Barrel & Marble Works: Barrel Works Sub-structure

One thing I don’t know is how Mr. Moore went about designing his projects. Maybe he did indeed take the logical route: imagining, to scaled drawing, to model. Maybe not. I don’t know for certain. I can’t quite discipline myself to do a detailed drawing first. I like to start building as soon as I have some sort of firmed-up idea in mind. Just a personal quirk. It makes the hobby fun since I concentrate on what I like doing, but it certainly isn’t the ideal way to build. I just thought I had to point this out because the way I show projects proceeding is far from the right way, and I didn’t want to lead you astray :-)

{Window and door openings are drawn on the wall panels.}

Anyway, the next part I worked on was the sub-structure for the Barrel Works. Again, 0.040 inch styrene was used instead of balsa. I played fast-and-loose with the windows and doors since I wanted to use items I had on hand from my Tichy Train stash - they aren't what you'll find on the prototype, but they look fine on this interpretation.

{This is a test fit of the windows and doors just to make sure all is well.}

{The corner reinforcements are being glued to the walls prior to final assembly.}

{Here it is: glued together and squared-up waiting for the glue to dry.}

Shapes at Art Park

S/R/Sv2 was something of a study in shapes. When laying out the geometry of the roads and sidewalks at Art Park I thought I'd continue on that theme.

Grille’s: A beginning

Grille’s is another project that became something else once I began gluing the kit together. I bought the Walthers’ Al’s Victory Service gas station kit thinking that a retro-styled gas station would look good on the layout. I assembled the walls, placed the partially finished building on the layout, and looked at it for awhile. And awhile, and awhile, and awhile more. It looked too old, and just sat around unfinished for a long time.

These days lots of gas stations are closing down around here. Most are eventually bull-dozed and then redeveloped once the site is cleaned up. Some get repurposed instead of demolished. One nearby station was converted to a used car lot. I figured I’d move the station near Art Park and repurpose it to a grille and cafe with a hot rod meets eco-friendly theme. Yeah, well, I know, hot rods and eco-friendly? It’s still a work in progress, but I think it’ll work out.

The eco-part is going to be a grass-surfaced, roof-top patio with a view along the highway, Art Park and the railroad switching action. The kit has a slightly sloped flat roof that needs to be converted to a level, flat roof. This means the molded on roof supports need to ground off and new ones - ones that are level - need to be added. A Dremel with a sanding drum and a sanding stick make quick work of grinding off the moldings. I also needed to shorten the wall between the two parts of the building so that the two flat areas that’ll comprise the roof-top dining areas can be connected via some stairs.

{These are the moulded-in roof supports.}

{This is what it looks like after they're ground off.}

{The large flat-roof is test fit to make sure everything fits well.}

Since it’s an entertainment spot, the building was given a wild paint scheme - purple, toned down a little with some thinned black wash. To prevent things from getting too bleak, the engraved panel lines on the kit were lined with white. I used a ‘galaxy marker’ I found at an art supply store. It’s basically a fine-point pen with a permanent, paint-like ink. It goes on smoothly and is very opaque. The problem I found with these pens is that the cap doesn’t have some sort of positive-action, snap-lock to click it securely to the pen body. One night I didn’t slide the cap on all the way and the pen was dried out and unusable by morning - a waste of $2.50.

The inside was painted flat black and black card-stock was used to block views since I don’t intend to detail the interior.

The roof sheets were glued on once the interior was dry and the clear plastic window glass was in place. Parts of the end walls were cut even with the roof panels, and styrene extensions were added so that the exterior staircases to the roof could be installed. Those stairs were items from Central Valley.

Still lots of work to go on this one.

Level crossing at Art Park

This is a test shot of the level crossing at Art Park. I need to work on getting better depth-of-field in the photos, but I'm happy with how the scene is developing. The crossing barrier is non-functional and is a relic from my 1970's layout - close-up it doesn't look so good, but from a distance it's not too bad.

Mr. Scott’s: Compressing

Mr. Scott’s has been sitting on my layout table in a forlorn state ever since I cut it down to size from the original Bralick Building kit. Something about it just wasn’t quite right.

After looking at it for a year or so I finally figured that it had two problems. First, it was located on the wrong side of the highway. It should be on the south side with the Moore industrial park and the other industries. The north side is developing into an urban area and it’s out-of-place there. Second, it was still too big, so I decided to make it narrower by cutting out a section.

You’re no doubt thinking this is a pretty weird way to build a building. It is. Ideally, I should have done all this thinking and fiddling before I had glued any of the walls together. Well, I must admit that I still didn’t know what this building was going to be until some assembly had started. Although this isn’t the best approach to tackling a building project, consider it a lesson in what can be done even if a project has been started. Nothing is final, so if some better idea strikes you during construction, just go ahead and make the changes.

Cutting the plastic structure is very easy. I simply marked the section I wanted to remove and used my razor saw to make the cuts. Try to cut as carefully as you can. Mine came out a little rough, but some later gluing, sanding, and puttying fixed this up so that the seams were more-or-less invisible.

{On the wrong side of the highway.}

{The tall side is marked for cutting.}

{Mark the short side too just to make sure you're cutting the correct piece.}

{Here's the short side after cutting - a little rough, but correctable.}

{And here's what the tall side looks like after cutting.}