Elmer Lane 16 - Storage Shed

 DB says:

During the modelling day last week, Ev whipped up a goods shed for Waihao Forks (see previous post). This success prompted me to follow suit and build the big 'storage shed' that will hide the Kato turntable controller. 

This is conveniently labeled '29' on the partial Ian Coates pic from Steam Inclined below. This is a fairly tall building with a little brown door on the end, and 5 windows along the side facing the track, along with a little loading dock and door out there as well.

Since the Waihao Forks goods shed is quite tall, and Evan had put so much work into getting it all square and symmetrical, it has subsequently become the 'standard' building. I simply traced around his ends onto some Evergreen clapboard and added a lean-to out the back. This isn't on the prototype but will give me more coverage over the Kato turntable controller. This 'Forks' roof has a slightly steeper pitch than the prototype too, but nobody is going to notice that unless I tell them. Dammit. 

I added the loading dock door further leftwards on the windowed-side than the prototype, because I plan to have an LC of coal for the shed boiler down the right end. 

I then went to town on the windows, thinking I could get away with one or two, and ending up doing four. .030x.030 strip was used to add the middle sash which is prominent enough to show up on some aerial pictures of the depot. Test fitting:

Then in a flash of genius, spare acetone-laser-printed window grids left over from the roundhouse, were stuck in behind the walls, then a little bit of black card from a woodland scenics product was slapped along the back. This came out really well and I'll definitely use this idea on the other buildings here.

The eaves are some .080x.080 styrene strip and the roof is that same Metcalfe malthoid-tarmac-printed card used on the roundhouse roof, here a single piece was scored and folded twice. My brown trim is a bit orange here:

The loading dock is yet to be built, and ballast will be added up to the steps:

I may remove some of the lean-to roof for better access, or maybe shorten the depth of the whole lean-to. Arguably I didn't really need the unprototypical lean-to at all, but as they'd say on The Castle: "adds a bit of charm."

The plan was to glue this storage shed down, but there is the real possibility that the Kato box might need to be accessed at some stage in the future if the connections out the back come undone. Maybe I'll tack in down in a way it can be removed if need be.

Good, Good

Am_Fet throws caution to the wind and creates:

With advancing years comes wisdom (or so they say) and one of the things I've noticed about myself is that I'm loathe to start a project as I'm scared to muck it up.  And I think thats why noted modeller Grant Morrell gets so much done, he has no fear of failure and just rips in where us mere mortals are studiously drawing up plans, taking measurements and talking ourselves out of making the first cut until its time for a cup of tea.

Tony Koester of MR once made a similar observation.  He had a bridge to build and ended up doing a year of research with the main output being a pile of paper about as high as one of the bridge piers.  However, in the end he ignored it all and just gave it his best shot.

So.....Waihao Forks needs a Goods Shed, and while we build up the courage to fix the set of points I gloriously screwed up on my last visit to Oamaru it seemed like a good project to attempt.  Bullied by Mr Bond, I turned up with some Evergreen Clapboard and Metal Siding and had a ponder.

And this is where things went west reasonably quickly.  Now I know the shed is 60' x 30' (Its in the WTT) but DB said "That looks too long, just make it look right".....and suddenly we were off to the races.  Using the lines on the baseboard showing the building footprint, DB's Goods Shed for Moana and a KP wagon we hoped wasn't overheight, the first cuts in styrene were made.

Now this is where the purists clutch their pearls, snort into their brandies and fall off their chairs......a helluva lot of "Looks Good, Is Good" went on here.  I don't think I referred to a scaled drawing for the entire build.  With eyesight officially deemed "Not too Flash", it was a revelation to ignore that a piece was 77.4mm long and just round it up (or down) to where the markings on the ruler were bigger and easier to see.

I put off cutting the holes for the loading doors until I realised....I'll just model them closed!  The doors should be scribed wood....But the metal siding looks just as good.  DB did the only bit of work that looks like we cared when he did the internal framing visible inside, but thats all we did.  Some stolen "H" girder for the door tracks and it was pretty much done in under 90 mins.

There is still some titivation to do (barge boards etc, and I'm still not happy with the roof at one end), but I've built a goods shed.  The takeaways are that clapboard and metal siding styrene are god-sends, as is having someone to stand behind you to deliver a slap to the head when you start overthinking things.

Elmer Lane 15 - Stoning o'fence

 DB says:

With the arrival of Mr B the Younger on the premises a few days ago, we ventured downstairs. He, laden down with Evergreen clapboard and corrugated iron to build a goods shed, and I thought I might get a bit of ballasting done. 

However, since there was some plastic roofing iron in the house, I also thought I might make a little fence to provide some visible separation between the loco depot and the 'workshops tracks/staging yard' behind.

Some slices were slivered, painted and weathered. The latter being rust wash, grunge wash and some thinned track brown colour applied sporadically and randomly. While that was setting, some steel point rodding was snipped up (*ping* "anyone see where that went?"), little holes drilled, and then the whole lot glued in. 

This allowed the ballasting to proceed apace, with a nice fresh fence to butt up against. Similarly, some stripwood 'foundations' were glued in place for the storage shed and amenities buildings.

The ballasting was done with the usual methods well detailed in this blog previously.

Elmer Lane 14 - Roofed.

 DB spent a few minutes in the basement tonight finishing off the inner roof and then cleaning up all the mess for a modelling day tomorrow:

A bit of cleaning up to do, but the depot is coming along. Needs stacks, doors, weathering and some cleaning up.

I've yet to put the spare red cover bits between the window segments (see a few gaps below)

Elmer Lane 13 - Top Hat Roofing

DB bumbles onwards:

The back wall of the top hat windowless clerestory roof protrusion:

Stuck together:

Both walls of the upper walls installed:

Top hat roof going in by trial and error:

Top hat installed!

On the bottom half of the wall, a dark-topped piece of stripwood that the rear half of the main roundhouse roof will sit on. Halfway down some of the roof beams are little sections of further support:

Ooo, roof sections going on, cut by trial and error, 4 bays at a time:

Installed, and the intermediate bays marked with a black pencil:

It still needs smoke stacks, and it really should have skylights up by the top hat, but I couldn't quite be bothered. I may add these on the inside roof section, but there are two skylights per bay, with the smokestack in between so that sounds like a lot of work. 

Roof martial is Metcalfe ("made in Yorkshire!") printed card. They do bricks and tiles and the like but this is road surface. I used that black coloured pencil to 'paint' the white edges where I made cuts in the card before sticking things down.

Another thing I was stewing over was whether to install some lighting. As the whole thing lifts off and is completely open inside, that can always be done later, as it feels like this building build has already been going on long enough, and updates will become more sporadic over the next few weeks.

Went out trainwatching with Mr Wallace Friday night/Saturday morning and saw this guy on the way home (little blue penguin):

Elmer Lane 12 - On the Boil with the Roundhouse

DB getting steam up:

The roof 'fascias' have been completed now, on top of the corrugated plastic 'boards' added last time on the side that faces the turntable. This may barely be noticable in these pics, but was a bit of work front and back with about 30 segments being added. Made from square section stripwood prepainted/weathered. Here are the backside segments going on, this time onto the grey stripwood bits above the windows.:

All that work and you can barely see them. They will have a practical use though,  providing a fairly wide surface for the roof deck to be glued onto. They are prominent as the grey lines at the top of the black 'side/end' in the pic below.

Some of the workshop back-walls have been added and the shed boiler lean-to has been made (left 'stall' in the above pic).

A nice little distraction today was the shed boiler, presumably used for heating/hot water, boiler washouts and as a steam supply for blowers etc. The backside of this is quite prominent in many pictures sitting in the lean-to, such as this (cropped from a from Ray Mathewson picture). There is a concrete coal bunker outside (to the left)

 I made one up from some styrene tube whacked off to a guestimate length, angled at the back, and with a thick backhead glued on. I've already started shaping the top of this before the glue has set (You idiot!) The firebox sides are ready to go here (thin plastic):

Firebox sides installed, and a funnel perched on top, this is only half found as I had it spare and I'm running out of this tubing. It is tall because on the real thing it exits out a pipe through the roof. A steam dome was made from a round bit of this tube (but has no top!)

Getting a bit fancy now with some filler putty deployed above the firebox sides, some steam turret bits, a safety valve maybe, some sight glasses, dials/knobs on the backhead, and a steam take off pipe. Yes, I am just making all this up.

And painted/weathered. This whole creation probably took about ten minutes working time between other jobs and I reckon it looks pretty decent and fairly well proportioned for a complete hack job. 

Sitting unglued in place temporarily to see how it all looks:

Might have to put a light in there after all that effort! Maybe its a bit small (or my lean to is a bit big). The lean-to has a roof popped on as a test below:

Also visible there are some of the parts for the clerestory-with-no-windows pop-top that runs along the roofline. I painted more of that wonderful corrugated plastic sheet grey, weathered it and cut it up. Then the little white IKEA style tabs were added to the back at one end to facilitate glueing the next one. This is another thing I thought would take ages, but it didn't take long thanks to my patented Pick Up Sticks roof reinforcing.

You can see the side of this raised section that faces the turntable is complete all the way around. I'll make a matching backside (obviously with a slightly larger radius curve), and use spacers between the front and back with a pointy top that matches the black corrugated end profile to help me put the roof on top of this raised section. 

That's the next job I'm dreading.

Elmer Lane 11 - on a Roundhouse Kick, and Tidy Track painter pen review bonus

DB bumbles onwards:

I've been chipping away at the roundhouse for a few days here and there. When I started, it felt like this would take months, but progress has been fairly rapid.

A quick aside, and a little out of order, but I wanted to paint the track, as I reckon this looks good. I've done this with Rustoloeum spray cans in the past, which  is OK if you keep away from points, and hand painted my Z scale double tracker, but that's slow work. 

A Woodland Scenics 'Tidy Track' painting marker was procured last time I was in Christchurch as a novelty. Pretty pricey at about $23, but I thought it might be useful for some of the tricky bits. As track painting was nearing the top of my list of things to do, and there is a lot of tricky fan trackage, it was opened up for a try. 

Its a paint pen with a fibre tip that is spring loaded. You shake it up (with a little ball inside) press down on the tip a few times and it should paint. 

I thought mine was broken, because after shaking it for forever, and pressing on the tip again and again about 100 times, eventually a little brown discolouration appeared at the top of the tip. This eventually seeped its way down to the point and away I went. 

Initial thoughts: mmmm, not great, the hard fibre pen tip bounces off all the moulded track spikes, so there's not great coverage on the rail. But soon enough the tip starts to fluff up a bit and it starts covering nicely. It started humming away along the Peco 55. The Kato unitrack turntable pieces seemed to have sharper or more pronounced spikes, which tore up the tip more. As I went along, I wiped the tops of the rails with stripwood, to clear off the brown paint on the rail heads.

Eventually the tip got so fluffy as to be useless, but fortunately there is a spare in the package. 

I figured the pen might do some of the fan tracks and be an expensive and pointless experiment, but it covered all the track on the module, including the yet to be installed Hokitika balloon and straights, and most of the track was done on both sides... and I haven't run out yet. Its not the most precise weapon that exists, so I'll hand paint the turntable bridge rails, but its pretty quick once you get into the swing of things and a good colour. 

Final verdict: I'd do it again.

As for the roundhouse,  there are a millions ways to pat this proverbial cat, but I decided have the whole thing lift-offable so it can get carried in a box and not get smashed in transit.

The first step was to build the internal wooden pillars, as I figure you'll see them through the open doors. A jig was made, since I have to do everything 15-30 times! This is below in foreground of the pic here, made from some offcuts... and the output (an unpainted roof beam with three dark grey legs) between the DI and the roundhouse.

The roundhouse walls were stuck together in about the right places and then the leg sets were supported in a more or less vertical orientation and glued to the rear wall....

Random stripwood bits were then haphazardly glued across the tops of the unpainted beams to tie things together. Surprisingly this is solid and the whole roundhouse is pretty light so far.

About this time I was also adding 3mm sheet basswood under everything to bring the legs and track up to a consistent height, but the less said about that the better. It was painted the same concrete/Harvard grey as the module top.

Then some thin card 'concrete' was poured in a ring around the roundhouse fan tracks. Supported by stripwood. 

On the two most 'visible' roads to the 'left' by the crew buildings, I decided to put in some 'pits' by cutting out the sleepers.

Gluing the track onto some little 2x2mm strip

And painting the inside black.

We shall see if this is a good or stupid idea, but it didn't take long. 

The roundhouse progresses:

A little like the real 18 stall thing curtailed, this has are 15 to make it about the same shape as the original. Two normal bays to the left, then three longer workshop roads (the building should be twice as deep but here, but I have only room for 5-10cm), then one track that continued outside through the back wall of the roundhouse (the three workshop tracks and this through one survived as a 4-stall roundhouse through the 80s) and then I have 9 more normal bays to make 15 (the real one had an additional 3 normal bays to the right, but their bays were all more closely grouped - I'm stuck with the Kato turntable angles/spacings). All my 'regular' bays (11 in total) have nice back windows, the workshop bays have plain walls.

Front face vertical pieces have now been installed (Mitre 10 stripwood prepainted light grey):

These vertical pieces have now been joined with the start of the front face woodwork above the doors (the same ribbed plastic, prepainted light grey and weathered slightly since I don't have a local hobbyshop selling Evergreen styrene/balsa etc, and I'm too impatient to wait until next week):

And again the whole roundhouse is light as a feather, but its quite strong and and can be lifted off if work needs to be done - the track painted or cleaned, or the workshop floor weathered, as will come. There are several locating 'bumps' glued to the module that but against the roundhouse walls to ensure it is positively located in the same spot every time it goes flying and then returns. There is also a dark grey 'foundation' glued to the module that the roundhouse sits on. This will let me ballast up to that tidily without getting glue on the roundhouse itself.