For this edition of on the workbench I will continue with the roundhouse as that’s all that I have had time to do. I won’t have time to do major construction on the layout for about another two weeks.

Last I left you I had a list of things yet to do. I have been slowly working my way down that list. First I got the service pits in and painted, as well as the windows and service door at the end, the large doors won’t be installed till the roundhouse is put in place.

Then the tracks went into place.

Looking at the pictures I guess I did the doors and windows after these pictures. Then came the weathering. I do enjoy this and slowly worked my way up to where I’m happy with it, working stall to stall. The staining on the floor represents dirt, oil and rust stains.

Next was the lighting, but first I added the details to the interior. Tool boxes, oil barrels with lubricating grease, jacks, acetylene tanks, etc. Figures to be added as I figure out there placement.

In the past when I have added lighting to past roundhouses, I had a pair of buss wires for each row of lights. This time I ran one buss and then ran all the wires to it. I also ran the wires from the lights on the backside of the beams as viewed from the cutout opening. I then painted all the wires including the buss wires a flat white so that they would blend into the ceiling.

And the finished product with the overhead lighting off and with the roof panels set in place ( which i have repainted a flat black).

While adding details to the interior, I came across an electric hoist on a beam in the junk box. I decided to add it to the interior. It would not be large enough to handle an entire engine , as some facilities would have, but rather larger items (such as the compressors as pictured). I staged a couple of shots to show work in process just for fun.

So what’s left to do, well:

Place more workers in the roundhouse.

Install roof sections.

Prep it’s final resting place. Which means getting the turntable installed

That’s where I’m at for now. Till later – Happy Railroading…

For this installment of On the Workbench I will be showing the progress on the roundhouse. However, first an apology.

It’s been a month and a half since my last post and at the end of it I had hoped you had a good summer and that you would have a great Fall. Well here we are, well into Fall and I’ve been silent. For that I’m sorry. For work we have a large trade show in New York in early October. So for a couple of weeks before hand is very busy. Then there are two weeks in New York and the last week has been all the follow up work.

That’s not to say that I haven’t gotten anything done, just no time to share it. When I left you last I had the basic structure done and it was time to head of to the paint booth.

Before I share that odyssey, one thing that I did and forgot to point out was the smokestacks on the roof. With the advent of steam engines coming with more features, one being that more are coming with working smoke, I made a minor modification to the roof sections with stacks.

The actual smokestacks with the kit are hollow, so I drilled a hole in the middle of the pad that the stack sections mount to. Now if an engine has working smoke and is parked in the roundhouse, the smoke will actually go out through the smokestack. Waiting to see if it actually works.

Now painting. I had painted the concrete floor before the walls or support beams were in place. So the first thing I had to do was mask the entire floor. I then shot the whole structure with grey primer. My intention was to the paint the lower portion of the walls with a grey paint because any industrial business does this because that’s where most of the dirt happens. Looking at the primer I felt that it would be a little redundant. So a masked off the lower 4 scale feet of the walls and painted the rest of the interior a flat white. After that I further masked off the window openings and painted the exterior of the building. Unfortunately I did not chronicle the journey, I only have the finished photos.

The last thing that I painted was the roof sections. The underside was painted a flat white, while the exterior side was painted a roof brown. Thought about a flat black which is probably more prototypical for the type of roofing, but I wanted the there to be a visual difference between the roofing and the smokestacks. Epic fail.

Testors owns or owned both Model Masters paint and Polly Scale paint. For those who don’t know, Polly Scale was where you went if you were looking for acrylic paint in railroad colors. One of those being “Roof Brown”. Testors got rid of Polly Scale and merged the colors into their Model Masters line. You would think that they would have used the same formula, however they didn’t. The new “Roof Brown” isn’t anything like their old “Roof Brown”. The color sucks and I will have to repaint in a flat black. Which I should have used in the first place. Oh hindsight.

Anyhow, here are the roof sections in place painted in “Roof Brown”.

Obviously I had not glued them in place yet, as there is a ton of work to be done on the interior.

Next up:

1. The service pits.
2. The rail sections.
3. Weathering the interior walls and floors.
4. Adding details and figures.
5. Adding the light fixtures, of which there will be something like 29 of them.

Of course the windows and doors have to go in too.

So, that’s where I’m at. Till next time, Happy Railroading…

Still been really busy, so I’ve been working at the workbench on the roundhouse as I have time. When I left you last time I had only three stalls done. One thing I noticed as I read through the last post is that I didn’t really explain why the brick facing on the inside off the walls. As they say a picture is worth a thousand words:

As you can see without the facing you can see the raised and lowered casting for the details on the outside of the walls. By adding the bracing and facing you can hide all that.

I continued adding stalls.

In the above I had finished up to the cutout. I do have the whole basic structure done. This is probably obvious from the fact that the short end wall was pictured above.

While surfing online looking at pictures of roundhouse interiors for ideas, I noticed that the interior roof was very evident in all the pictures. While i have all the support beams in place, something I would have to add is rafters. I decided to add these to the underside of the roof sections rather the gluing them in place on the beams. This would make it way easier to add interior detail and as well as painting and weathering. I used .040 X .100 styrene strips, a little big scale wise, but it looks right when set in place with the support posts/beams. They are set on approximately 2 foot centers.

What you see above is what I got done before I ran out of strips. It also represents the total inventory for 2 of the local hobby shops. Luckily I still have two more I can hit and see what they have.

Below is a series of pictures showing what it looks like with the finished pieces set in place.

Since I had time but no supplies, I started masking the floor so I could prime and paint the main part of the structure.

So, that’s where I’m at. As I have time I will continue working on the roundhouse and keeping you up to date with my progress. I hope you’ve had a good summer and will have a great fall.

Till next time, Happy Railroading…

Wow, it’s already mid August and the list of projects around the house continues to grow. All of which needs to get done before the snow flies here in Minnesota. The good news is that I’ve put all the wood cutting projects on a calendar so that even if I’m not able to actually to get any actual work done on the benchwork, I’ll have everything ready to go even if the weather turns cold.

So with the free time that I’ve had, I decided to start the roundhouse. Probably jumping the gun, with so many other small projects started. But it sounded the like the most fun.

First thing I did was to glue all the base sections together. After I had them glued together, I scribed in concrete panel lines as I doubt anyone would pore one humongous slab.

I kept the them to around 10ft sections, as this seems to be around what is done in the real world. After I had them all scribed I positioned the base on the layout and marked, then cut out the rounded section that intersects the layout edge. I primed and painted the base in a concrete color.

One of the differences between Walther’s roundhouse and their modern roundhouse is that the interior walls are not detailed. The modern roundhouse has brick detail on the interior walls where as the regular roundhouse does not. Since the interior is very visible I had to add interior brick work to the walls.

Once the end wall was done it was off to the races. I glued the end wall into place and the first inner support beam section. Then I glued the front end wall section (the one that supports the doors) and the transom section into place to set the correct spacing. I then added cross bracing that matches the support beams.

Once I finished those I added the end wall, also with brick facing on it. Then it was on to the next section. and so on and so forth.

You will also notice that I removed a little of the brick work around the windows so that the window casting will sit into place.

One other thing I noticed as I was looking at the pictures is that I will need to A: get the backdrop into place and B: put into place any backdrop buildings behind the roundhouse before it goes into place. Because wow, it would suck to try and place them working over this finished scene.

Well that’s what I’ve been up to. I will continue to update as more progress happens. Stay tuned…

This is my early April update ( hoping I get enough done between now and the end of the month to have a late April update). With work at home and travel for business, I haven’t had large blocks of time to work on anything major. I have had time to keep working on my main street buildings though.

I have finished off the Bookstore building. When I left off last time I was working on the roof. To get a little more depth to the roof I used masking tape cut down to a scale size to simulate rolled roofing material.

With a coat of flat black paint it turned out pretty well. I didn’t airbrush it, but rather brush painted it. The color is less uniform and looks more like a tarred roof.

I will add fine details after the building is in place.

To finish this block I pulled a couple of old buildings I had previously built out of one of the storage totes. One was City Classics “food Market” and the other was a nondescript brick building. It’s a Kibri kit reboxed and sold by Walther’s. The market needed some touch up to the paint and still needs some kind of interior. I have been looking for suitable photos to print. It has large windows and even with the window banners in place, the empty interior is still obvious.

The brick building on the other hand needed a lot of help. It needed a coat of paint for the brick and stone work details. I added an awning and a photo of a hardware interior. Why a hardware store? I had a Woodland Scenics  dry transfer sheet that had a large hardware store decal that looked good on the blank wall that overlooks the parking lot between it and the bookstore. Thus a hardware store.

Also the buildings were chosen for there height. The buildings taper down from the bookstore to the market. After these commercial building will be a residential neighborhood and I didn’t want a abrupt change visually.

Anyways, here is what it looks like:

Again, fine details will be added to the block once installed on the layout. These will include: street lights, road signs,  parking meters, trash cans, fire hydrants, etc. Also, the streets will be weathered and markings applied once they are all in place.

In the past I have always done all this work on the layout. Doing this on the work bench has been much easier and more enjoyable.

I have one more commercial block to finish and will be starting that soon.

Stay tuned and Happy Railroading…

I apologize as this may be my only March Update. Work is very busy and will be so through the end of April. Add to that spring is here early and there are things that need to be done around the house. If I have a chance I will fill you in on what’s going on, if anything.

One of the things I have been working on when I get a little time downstairs is getting ready to wire up the staging yard. As I had mentioned, I plan on being able to cut the power to the individual tracks. Wanting more then a just the position of a toggle switch to tell me which track is on or off, I had planned on having an LED to indicate whether it was powered or not. Now for me wiring an LED is kind of scary because of the need for the proper resistor. And yes there are several different ways of figuring out  which is the proper size resistor. But being slightly math impaired, I would stare at these and my head would start to swim and they would simply make no sense.

So after reading many different articles on it (coming away more confused than when I started), I hit the forums. The basic take away that I got was that a 1.0K ohm resistor was a good starting point. I ordered a small selection of different values of resistors figuring that I would start big and work down till I found which worked best. If I killed a couple of LED’s along the way it was OK as I have plenty.

Turns out the 1.0K ohm 1/4 watt resistor was the way to go. I’m using 3 lead, bi-color (red/green) LED’s and DPDT on/on switches. I prepped everything and as they say, it was off to the races.

The other ongoing project on the workbench is a Walther’s Kit (walthers.com) of the Argosy Booksellers. I think this kit was first released by Magnuson Models as a resin kit. Walther’s then released it as a plastic kit, being that it was a model of their original home. It is a good subject, but the kit takes a lot of work as everything is added as layers. Think some of the German manufacturers like Faller or Kibri. I believe that this is the only kit that they tried this way and it’s just as well. While the Germans have this down, I’m sorry to say Walther’s failed.

The different layers are: the basic brick wall, the stone pilasters, the concrete (?) sills and headers for the windows, additional stone work trim and then the windows and doors. Some parts fit from the front and other pieces fit from the back, depending on the wall section. Even then, pieces that are mounted from the front on one wall, might mount from the back on a different wall. The castings aren’t that great either. They needed some filing and sanding to get them to fit properly. I had planned on painting the different pieces first and then assembling them but gave up on the idea.

So I assembled the wall sections, leaving off the window castings. These I painted separately and applied them after the walls were painted. I painted the whole assembly the brick color and hand painted all the trim work. Like I said, this has been an ongoing, long term project. My progress so far:

A couple of things that slowed me down were the roof, which is just a big flat piece of plastic on top of the building and adding the sidewalk. Since the building will be on the lower level, the roof is very evident. I added a couple of taller vent pipes, as well as a series of vent stacks. Also a roof access was added. Overall what was added all looks plausible, at least to me. I’ll probably add a TV antenna or two to finish it off. The last thing is to decide what type of roofing to add to finish it off.

The sidewalk was it’s own challenge. I use the sidewalks from the Walther’s street system. The problem is that they are not as wide as the sidewalks with their Merchant Row series of buildings, which form the basis of the scene. In order to widen the sidewalks, a piece of .080 x .100 styrene has to be added. Not a big deal, other then getting them to sit flat against the sidewalk, then sanding them to blend. All that’s left is to figure out the roofing and then add the printed sheets to the windows. And lights. And then weathering.

Great little projects when one doesn’t have a ton of time.

Like I said, if anything else happens I’ll let you know. I appreciate your patience and understanding.

Till later, Happy Railroading…