The back side of the hotel (above) reveals details that won’t be seen by anyone who visits the layout. The red colored shades were used for the dining room. Rear access doors were placed at each end of the building. The wood siding (below) was cut from a
large plank of basswood, then re-cut to the final size with a Micro- Mark precision table saw. The recessed top edges of the ship-lap siding were made with a router bit. The siding was applied to the sides before it was stained and dry-brushed for weathering.
dle of ammonia to remove the floor wax. The piece was carefully rinsed in warm water and set aside to dry.
I didn’t have any thin acrylic plastic,
.005″ styrene or acetate on hand for the windows, but I did find an old page pro- tector in a pile of office supply items on my desk. It was the kind made from ac- etate punched for use in a three-ring binder and had a piece of black craft pa- per inside. The acetate was thin enough for what I wanted.
Calipers were used to measure the width of the sashes and that measure- RAILROAD MODEL CRAFTSMAN
ment was transferred to a paper cutter. It did not take as long as I thought to cut thin strips of acetate, then trim them to length. The individual pieces were attached to the sashes with cyanoacrylate.[Usually, cyanoacrylate cement fogs plastic glazing. Glues like Weldbond or canopy cement, or even Future, may be used instead. EDITOR] Window shades were painted on the inner surface of the acetate. I used the Ivory White on most of the single-width windows and Santa Fe Red on the cus- tom-built double wide ones. The three
single-width windows at the front of the second floor suite for the mine manager were painted with Folk Art Clover. After the single coat of paint was dry, I held one window up to the light and noticed the uneven density of the paint. An additional coat or two of the respec- tive paint color evened things out. The painted portions of the windows were given a final coat of black acrylic paint to eliminate any chance of uneven paint densities from being visible when lighting would be added to the interior. With the windows completed, they were glued into their respective holes with a couple of dots of Aleene’s Tacky Glue and pressed in position. Some rooms had their window shades pulled all the way down, suggesting that they housed miners who had completed their shift and were sleeping. When all the windows were installed on a side, the building was laid on the bench with that side facing upward and Future Floor Wax was again applied to each of the acetate panes and allowed to dry. When dry, the effect was that of old window glass, which was clear but not quite smooth. For an even greater effect I applied a second coating of wax. (You often come across such wavy glass at historic buildings.)
Front porch and balcony The hotel has a front porch running 69
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