opening for the loading chute before re- turning to full-length boards. A couple of pieces of 2″×8″ were trimmed to length and glued in place vertically to finish framing this opening. The fourth wall presented a problem: I could not work on the glass surface since the other walls got in the way. I therefore braced this wall on the inside with some .060″×.250″ styrene strip to keep it flat while I added the cribbed wood boards.
Variations in the thickness of the wood after staining resulted in an in- teresting side effect. My walls ended up slightly wavy, as though some of the panels had sagged over time. I like the effect, as it contributes to the struc- ture’s apparent age and out-of-service status.
With the walls done, it was time to turn to the foundation.
The windows and doors were built up by using stripwood and real glass. The end walls were finished while the two longer side walls were still under construction. The window frames had been inked in on the end walls but didn’t look good. Alcohol on a swab removed the ink.
ter-weave the boards on the side wall with the boards on the finished end wall, so I started at the bottom and built up the wall, panel by panel. With two walls done, I added the oth- er end wall, then finished with the trackside wall, remembering to cut away the sub-wall around the opening
for the no-longer-present chute used to load boxcars with grain. When adding the wood to this wall, I built up the pan- el to the seven-foot mark. I then trimmed seven boards to 6′-0″ long and seven boards to 5′-4″ long. From the off- cuts, I cut seven 24″ boards and seven 16″ boards. I used these to create the
Wasabi peas, belts and suspenders I’ve never had luck casting plain walls in plaster, let alone walls with window and door openings. In addition, I wanted the look of a rubble stone foundation, so I decided to build the foundation walls as flat sections and blend them at the corners when I as- sembled the structure. I grabbed some .060″ thick styrene sheet and laid out two side walls. They are eight feet high and 39 feet long. I also made two end walls the same height and 29 feet long. I marked the openings for windows and doors, then used a nibbler tool to remove unwant- ed material and cleaned up my work with a file. I cut some strips of .015″ styrene a scale one foot wide and used them to add dams to the walls and openings. (At this point I should have painted the strips black. I went back and did this later but it would have been easier to do it previously.) A trip to the garage with an empty Wasabi pea can produced a few hand- fuls of clean, quarter-inch stone left- over from a landscaping project. I spread some full-strength white glue around the walls, poured a small pile of stone into the can lid and picked out the smaller pieces and interesting shapes to press into the glue. This sounds like tedious work, but it went quickly. (I picked the stones so that most of them sit proud of the styrene dams.) I let the glue cure, then used a spoon to apply some Woodland Scenics Mold- A-Scene® plaster to the stones. I worked this into the walls with an old toothbrush, which also helped break up the lumps in the plaster.
Here, the first floor walls have been joined to the cribbed wood walls. Note the corner construction. These areas of the model were filled in with more stones and plaster.
RAILROAD MODEL CRAFTSMAN
The next step was a bit like wearing a belt and suspenders, but I was wor- ried about how well the unmixed plas- ter would cure if I simply added water. 59
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