Two-Stall Engine House Part 1: The Four Walls
Engine house The model of D&RGW’s Montrose, Colorado, engine house was built from a single photo. The model is 72x35-scale feet, but the prototype was likely more than twice as long.
Weathering Long, hard strokes will grind the chalk into the painted surface and smooth out the speckled eff ect nicely.
CRAFTSMAN/Bob Walker, photos by the author
Like a lot of folks who write for the model railroad press, I get a lot of encouragement from friends and the people I meet at various functions. It is gratifying that at least a few folks actually read this column. One of the re- curring comments suggests that I actually write up a specific proj- ect. While I have done so in the past, most of this work has been about the theories and method- ologies of scratchbuilding. I must admit that thinking up new topics
each month gets a little daunting after almost 13 years. Taking ad- vice from others has never been one of my strong suits (unless your name is Stephen Priest), so I did not come to the conclusion alone that it is time to do some real construction columns. Un- less I’m reined in, my intent is to do about a year’s worth of specific structure projects.
There is kind of a ritual I go through before I actually get to work on a model. Once I know what I want to build, and have spent a quarter hour or so sort of building it in my head, I head to the layout. Scale ruler in hand, I determine the exact measure- ments of the model. Be reverent about these numbers, or the con- sequences will be painful. Now, I know the following advice is kind of like “honesty” advice from a pol- itician,
but...um....err...clean up the workbench. Lay out the tools
82 RAILROAD MODEL CRAFTSMAN
you will need, or at least most of ‘em, because you will likely miss one or two. Likewise, determine the supplies you will need like doors, windows, and all the prop- er sheet and strip stock, paint, adhesives, and the like. Running out of CAA on a Sunday afternoon is not part of the fun. Few things in this area of the hobby are more frustrating than missing some key component of the build. I try like the dickens to keep ahead of these materials, though not always suc- cessfully. There are so many to consider. For the engine house, I chose sheet tin, with a tarpaper roof. Since the front doors were so large, and the interior way too vis- ible, I chose scribed wood for the interior walls, laying on the sty- rene sheet tin on the smooth side of the wood. The Northeastern scribed wood starts as a 6 x 24- 3/32-inch scribe (for O scale, 4½-
SCRATCHBUILDER’S WORKSHOP
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