and the placement of windows and doors to match the photos. The buildings were scratchbuilt largely from wood strips. The roundhouse and turntable are the centerpieces, but the associated build- ings and consequent “clutter” establish the authenticity of the overall scene as a busy railroad division point.
The roundhouse The largest building in the scene is, of PHOTO BY GEORGE MELLEN; MALLORY HOPE FERRELL COLLECTION: COMO, CO; 1887
The six-stall stone roundhouse at Como was completed by the Denver, South Park & Pacific Railroad in 1881. This 1887 DSP&P scene (above) shows six DSP&P Congdon stack locos. The DSP&P era lasted only a decade and eventually the line became part of the Colorado & Southern. By the 1929, traffic had dropped and the narrow gauge railroad’s days were num- bered. C&S No. 5, a 2-6-0, is the only loco in view (below). Less than a decade later, the line was abandoned. Famed narrow gauge historian Mallory Hope Ferrell made this dramatic photograph of the Como enginehouse with a large format view camera in 1971 (bottom).
ly operated ten trains daily. But, on busy days, as many as 26 trains were dispatched from Como. The facility re- mained active, although with reducing intensity, until the line was abandoned in 1938. Today Como is inhabited by a very small, year-round, population of ranchers and merchants. In the sum- mer, the Boreas Pass road, following the DSP&P’s roadbed, is popular with tourists for mountain viewing. The six stone stalls of the original roundhouse still stand and are being nicely refur- bished by their private owner.
The model scene
Modeler Grant Knowles set out to depict the Como roundhouse and its environs on his HOn3 layout. The re- sulting scene, featured on these pages, show the engine facilities for the Como division point of his HOn3 Colorado & Southern layout. The layout’s focus is signature scenes from the South Park and Clear Creek divisions of the C&S including the stations at Jefferson and Mt. Princeton from the South Park Di- vision and Blackhawk and the bridges at Forks Creek from the Clear Creek Division. The layout serves both for op- eration and to display super-detailed buildings and structures. The Como roundhouse scene is assembled on a plywood base that occupies a space about 20″×34″. This article outlines how the roundhouse scene was created using six smaller “mini-scenes” made from various scratchbuilt buildings and kitbashed accessories.
Although the roundhouse can be built using the Model Masterpieces kit, the associated buildings including the blacksmith shop, the boxcar shed and
RAILROAD MODEL CRAFTSMAN 55
the car shop must be modeled based on photos. For these buildings, sketch-plans were drawn to work out the dimensions
course, the roundhouse. This was built from a Model Masterpieces cast plaster (“dental stone”) kit. The available area on the layout allowed for only four stalls with an open track to accommodate the “modern” locomotives that are too big for the roundhouse. The walls of the kit were cast in five-sided (“open faced”) moulds with no detail on the interior of the walls. As the wall sections project above the roof line, some additional de- tail is needed on these visible surfaces. Similarly, as the interior was to be de- tailed, the stone facing needed to be fin- ished on the interior walls. The interior stones were carved by wetting the plas- ter surface and scribing the stone lines by hand using dental picks and hobby
PHOTO BY RICHARD B. JACKSON; MALLORY HOPE FERRELL COLLECTION: COMO, CO; AUG. 1929 MALLORY HOPE FERRELL: COMO, CO; 1971
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