On the Workbench #3…

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.

Roof section with the hole drilled for the smokestack.
Roof section with the hole drilled for the smokestack.

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 interior of the round house painted.
The interior of the round house painted.
The exterior of the roundhouse with it's coat of paint in place.
The exterior of the roundhouse with it’s coat of paint in place.
Close up of the interior painted with the roof sections in place.
Close up of the interior painted with the roof sections in place.
Longer view with the roof sections in place. Better view of the smokestacks.
Longer view with the roof sections in place. Better view of the smokestacks.

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”.

View from above with the roof sections in place.
View from above with the roof sections in place.

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…

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