Lots more done

Assembly well underway

    I spent a few solid days getting the very BIG roundhouse almost completely assembled so I could move it off the kitchen table and over to Johns for final assembly.
    Fitting the front doors and door frames was not as daunting as first thought just needed to ensure that none of the liquid solvent got into the door pivot pins in the floor and top of the door frame.
    I also sprayed the outside of all roof sections with flat black and underneath surface primer grey and then a dusting of Racing White like the walls.
    Once these had dried I attached the chimneys and smoke deflectors outside and inside the rear roof sections. I then glued all of the center sections of the roof in place on both sections of the model to help stiffen it up for ease of moving it to Johns house.
    And this is how both sections look just before they were taken to Johns on Saturday afternoon.        Final assembly by joining the two halves will be done once the pit holes are machined in the layout sub-roadbed so the roundhouse will sit flat into it.

A couple of pics

    Next is the full assembly once the above mentioned ground work is completed. A big build in many ways so hopefully it looks okay once completed.

Until the next project.
Regards
Rod.

More on this BIG roundhouse

More painting and preparation done.

    I have steadily been painting the window frames for this roundhouse and decided to paint the insides also. I have been using Modelflex Tuscan brown which looks  a good match for the trim on the AT&SF photos that we have been using for reference. I have deliberately left the centre window frames in grey ( after spraying them with a dull flat grey from a Tamiya Rattle can) as this is how they look in the pics also.
    I think they all look okay.
    The next step was to install the kit supplied window glass. I used the kit stuff on all of the rear wall sections however raided my wife's scrap-booking supplies and found to my surprise a self adhesive very thin sheet of clear plastic. Wow how cool is this stuff for windows. I carefully cut out the size for all of the side wall windows and just placed it in position and with a small amount of pressure voila it stuck firm. Very happy as you cannot see and edges to the glass like the kit supplied would look like. It hard to see it in my ordinary pics below but it does look good.
    Some more weathering to the outside of the two side walls plus some clear green and old white paint applied to make it look like some small panes of glass have been broken and replaced with a substitute.
   Next step is to start to add the side and rear walls and trusses so that should be fun.

Some pics below for reference.

Lots of sub assemblies sitting ready.
I would like to get this completed before Christmas so we'll see.
Rod

A Bit more progress

More painting of the Roundhouse.

    This is a very BIG roundhouse, so much to paint and detail so I had better get it right.
    Over the past few weeks I have been working on the interior and exterior of the walls along with painting and weathering all 13 trusses.
    As we are still renting it has been difficult to paint these items so when the spring sun came out for once a few weekends ago I took advantage of it and spray bombed the lot outside in the sun.
    A few coats of Tamiya Racing Car White ( its more of a light cream and the colour I was looking for) on the trusses and a few light passes of Tamiya Dark Red for all of the walls. These flashed of very quickly so I was able to get to work of dirtying up the trusses.
    As these are made to represent timber trusses I used the dry brush method and a variety of dark brown and light brown applied sparingly to just give them an aged look. They then received a spray of dullcote to flatten them down.
    The interior walls were next. Once these were dry I returned to my trusty bottle of Golden, Acrylic Titan Buff. This was kinda dry brushed all over the interior walls trying to keep the mortar lines free of any excess paint (the bricks in this kit are very small). This took two coats to get the colour I wanted.
     I am using these colours because the Santa Fe used to paint the interior of many of their roundhouse walls with a cream paint mixed on-site from powder.
    Next up was to apply vary sparingly a mix of Tamiya Panel line black and brown into the mortar lines. Hmmm that was somewhat painful and there is more to go. I also dry brushed some brown over the interior walls to get them a bit grubby followed by a bit of Pan Pastel, Brown, Grey and Black powders over the outside brickwork. 
    A fine brush to paint the concrete base flat grey on the lower portion of all the walls and the base of the windows and these are all about ready to fit into place.

    
     Windows, doors and roof to prepare then assembly.
Thanks for dropping by. Until next time.
Regards
Rod.

Its been a while

More work done
     Over a month gone by with no work on the Roundhouse for John. Well I do have a very good excuse as our eldest daughter got married up in Brisbane where she has resided for the past several years and of course I had to give her away. It was a great wedding too with a lot of laughter and good wishes all round. I was given these socks to wear by my daughter so just had to show them off.

           For those that cannot read them (and I am one) it says "Father of the Bride" very swish.

    We took advantage of our 1600 kilometer drive to Brisbane to include a holiday on the Gold Coast and stay with friends in Ipswich for a few days.
    Anyway enough of that.
    Since returning late last week I started to install all 15 tracks into the floor of the roundhouse. John and I discussed which glue would be the best and eventually came up with a clear product that has worked very nicely. It was difficult to apply sparingly however I managed to get a good small even coat on the lower flange of the rail and then it was an easy job to fit the rail in the base made easy by the forming of a groove in which to place the rail in the Walthers manufacturing process. Well done Walthers.
    Once the track was placed in the correct position I placed a heavy metal weight on the track to ensure it made good contact.  Next job was to clean of any glue that had seeped from under the rail to ensure that it would not only look correct but that it did not remain to foul on any of the fine loco wheels that will reside in the shed.
    So after all the rails had a touch up of Tamyia Nato Flat Black paint, rail heads cleaned of any paint, two pieces one of 8 and another of 7 are finished waiting for the roof trusses and walls to be applied.

   
   The trusses and walls need painting and weathering so that will be the next step.

   Its going to be a very BIG roundhouse once completed and should look good once installed.

More next time so thanks for stopping by.
Rod.

A roundhouse for the new SFRSD

The start of the build

    John is planning to add a 15 stall Walthers roundhouse to the Right hand end of Flynn to accommodate his beautiful roster of steam locomotives. The kit is one of the newer Walthers kits that comes as a 3 stall version with 3 stall add-on kits  that easily go together. So I asked if I could build this for him.
    Kits in hand I was off and running getting to work on the concrete floors. I decided to scribe concrete form lines in the supplied flooring along with scoring of cracks to show some age on each segment. I then gave each one a scrub with worn 600 wet and dry paper to remove any gloss along with any burs from the scoring process.
   Due the large footprint this roundhouse will have, I have made it in 2 sections one of 8 segments and the other 7.
   Here are just a few teasers showing the floors so far. No painting nor weathering as yet, that will come as soon as John has finished cutting all 15 lengths of rail to length and returned the floors and rail to me for painting.

    
     The kit comes complete with pits that will be installed after the track has be installed. Then it is on to the interior trusses.

Thanks for stopping by.
Rod.

A bit more done

Some more work completed.
   
    On Friday last John and I got together and installed some more brackets in the room where the old town of Augusta is situated. John wanted to install some more wall brackets on which gets installed the L Girder for bench work. We started on the wall to the right of Augusta by adding 3 new brackets pre-made by John and having completed those in good time decided to keep going around the wall on the opposite side to Augusta. We then came back and after making some additional L Girder quickly installed that in place.
     John had the desire to include as much of the old SFRSD into his layout as possible and this included the portion that ran on the wall directly behind Guthrie in my layout room that included my scratch built wooden barn and a brass etched windmill. It is mostly only 6 inches wide except where it turned around the end of the wall to meet up with the track in Guthrie. "Do you want to see if this section of the old layout fits this space John" of course was the reply so with brackets in place it was an easy lift and voila it fit almost perfectly. A few cuts with the say to remove a small portion of the rear L Girder to clear the room light switch and you could saw it was almost made for that spot.

     All John needs to do is add some track road bed and a small amount of track to link it with the old town of Udall and that will be that.

Some pics of the days work.

     John has also made good progress with the sub-road bed for the visible staging and turntable and roundhouse that will be added to the left hand side of the old town of Flynn. Pics to follow.

    This is something I built just before the SFRSD was torn down and a new hobby direction that I have started.  My completed M113 complete with engine and interior.

  


 More to come as I start my 1/35 scale journey.

Thanks for stopping by.
Regards to all and happy modeling.
Rod.

More progress

It's all happening

    Lots more progress on the installation of the old SFRSD into Johns house.
    Backdrops have been added to the room where the old Augusta is to reside along with Augusta East. John and I worked hard early last week to install one of the backdrops that needed to have two curves in it to make the transition around from one wall to another across a heater bulkhead that ran up the corner. Once this was done John did a lot more work to the backdrop that was to go behind Augusta East and tuck into the left hand wall where tracks will go through the wall to new staging. John is thinking about how best to have the staging, open or hidden I guess time will tell.

   Here is a few shots of progress in the room.

  
     Once the backdrops were installed then Augusta was easily lifted into place. It fits this room like it was made for it and has made the whole process of the move very easy.

     Now Augusta East is temporarily installed into what was a cupboard. Ron and John removed all of the doors last week so this gave a chance to see how it should be orientated and where best to position it before the backdrops where added.

   
     The hole cut in the wall on the left hand side is for the tracks to extend out to the staging area and then onto the old Flynn.

     And here is a preliminary track plan that John has drawn of the whole layout once completed. I'm sure there will be some changes cause that's what us modellers do.

    
     Notice all of the towns names have been changed. It might take a while for some of the old operators to get their heads around them however there is good logic in choosing these names.
     An additional RR, Mopac, will be included to run from Wichita and on to Belle Plain that will run on SF trackage at South Wichita that should make it a very interesting for the dispatcher once the layout is completed.
     Its all coming together very nicely for John.
Stay tuned for more updates.
Rod.

Sections on the wall

Layout sections have been lifted
    
    Okay now the real fun stuff begins. Once we found more of the wall studs we attached the angled brackets that John had modified. These were spaced a good distance apart but not so far that the sections could sag. These brackets allowed us to attach the layout sections to the brackets and not directly to the wall like I had done giving some flexibility in the layouts position considering all the cuts that had been made to section the layout. Flynn was lifted first however it was kept back from where the Perry section would fit so it could be slid into place.

     Then we started to work on lifting Perry. The Perry section was about 14 feet long and had a return section from where it connected to Udall. It was kinda flexible and so we reinforced the Right hand corner and waited until all the troops arrived to help lift it into its place below the widow.
   
     This lift went very well so with the guys still around the next section to be raised was the Winfield / Red Rock section. This section needed to be attached to Perry at the same location from whence it came and fortunately the locating pieces of L Girder fitted perfectly. Some lengths of 2 x1 pine to give us the correct height a few clamps and it was sitting quite nicely in place.
   
    The Hackney / Ponca section was next. It took a little extra effort to put into place as we wanted to get the alignment just right where it had been cut from the Winfield / Red Rock section. A bit of grunting from all the guys while some more bracing was put into place and it too was in place and looking darn good too.

The Winfield / Red Rock section in place. Perry is at the far end.

Flynn on the right, Perry at the far end and Hackney on the left.

     Before we lifted Udall John realized that he could get some additional space between Flynn and Hackney so we put a cut through Perry and extended it to the left by 13 inches. A bit of work in moving the BDLs that were tucked up underneath taken care of. To get the two peninsulas moved the same distance we placed some masking tape on the floor to mark where the sections needed to be moved to and moved them across inch by inch.

   

The sectioned out portion of Perry.

     The next to be raised was Guthrie. This was to be installed in a totally different position than when on the SFRSD. It has been installed in an old bedroom and is one of the reasons the bedroom wall was removed. Guthrie is to become a branch line under a new name (all to be revealed later).

Guthrie with a bit of Udall on the bottom Left hand.

    "Can we get more space between Winfield and Udall" John said as I ventured over for another work session. The plan was to cut Perry one more time and move the corner section over 6 inches. This would give more room and at the same time make the join to Udall so much easier.
     So here is the second cut.

More BDLs moved and all the wire are still long enough.

    Then Guthrie was moved to but against the corner section of Perry and both screwed into position.

    Next up Udall was lifted into position onto the wall on the far left hand side of Johns room.

Udall sitting nicely in place and with much more isle space between it and Winfield.

    Flynn was pushed into place up against Perry and so far its all looking like it was meant to be here.

    Well that's it for this update. More work is on the agenda for tomorrow so call back if you can.
Thanks
Rod.