house with a truck lift, engine house, office, warehouse, and loading dock. Most of the structure was built of styrene, with the exception of the cast components and exterior metal sheath- ing. During construction, walls, floors, and roofs were assembled dry and held in place with narrow strips of drafting tape to check for square and proper fit, then disassembled and reassembled as building progressed.
Pit
The pit at Hill City was below ground level. The model pit walls are a one piece plaster casting made from USG Casting Plaster and formed in a two part mold. An auger was located inside the pit to move grain to the legs. It was con- tained in a box connected to the deliv- ery chutes from the storage bins. On the model, the floor that supports the auger was built up from styrene, and the deeper “pit” accommodates the bot- tom of the legs.
Storage bins
There were thirteen storage bins ranging in capacity from 370 to 4,150 bushels. These six large bins were built from Evergreen Scale Models No. 3025 scribed styrene (passenger car siding), laminated so that the scribed surfaces faced outward to represent the cribbed walls. The floors, built using jigs, were slid into place between the bins. Making jigs from stripwood and basswood sheet to build the many mod- el parts became a sub-hobby, and they filled a shoebox size container. The technique for coloring the styrene to simulate wood is as follows:
HILL CITY, IDAHO; AUG. 1987
Grain elevators, like this one in Hill City, Idaho (above), were once common sights along rail lines in western prairie towns. To make the task of modeling the grain elevator easier, the structure was broken down into more manageable sub-assemblies. Pictured here (below left) are some of the walls, roofs and other components that made up the model. To model the pit in which farmers unloaded their grain wagons and trucks, a two-part styrene mold was made (below right) to hold the casting plaster used for the pit walls.
1. Lightly sand away the sheen with 400 grit sandpaper and wash. 2. Brush paint the styrene with a 1:1 dilution
of Floquil Foundation and thinner using a soft bristle brush or a
microbrush, depending on the complex- ity of the surfaces you are coloring. The objective is to apply the paint thinly with a minimum of brush strokes. Al- low this to dry overnight.
RAILROAD MODEL CRAFTSMAN
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