Finished paneling at Jones

It turned out that if I watched some episodes of My Name is Earl and Corner Gas I was able to make and apply the remaining panels without too much trouble :-)

Once all the sides were paneled, they were painted with Tamyia flat aluminum, and all the window frames were inserted and glued into the openings. The door openings were framed with styrene angle stock as was the vent opening on the railside loading dock. The rolling door receiving structure above each door was made from a styrene tube sliced lengthwise in half. Its ends were then closed by gluing on a thin styrene piece and sanding to shape. The door frames and rolling door structures were painted light grey. The doors are made from 0.040 inch styrene sheet cut to size and scribed with a scribing tool.

I've also finished the wooden truck loading dock and hopefully will have some pictures posted this weekend - and hopefully will start on the chemical tanks.

Wall paneling begins at Jones

I’ve got about half of the building paneled with the simulated corrugated metal panels. Frankly, I think this is the last time I’ll use this technique because the tedium of creating the panels is starting to get to me – but, I wanted to have an E. L. Moore-esque look, so I only have myself to blame :-) To add to the frustration, I’ve misplaced the extra panels left over from the Bunn’s Feed and Seed Plant that I had saved for this project. Argh!

So, I began by making panels. That pile is about enough to cover one side and one end wall. I’ll need to make another pile for the remaining two sides.

Before gluing the panels to the walls I painted the bottom halves of the panels with dull aluminum paint from Tamyia so that post-installation painting won’t mar the finish on the foundation.

Prior to gluing on the panels I did some preliminary finishing on the concrete steps, tank pad and foundation. The exposed laminate edges were plastered over with some white putty and then sanded to a rough finish. The concrete parts were then painted with several coats of Tamyia light gray and then with a thin wash of flat white to tone down the colour. Also, the interior was painted flat black to help control reflections.

The panels are attached to the walls by coating the wall with a thin film of white glue and pressing the panels on. Don’t press too hard or you’ll overly flatten the corrugations. Once dry, the excess panels are trimmed from the window and door openings with a new, sharp knife. To get an idea of how things will look when it’s finished, I then installed the window frames on the front wall.

North Wall

After a lot of finicky work on the garage it was a pleasure to work on the pieces that make up the north wall. After a couple of hours on Friday night, it's starting to look like something. Well, the summer is definitely over and I had hoped to have this finished by now, but I'm about 115 parts shy of that goal :-) Maybe progress will be faster now that fall is here.

Walls go up on Jones

The walls are now raised and glued up. Each of the corners are reinforced with pieces of square-section styrene strip. As well, a floor cut from 0.060 inch styrene was inserted a scale 4 feet into the structure. As I mentioned previously, since the door sill height was adjusted to a uniform 4 feet, everything lines up well.

The concrete railside loading dock and the side tank pad were built from laminated 0.080 inch styrene sheets. Mr. Moore shows the loading dock with four steps on either end; however, I thought that since this meant that each riser was about a foot tall, they were too steep for actual steps and looked a little odd. It turns out that 0.80 inch styrene is approximately equal to 7 inches in HO-scale, I re-sized the stairs so that each piece of 0.080 laminate corresponds to one step. It turns out this means there are 6, 0.080 steps, with 12 inch scale treads, and the top step is made from 0.060 inch styrene to get the whole unit to come level with the door sill. This also means that the total length of the staircases are longer than in Mr. Moore's model, but looks a little more realistic when a figure is placed beside it.

Building E.L. Moore's Jones Chemical Co.

E.L. Moore’s ‘Jones Chemical Company’ appeared in the March 1974 issue of Model Railroader magazine - that's the first page shown above. Like Bunn’s Feed & Seed, it’s a structure that captured my interest long ago, but when I first tried to build it, it was beyond my abilities. Now is as good a time as any to try again.

As I noted in the Bunn’s project, Mr. Moore used mainly balsa wood and basswood and paper and clear acetate and other rather humble materials to build his structures. I tried to follow his lead in the Bunn’s project, but in the end I used a lot of styrene to build the basic forms of the buildings in the complex. With the Jones project I’m going to completely abandon balsa and basswood except for things that are obviously wooden structures like the truck loading dock and some elevated platforms in the tank area. The core structures will be made from styrene or other plastics, and many of the details – like the window-frames - will be commercial items. However, I still like his paper-based method for making sheet metal panels, so I’ll still use those to help the overall appearance continue to suggest its Moorian origins.

The walls of the building are drawn on 0.040 inch sheet styrene according to the dimensions in the article; with one exception. You’ll note that in the plans the railside platform is 4 feet above ground, and the truck loading dock on the end is 3.5 feet above ground. If you want to have both loading doors open – as I do because I want to make the overall scene a little more animated than shown in the article – you’ll have a problem when installing the floor. Mr. Moore recommends a balsa floor carefully sanded to work out the problem with the door sill heights. Since in an actual building such as this the floor would probably be at a single level, I simply placed both doors 4 feet above ground, and I’ll adjust the truck loading dock dimensions accordingly.

I like working with sheet styrene, but I hate cutting out door and window openings. Previously I’ve done this by simply using a knife and steel straight edge to slice my way through the plastic along the edges of the openings. An internet search popped up a link to some instructions from the Saskatoon Railroad Modellers for making cut-outs. It’s relatively easy and works well. Simply drill out the corners of the opening (I used a small drill in a pin-vise), score along the edge of the opening with your knife and ruler (no need to go all the way through as before), flip the piece over and score an X between the holes, and finally, carefully flex the piece until the scored plastic pieces pop out. You may need to clean-up the opening with a file or sanding stick.

[How to cut out an opening]

[Step 1: Drill out the corners of the opening]

[Step 2: Score the outline of the opening with a sharp knife.]

[Step 3: On the flip-side, score an X between the holes.]

[Step 4: Flex out the piece.]
I’m using Tichy Train Group horizontal slider windows instead of Mr. Moore’s ink-ruled, scratch-built ones. I used those on Bunn’s, and they are alright, but I thought I’d use something more three-dimensional on this project. I test fit the window frames as I cut out the openings, and sanded them as necessary to make sure the frames fit before proceeding to glue the walls together. Unfortunately sometimes my sanding goes a bit astray, but not to worry, some out-of-squareness of the window openings can be tolerated because the window frame trim will hide a bit of unevenness in the opening.

And finally, here are the four walls, ready for assembly.