office walls were angled a bit and the 2nd floor of the warehouse extended outward from the backdrop.

 

Since I was also working on the scenery on this section of the layout This structure was taken back to the workbench and painted, weathered and some details added.

When I paint a brick structure there are a couple of techniques that I like to use.  On this structure the brick was painted with acrylic paint that had been thinned with water.  After that had dried I applied a thin wash of Acrylic paint to simulate the mortar lines.  For this wash I used a mixture of aged concrete and white paint.  Doors and window frames were painted pullman green and the roofs painted grimy black.  A cheap way to give your roofs an aged appearance is to take some plaster dust, I had just been sanding down a road to make it smoother, on your fingers and wipe it onto the roof.  Cheap easy way to dull down the roof.  Mentioning the roofs, I did cheat a little here.  Woodland Scenics do not have a module with roofs so I cut down some sections from the Walthers Cornerstone Modulars for this.

Some graffiti was added from Blair Line, some decals from MicroScale and I used some dry transfers from Woodland Scenics .  The dry transfers were used to simulate some old advertising signage on the building.  This was accomplished by applying the transfer and then taking a knife and scraping across the sign removing pieces of it.  It was then time to pull out the weathering chalks and add some final weathering before spraying the whole thing down with clear laquer (Cheaper than Dull Coat).

Finished backdrop structure in pace waiting for the rest of the scenery to be complete

 Overall I found it easier to work with the Woodland Scenics Modules but I also like the Flat and Peaked Roof Modulars from Walthers Cornerstone and isn't that what model railroading is all about?  If you can't find what you want KITBASH IT.

 Gary

NEXT UP: Starting Scenery in the Jeff City Area

N-Scale Picnic Table

I have been doing a bunch of reading about scratch building structures and ordered lots of styrene strips and sheets to start working on downtown buildings.  While I haven't exactly decided what type of building I want to attempt first, I did know that I needed a couple of picnic tables for the break area of the mill.  Using a picnic table plan that I found online and using .010 x .040 strip styrene, close to the N-Scale equivalent of a 2x6, I built the table top out of 5 strips and benches out of 2 strips side by side. It took me less than an hour and it turned out pretty nice.  Once I get a coat of paint on it, I think it will look great.

Mill Facility

The mill has been a long project and over the course of the project things keep changing.  It was originally going to cover a lot of ground with a few tracks for staging empties and fulls, a track for the local switcher, and pull through track for the elevator unloading.

This mill build actually started based on this set up and elevator (Walthers Kit), transfer building (PikeStuff), large warehouse/manufacturing building (PikeStuff), loading dock(Micro Engineering), and office(Micro Engineering).

This is where the mill stayed for almost 9 months.

In those nine months we chose to run a point to point layout instead of a loop which changed the placement of the mainline and siding for this area.  The mill land ended up swapping with the fuel facilities for this section of the layout and the buildings needed to be rearranged to fit the area available.

This is what we had settled on as a building arrangement.  There are a few things that we were not happy about with this arrangement, but we did not want to start over with the mill so we were happy enough.

Today I finally started to finish up the buildings on the facility and in the process of the finishing I was playing around with spacing again.  I have finally found a building layout that I am happy with again.

The finalized layout has the buildings back into an L shape and the area in the corner of the L we have decided to make into a concrete patio that we will be able to put a few picnic tables and benches.  The area will be great of adding workers taking lunch or coffee break.   

The mill still has a long way to go.  Lots of details to add, parking lots, sidewalks, bushes, roof details, lighting, interior of the office, and weathering.

Helix Approach

Started working on the sub-roadbed from the river crossing to the helix today.  The area will also including the siding tracks for Sedalia Quarry, and part of it will need to be removable to access the window.  I decided to put in spline roadbed, and had completed that when we decided that we could put in a small 8" deep lift out section and just scenic the whole area.

Since the bridges are still part of the incline grade to the helix, I notched out part of the supports for the spline to sit down at the correct level.  I used a 12" piece of plywood to clamp to the spline as it went in so that area stayed straight for the turnout to be placed there.

Here are a few pictures after a few of the spline have gone into place.  I seems we use a clamp spaced about every 4-6 inches to make sure it is held together nicely while the glue dries.  The area below the spline is covered with shop towels to catch any of the glue that drips out.  While I am very particular about no glue squeezing out on the top of the spline, I dont really care about the bottom.

This is the part where we decided to change it all up and add an 8" deep section of plywood that will be the lift out so that we can put some rural scenery around that tracks as it crosses over to the island of the helix.  Had we know we were going to do this at the beginning of the day I wouldn't have put in the spline roadbed, but now that both are in, it will look nice having the elevated track and have the scenery slope down from the track in front.

A couple pictures of a few of our locomotives lined up in the staging yard.

June Update

Staging Yard

The staging yard has now been completed, It has four stub end tracks and then a 5th that also serves as a reversing loop.  We have installed ground throws for the staging lead turnouts, the cost of tortoises didn't seem worth it for the staging area, especially since all turnouts are very accessible.  We used a Digitrax AR1 on the reversing loop to control the power of the isolated track.

 

River Crossing & Sedalia Quarry

When the trains enter the layout from the east staging, they enter here on the lower track of the river area representing the track between St. Louis and Jefferson City running along the river and through some rock outcroppings.  Once the train has passed through Jefferson City it begins its climb up to these bridges that cross a river here on the way to Sedalia, where we have decided to make home to a Quarry.  The Quarry will have a siding off of the mainline here before the mainline crosses over the staging to where the helix will be (above St Louis Staging).

These are the two areas that have been much transformed in the past few days.  For the basic landforms we have used a few different methods.  Most of the river area is cut from 2" thick foam board, the rock cliff between the river and lower tracks is made of layered ceiling tiles, and the Sedalia are is masking tape on cardboard strips.  All area have now been covered in plaster and soon will be on to paint.

Milling Facility

While the layout continues to change, the milling facility has been through many different configurations.  This is the latest and hopefully final configuration of the buildings to best fit the space, now I just need to finish the buildings, foundations, loading dock, windows, doors, details.  The roadbed has finally gone down into the facility, a pull through track just behind the elevator, holding track next to it, and then the short track in front of the elevator will the the locomotive holding track for the town that the Milling and Fuel facilities reside in.