Freelancing rolling stock in Railroad Modeler circa 1974
While browsing the 1974 issues of Railroad Modeler it struck me that it seemed there were a lot of articles about building freelanced rolling stock. Here's a list of what I found:
Jan: Conversation with the Builder: If you want to know how John Olson built this fantastic small railroad simply ask him; Denis Dunning & John Olson. (JDL: Although about Olson's layout there are a few notes scattered in the article that the freight cars were scratchbuilt and freelanced, here's one: "The caboose was scratchbuilt using strathmore and imagination.")
Mar: An Idiot's Approach to Building Locomotives; Jeff Scott.
Apr: Mini-Contest Results: Photos and plans of the four winners plus some of the honorable mentions. (JDL: These are the winners of the MoW contest announced in the Nov '73 issue. The brief was: "Take a passenger car, any type from any era, and convert it into a maintenance of way car. Do what you want - make it into a crew car, boom tender, whatever you can dream up.")
June: Freelance Center Cab Diesel: A happy marriage of Athern's SW-7 and a pair of Hustler bodies results in a great little switcher; Mike Ross.
Aug: Homebuilt Box Cab Electric: Using various diesel parts, an electric fan comes up with a prototypical looking freelance locomotive; David Smith.
Oct: That First Kit Conversion: Taking a nicely detailed car and converting it to something else for the first time can be a challenge. Take your time and do it right; Miles Moran. (JDL: Although not specifically about building freelanced rolling stock the methods presented apply to both it and prototype-based conversions)
Nov: Cut Up A Coach: A little imagination can provide you with a whole new roster of shorty passenger equipment; Bill Jurden.
Freelance Generator Car: A modern railroad can't afford to be hampered by something as trivial as nightfall. Take an evening and do something about it; Mark R. Henley.
Dec: Turbine Look-Alike: A massive turbine locomotive results from the judicious blending of commercial diesel parts; Wayne Lyndon.
Economy Log Hog: The days of nickel beer and twenty cent a gallon gas may be long gone, but a $30 brass logging loco is still a possibility; Brick Price.
More freelancing
I did a cursory look through Railroad Model Craftsman for that year to see what was going on there in the way of articles about freelanced rolling stock. In two words: not much. No articles specifically dealing with such projects, but there were a couple of RMC / Dremel Kitbashing Award projects that caught my attention: An HOn30" Roster by Daniel Johnson (Jul '74), and "Cab-on-a-raft" - plus! by John Weinhold (Mar '74). There was also a 'roster' of N-scale traction vehicles in the article Fairmont Traction Co.: the vertical module by Phil Lehr (Dec '74) that has fascinated me ever since I read about them back in '74.
Even more freelancing
By 1974 freelancing rolling stock was on its last legs in the mainstream as the real prototype modelling movement was gaining momentum, so I found it interesting to find so many freelancing articles in RM. You may recall I wrote about Edward C. Steinberg a few years ago and his articles, beginning in the mid-70s, on kitbashing and freelancing rolling stock. His later projects were not without a little controversy as I noted in the post. Some of his projects appeared in RM, and I'll touch on them as I continue through the 70s.
After sitting back and thinking about the community garden shed model I built inspired by the Back to Basics Challenge, I decided I really wanted to try and make front doors that open. I thought it would give the shed more life.
And while I was at it I also thought I should just go full tilt and build a new shed the way I normally would: making use of whatever was in my spares boxes regardless of whether or not I was using beginner friendly materials.
The flower pots are engine nozzles from Hasegawa's Space Shuttle Egg Plane kit This is advanced LTB :-)
For the walls I used a piece of 4-ply, 500 series Strathmore bristol board that was left over from the repurposed firehouse project.
Although I laid out the walls in a continuous strip, I cut out individual pieces for creating the structure instead of folding the strip into a box.
Siding was simulated by scribing vertical lines into the bristol board.
The trim overlays were drawn on a 3x5 index card as they were for the first model.
Unlike the first model I attached strips of transfer tape to the back of the card so the trim overlays would be self-adhesive. They wouldn't need to be glued on.
As I always say, put a new blade in your knife before cutting. It's especially important when cutting out the fiddly trim overlays.
With the transfer tape backing, it's no fuss, no muss attaching the trim to the door blanks. But, it's important to get the alignment right the first time because that tape bonds instantly and is a real %^&##$^ to peel off in case of a mistake.
Checking the doors' fit. It turns out it was a little too tight and I had to sand their edges a little when it came time to install the hinges so they'd open and close without too much effort.
Jumping ahead a little because I got so caught up in construction I forgot to take photos at this point in the process :-( I dug up a scrap of 'thin' sheet balsa and sliced off 2x4s for paneling the interior. I also did some scrounging to find some garden tools in my scrap box. The interior is painted with Tamiya XF-57 Buff.
The roof is also made from bristol board. The ridges and peak cap are from 3x5 card, held in place with transfer tape.
Trusses were cut from bristol board to give the roof its shape. They're stuck down with transfer tape. I added trusses because I thought I'd make the roof removable. The fit isn't bad, but not perfect. I may go ahead and stick it in place with some glue, but for now I'll leave it removable.
Painting in progress
Ok, around about this point I started to paint the pieces. And around about this point progress on the project stalled out. I got it in my mind to go out and buy some Vallejo Model Color paint at a nearby hobby store that I colour matched to the prototype. Well, insane gas prices and winter weather that just wouldn't quit encouraged me to delay my shopping trip for days. I finally gave up and went back to the workshop to look in more detail at the colours I had on hand. Instead of relying on the bottles' coloured labels I opened them up, mixed them, and then did some test painting to properly assess the colours, which is what I should have done for the first model.
Bingo, I had some that were fairly close to the prototype, so I used them and saved a trip and some money. The walls and roof are painted with several coats of Revell Aqua Color 36162 Mossy Green with a few washes of Tamiya XF-5 Flat Green to give some colour variation in the surfaces. The off-white trim is a mix of Vallejo Model Color 70.919 Cool White with a very small amount of Vallejo Model Color 70.917 Beige.
And then there's red:
I painted the space shuttle engine nozzles I used for the flower pots with Tamiya XF-7 Flat Red. Well, let me clarify, I painted them with what was left over after I spilt the new bottle I had on the floor :-( Luckily, the deluge missed my pants. But not my shoes :-( The workshop floor is painted red, so no problem there, but my foot warmer rug got splashed. Argh.
Once the flat red had dried - the flat red on the flower pots that is - a thin wash of Tamiya X-7 Red was applied to give them a little shine.
I wanted an interior light, and following my philosophy of scrounging my spares boxes for parts I finally found a light that would fit. It's a Model Power incandescent streetlight cut from its support structure. I glued it to the trusses so that it pointed towards the back wall to light the tools and be a bit subdued.
There it is, lit up with a 9v battery. I love the incandescent glow. It's something that's hard to replicate with LEDs.
Ok, now the elephant in the room and the reason for this model: the opening doors.
The security window screens are scraps of very fine mesh I had in a spares box.
The prototype looks like it uses strap hinges on the doors. After some thought, and rummaging through my spares boxes, I decided to try using the thinnest brass shim stock I had on hand to cut out straps to use as hinges.
The brass 'hinges' were attached to the front wall with dabs of superglue.
And now for the truth telling part: they work, but not that well. When I closed the doors after taking some beauty shots of the model, half of the hinges popped free from the frame. I think the problem is the doors are still sitting too tight in the frame. They need more clearance, more free-play, so that no force or fiddling is required to open them. I'll likely need to remove the doors, sand their edges, and then remount them. Live and learn.
Well, there you have it. A shed from the spares boxes and junk drawers of the workshop.
It's good to have the first piece of the new layout done. I'm starting to see how this micro will develop. Stay tuned!
While lost in thought, and idly staring into the streetcar display cabinet, it dawned on me I could try using the chassis and drivetrain from one of the old Bachmann trollies I bought at a swap meet a few years ago to power the RDC-M.
I pried the chassis out of the trolley and found it would fit in the RDC-M shell. I then took the chassis for a spin on the Way Out Layout and it ran just fine. So, problem solved! All I've got to do is figure out how to securely install the chassis in the RDC-M shell.
Ron Tarjany's instructions for building simple sheds in Railroad Modeler, Dec '74 That's my community garden shed below the template for his HO-scale shed.
I was browsing the 1974 issues of Railroad Modelerand came across this Penny Model feature on building Railroad Storage Sheds in the December issue. You may recall I wrote about the Penny Model feature back in 2020. This 10 instalment feature that ran from '74 to '77 dealt with how make a variety of buildings from simple, low cost materials. This one on railroad storage sheds reminded me of the Back to Basics Railway Modelling Challenge and my attempt to build a little garden shed using methods similar to the ones shown in this article.
Mr. Tarjany explains how to build little sheds using the walls-folded-up-from-a-continuous-piece-of-card method, but instead of using the card's outer surface to directly apply exterior wall treatments, he glues on overlays of wood or corrugated metal. The card roofs also have overlays glued on. This allows him to use "index file cardstock", which looks like standard, thin 3x5 file card in the above photo. In my community garden shed build I only used 3x5 card for trim.
File this article under: Everything Old is New Again.
So far this is my favourite photo in this new series of pictures. One of the things I like about micro-layouts, well, about any small layout that isn't too hard to move around, is, well, you can move them around :-) Taking pictures outside in the backyard, on the porch, under lights in the workshop, in the living room being convivial, anywhere, is no problem. Got a scene in mind? No problem. Just set it up and snap away. To me that really adds to the play-value of the thing.
I continue to re-photograph the Loonar Module as I proceed with my relentless search for dust :-) I'm also translating the scenes I have in my head of this little northern paradise into photographs.
Three years ago today, on 17 March 2023, I published my eBook, The Model Buildings of E. L. Moore. That was a big day for me. The project began on 3 August 2013 and went on for nearly 10 years. It was a great adventure.
I still do a few posts on Mr. Moore from time to time. You can see what's new at the tag, E L Moore.
It looks like the eBook has had 2785 downloads. Although in April 2023 I lamented that the eBook was a Non-Thing, I'm quite happy with the number of downloads, which I thought was ok given that it got no mainstream model rr coverage. However, it did get some coverage in the back of a comic book in an alternative universe :-)
If you still haven't got a copy, no worries, I have an infinite number on hand. You can get yours here, or here at Library and Archives Canada.
I immediately thought this was right up my alley. I need to build a model of the city's storage shed at the community garden for my new micro-layout of the place, and readers here know I love anything that has a back-to-basics vibe. This being the case I figured I'd give the challenge a go by building that storage shed.
So, up there is a view of the shed I'm talking about. It's located about in the middle of the community garden, beside the car path, not far off the walking path.
The image above gives a better sense of the shed's location near the road, and you can get a feel for its size comparing it to the car.
As buildings go, it's dead simple. The doors and windows are on the front wall, and the other walls have no openings other than the air vents in the end walls near the roof.
Ok, so on with the show.
The first stop was the kitchen's paper recycling bin. I had recently finished off some delicious dark chocolate, and thought the cardboard package might be good for the walls and roof. Other materials used were a standard 3x5 note card for trim, doors, and roof ridges, and a piece of 2mm thick cardboard for the foundation cut from the backing of an old sketchpad.
I carefully sliced through the bonds and unfolded the chocolate packaging to have a look at what I had to work with. It's a rather low grade material, and I estimate around 0.5mm to 0.75mm thick. I usually like to use artist grade, multi-ply Bristol board for this sort of project, but I wanted to stick to the spirit of the challenge*.
Before getting on with construction I had to come up with a drawing to figure out dimensions and shapes.
I rarely draw fancy plans as I just use them to work out dimensions. All dimensions shown are in mm.
Ok, a couple of things.
First, I could have walked over to the garden and measured the shed, but I'll plead being a wimp that there was too much snow and cold for such Roye England style action, so instead I guesstimated the dimensions from the photos. Look, I would have had to compress the building a little and take some liberties to make it seem a reasonable fit on the layout anyway, so no loss really.
Second, HO scale is a weird scale. 3.5mm = 1'-0"? Come on! Basically, to scale anything on a plan one needs a calculator nearby to do conversions to HO. Unless of course you have a special ruler marked out for HO scale. I have my trusty one I bought at George's Trains in the '70s. But, if you're just getting started with scratchbuilding, and only have a ruler from the kitchen drawer, it's a bit tough laying out plans. I struggled with how many specialized tools I should use because beginners might not have them. So, on the plans I approximated dimensions so that they'd measure to whole or half mms. Frankly, I don't think it's reasonable to assume that with a standard desk ruler anything more accurate than 0.5mm can be measured. So, if some trim looks a little chunky, this is why. My advice though is if you're going to really get into making HO scale buildings from scratch, whether using simple or advanced materials, go and buy an HO-scale ruler, and make sure you get a steel one, not plastic.
Blue paper rectangle is the shed's footprint.
Once I settled on dimensions I cut a little rectangle of blue paper the same size as the building's footprint and placed it on the layout plan to assess the size relative to other layout features. It looked ok.
I then drew the walls on the cardboard. I decided to cut out individual walls and then glue them into a box instead of laying them out in a contiguous strip and folding them into a box as I've often done in the past. The thing I don't quite like with the folding method is I can never get the folded corners to be sharp and square.
The other piece of specialized equipment* you need is an art knife and some spare blades. There's really no other way to manually cut out cardboard with the precision needed. I use an Olfa brand one. Don't be skimpy with the blades. Always start off a project with a sharp, new blade. It makes cutting clean and precise, and it's safer too because you don't need to apply as much pressure as you would with a dull blade, thereby reducing the chance of slipping and cutting yourself.
You can see I didn't cut out an opening for the doors, but did so for the windows. I didn't want opening doors so I left the wall intact, but I'm eventually going to install lights, so I want to see them glow through the windows. If you don't have lights in mind, you could skip cutting out the window openings and instead use a Sharpie pen to blacken them.
The siding was scored into the walls using the back, dull side, of the art knife.
I always mark the pieces I need to cut out with Xs so I don't get lost in all those lines!
The trim was drawn on a standard 3x5 note card. The window and door trim, along with the doors, I laid out and cut as a one piece overlay. I decided not to assemble the front trim and door from individual pieces to keep the building a little more beginner friendly. I penciled in the various dividing lines once the trim was painted. Over on the right side of the card are some individual trim strips for the corners.
After cutting out the front overlay I test fit it to the wall. Not bad. I decided to score the dividing lines between the various elements to give them a little definition.
As you can see I went ahead and painted the walls while I was working on the trim.
In keeping with the spirit of the challenge I didn't go out and buy paints to match the prototype, and since I didn't have any similar colours on hand, I picked some from my shelf that I thought looked ok. I used Revell Aqua Color Fern Green 36360, and Tamyia Yellow Green XF-4. They were painted on with a brush.
The window muntins are made from strips of masking tape.
Stick a piece of masking tape to your cutting pad and slice off a number of 1mm wide strips, make them thinner if you can. I eyeballed the dimensions on mine so they're somewhere between 0.5mm and 1mm wide.
Then stick the strips to the inside front wall. Again, I just eyeballed their location, so if they look wonky, that's why :-)
Here's the front wall overlay after painting. I strengthened the divisions between pieces with lines drawn with a sharp pencil. I later came in and penciled in some shadows to produce a little 3-D illusion. Also, I later drew on hinges and the door hasp with a black Sharpie pen.
Around about this point in the project I started gluing components together. I had some white glue and weldbond in the workshop so that's what I used to keep in the back-to-basics spirit of the challenge. Normally I prefer to use transfer tape for attaching overlays because it bonds instantly, and since it's a dry process there's no chance of warping components being stuck together. It turns out the front wall did warp a little after using white glue to stick on the trim overlay. I did a little remediation on that, which I'll get to in a moment. I used weldbond for the 'structural work' of attaching the walls and roof together. It's thicker and stronger and faster drying than white glue.
Source of window 'glass'.
Once the front wall overlay was glued in place I added some 'plastic glass' to the windows cut from the top of a box of chocolates from many Christmases past.
The roof was cut from the same cardboard used for the walls. The metal ridges in the roof were simulated with 1mm wide strips cut from 3x5 card. White glue was used to stick them down.
The roof cap is a 3mm wide strip also cut from 3x5 card. The photo above shows a test fit of the roof before it was painted.
Ok, as we near the end of this project I couldn't put off any longer trying to take the warp out of the front wall. I cut an interior wall from the 2mm thick sketchbook backing cardboard I figured I'd use for the floor. I tried to unwarp the front wall with my fingers as best I could, then glued the interior wall in place with weldbond to keep the wall unwarped, and finally applied clamps and let the whole thing setup for an hour.
So, this is one of the problems with these cheap-and-cheerful builds. The cardboard I used for the walls was a bit too thin and it wasn't of good quality, both of which made the walls susceptible to warping from applications of glue and paint. Over the years I've minimized the chance of this happening by using artist grade, multi-ply Bristol board and transfer tape. If you're going to get into card-based scratchbuilding I recommend using those materials.
Interior 'de-wowing' partition glued in place. Still some 'wow' though :-(
As my father would say, the wall has still got a bit of a 'wow' in it, partly because I didn't get the width of the interior wall quite right. Well, it's rather a rigid structure now, and honestly, when the roof is on, and it's sitting on the layout, what's left of the warp isn't noticeable. It's the digital camera being a harsh mistress and showing every flaw up close in a way that isn't observable with the naked eye.
There're a couple of other things I should point out in the above photo. First, after the building was glued together I painted the inside black. I plan to put a couple lights inside, and wanted to minimize the chance of the walls glowing when the lights were on because the walls are so thin.
Second, I reinforced the inside corners of the building with some wood sticks.
Normally I'd do that with some scrap balsa or basswood, but to continue with the back-to-basics theme I took a craft stick - a wood coffee stir stick would work too - and sliced off the sides to make some corner reinforcements. Using the factory made straight edges on those slices I glued pieces into the building's corners to stiffen them.
The last piece is the foundation. It's cut from 2mm thick cardboard. I drilled two holes in it so I can poke some lights in later.
All that was left to do was glue the foundation and roof to the walls, and bingo, it was done!
And there it is, just a few seconds after the roof was glued on.
I think this post must have taken just as long to write as it did to build the little model :-) It was made over a 4 day period, 11 March to 14 March, by stitching together pieces of time. In total it took something like 6 to 8 hours to build.
The shed's future home.
There it is on what will be its home on the community garden layout. It looks quite large, but once the tall trees and other scenic elements are in place it'll blend in.
Cost? That's always a tricky thing to estimate. In one sense, almost nothing given that the materials were cast-offs, and I made use of paints, glues, and simple tools* I had in the workshop. But, here's the problem: those items cost something at one time. Construction of these sorts of models have only become low cost for me as I continue to use stuff I've already bought and paid for. If this model weren't built in the spirit of a challenge where the emphasis is more-or-less on rudimentary bricolage, I would have used artist grade Bristol board, transfer tape, balsa, and bought paint to match the colours on the prototype. That would have increased the cost. New paint alone would have increased the project cost by several hundred percent :-)
On the layout the walking path will be centred on a diagonal that runs from one corner to the other, and the shed will face it. There won't be a path for cars on the layout. It's been replaced by the little train.
Well, there's the first structure for the new layout. I quite liked this little challenge as it helped inspire further work on the layout, and was a nice lift out of the winter blues.
* I was a bit conflicted with this project as to what tools and materials to use. Should I use my usual ones, which are a bit specialized, or go with a simpler, basic set of tools and materials that a beginner might have? In the end I went with mainly basic, but pulled out some more 'advanced' ones when I felt I was getting frustrated.
You can see some of my 'advanced' tools in this photo I took of my workspace as the end of the project neared. I say 'advanced' because many modellers wouldn't consider them advanced at all. So, for the advanced ones I pulled out things like: a cutting pad, mechanical pencils, ruler marked in HO-scale, miniature speed squares and set square, sanding sticks, clamps, and tweezers. I think that covers it.
If you're going in for scratchbuilding miniature buildings I say get those 'advanced' tools as they'll make projects easier and more fun. I highly recommend scratchbuilding over any sort of kit work - ok, well, I'll cut kitbashing some slack :-) - because once you've got the basic principles learned you can build anything you want. You're not limited by what companies want to sell you. And if you can master using basic tools and basic materials, you won't be limited by cost either because you'll be able to use just about anything.
Ok, I've proselytized enough :-)
[25 March 2026 Update: I built a second version of this shed using whatever I could scrounge from the workshop regardless of it being beginner friendly: Community Garden Shed, Take 2: Lowe Tech Bricolage.]
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