Working from plans for the grist mill (above left), the dimensions were transferred to .040″ styrene (above right) and the doors and windows cut out. To achieve the sag the author used a stiff card- board template with a shallow curve to create the side walls. Paral-
lel pieces of painter’s tape, sticky side up, were attached to a piece of scrap plywood (below) and the individual pieces of stripwood were attached in preparation for the weathering process. The large group at the top has been treated with turpentine and acrylic paint.
there was no way I could imagine to get a styrene sheet of clapboard to assume a gentle horizontal sag. Nor was I espe- cially pleased with my skill at produc- ing a heavily weathered paint job on styrene.
modeling it, but when he had walked back to the mill ruins he was packing a tape measure and some plastic bags to collect paint samples. The results were accurate plans for the mill and a knowledge of the colors it had been painted. Brian is a great modeler, as his recent articles on modeling early EBT engines and cars in Carstens’ 2011 HOn3 Annual testify. His proto- type information gathering plus his modeling skills resulted in the wonder- ful grist mill model on his layout. When a copy of his plans arrived in my mailbox, I was finally ready to be- gin the project. Wooden grist mills are found all across the Mid-Atlantic region and many of them, like the 1851 mill at East Waterford, pre-date the Civil War. Virtually every agricultural communi- ty had a mill where local farmers could have their corn and wheat ground. Many (like this one) had originally been water-powered. Numerous grist mills survive to this day in good condi- tion, but others have succumbed to the elements. A great source for photos and information on grist mills is the Li-
RAILROAD MODEL CRAFTSMAN
brary of Congress website for the His- toric
American Building Survey
(
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ collections/habs_haer/). Today all that remains of the East Waterford mill is part of the stone foundation. While studying a prototype photo from the early 1900’s, I noticed that there appeared to be a sag in the build- ing. Given the eventual collapse of the mill, it got me thinking. While Brian models the TVRR and EBT before 1910, I was modeling the Tuscarora Valley R.R. in 1920. It would be inter- esting to try to model a 19th century wooden mill that by 1920 was showing signs of decay, the results of which I saw in 1985.
I therefore established two modeling
goals for my grist mill. Brian’s grist mill was modeled as structurally sound, but I wanted mine to be start- ing to sag. Brian’s circa 1905 version of the mill was freshly painted, but I wanted my model to be in need of a coat of paint. This immediately posed two modeling challenges. As much as I love to model with Evergreen styrene clapboard siding,
It turned out that the solution to both problems was the same: use strip- wood and board-by-board construction. I could create lots of individually- weathered boards following a method I had first encountered in the superb modeling of Chuck Doan (FineScale Railroader, The Modelers Annual, Win- ter 2008, pp.80-85). Some experimenta- tion confirmed that stripwood also was the best material to produce the de- sired building sag. This was a decidedly different set of modeling goals than I had been using. Unlike some modelers who prefer to have nothing but dilapidated struc- tures surrounding their trains, I was modeling a 1920 prototype (see my ar- ticle on the town of Port Royal in the June, 2009, RMC), and rural central Pennsylvania in 1920 was fairly pros- perous and well-kept. The scratchbuilt structures on my layout reflect this, but it would be fun to make an excep- tion. Here’s how I did it.
Construction
As with most of my scratchbuilt structures, I began with .040″ sheet styrene for a building core.
I have
found that styrene thinner than .030″ is too flexible and thicker than .040″ is too hard to cut through for windows and doors. I copied the foundation and wall dimensions from Brian’s plans onto the styrene with a pencil and used a straightedge and sharp hobby knife to cut them out. Since the side walls were to show sagging, I used a piece of heavy card- board to make a template for a shallow
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