Smittie's Engine Shed

Coffee Valley has its resident junk yard owner who goes by the name of Smittie.  Smittie's business is called "Smittie's Rail Salvage and Scrap Yard."  Since part of his business is rail salvage - as depicted by the business name - he has a couple of rail items which consist of an engine, some sort of crane car that he rigged together, and a flat car to carry said salvaged items.  It also makes sense that he has a shed to keep the engine stored in.  Thus, this project - I built an engine shed for him.  This is my first scratch-built project (so go easy on the 'new guy').  Honestly, I am quite happy with the way it turned out.  I learned some lessons along the way and will share those here as I describe how I built the shed.  I hope this will help others as they take their first steps into scratch building.  (Please excuse the varying quality of the pictures...I am trying to improve my photo-taking skills.)

I did not spend a lot of time researching and drawing.  Actually, I made some rough drawings and liked them enough to get started.  I had a general idea of dimensions and used a plastic engine shed kit as a comparison item for size and dimensions.  Here is what I started with:

First came the wall frames.  I used scale bass wood lumber which was cut to length and super-glued together.  I used a bathroom wall tile as my work surface because the glue only lightly sticks if at all.  I tape some pieces in place as I glue others. (Tip: Be sure to fold the end of the tape back onto itself creating a tab. This makes it much easier to remove the tape later.)

The 4 main walls are framed. 

The 4 walls are now up and attached to each other.

Here I have placed the structure where it will be located on the layout and placed my largest engine to see how things were going.  So far, so good.  Also in the picture, in the upper-left corner, you can see the plastic engine shed which I used as a reference for the building of Smittie's shed. 

Since the front opening will not have doors then part of the inside will be visible.  Knowing this I will also scenic the inside of the shed (at least the front visible part of it) so I started by adding some cross bracing to the inside of the side walls.  As time goes on I will add more details to the inside of the structure such as shelves, miscellaneous tools hanging from the walls, and various engine parts lying around on the ground.

Now for the side workshop.  As before, I framed out the walls first.

The storage room will have doors on the front, a window on the side, and a lean-to next to it.

I gave the framed structure a spray of diluted India ink to give the wood an aged and dirty look.  For my mix I combined some India ink with isopropyl alcohol and sprayed it from a used pump-type hair spray bottle. (Tip: Be sure the front of the spray bottle is pointed away from your hand...it takes forever to get that India ink stain off of your skin.)

The framing of the structure is now done and it is time for the siding.  I took a big pile of coffee stir sticks, cut them to length, and sprayed them with the same India ink mixture. To do this I dumped them in an old cooking sheet, sprayed them, let them dry, tossed the pile around, and sprayed again...rinse, lather, and repeat until they are good enough.

The process of attaching the side planks is quite easy and goes rather quickly.  I turned the structure so that the side being planked is up and horizontal with the table. I then squirted some glue onto a piece of cardboard and used a toothpick as a brush.  I dipped the end of the toothpick into the glue and spread some on the frame members for a distance of about an inch.  Using tweezers I placed a plank in place and pressed it into the glue and then grabbed another one...again its rinse, lather, and repeat.  Here are the first dozen-or-so planks glued in place.

The following pictures, each taken with different camera settings, show the planked shed (and the workshop waiting its turn).

As my grandfather used to say, "...which brings us up to where we are now" and that is doors for the workshop.  Using wood scraps I made a couple of doors, shown below lying on the ground, and my method of attaching them - cardboard 'hinges'.  Although not true hinges in the sense that the doors will be open-able, they did allow me some flexibility in positioning of the doors.  After the hinges were glued to the inside of the storage room I could bend them to a desired final position before gluing the doors on.

I wanted the building to sit on some sort of foundation so set off to 'pour' a concrete one.  My plan of attack was to build forms using Lego blocks and fill it with plaster.  I did not want the plaster to stick to my work surface so I first laid down a piece of aluminum foil onto a scrap of plywood and taped it in place.  Then, using covert operations, I obtained some of my son's Legos and started creating the form.  I wanted the top of the concrete foundation to be flat so I formed it upside down.  Fortunately the blocks let me create a shape close enough to work - some of the sections were just too wide but I figured I could manage it.  In the following picture I show the Lego forms in place.

There was nothing holding the Lego forms in place and I did not want them to slide around once the pouring started so securely I taped everything (gotta' love duct tape!).  I was concerned that once the pour was done, and I was handling the plaster piece, that it could easily crack and possibly break.  I an effort to limit the impact of such an event I decided to do what real concrete people do and that is incorporate some rebar.  So if the plaster did crack at least the item as a whole might stay together.  In the following picture, in the right side, you can see some electrical wire which I bent into shape and had ready to place in the plaster as I poured.  Once everything was said and done, the plaster never cracked so I do not know how effective my rebar would have been.

And here was have the poured plaster.  Things went well and the board was set aside so that the plaster could cure.

Once the plaster cured I pulled the tape off and broke apart the Lego blocks. 

Notice the difference between the picture above and the ones below?  Remember it was poured upside down so that the top of it would be flat.  Looking at the pictures below you can see how the unevenness of what is now the bottom causes the item to not sit flat (and that is OK... I will compensate for that when installing in on the layout).

I placed the foundation on the layout where I wanted it and drew an outline of its shape.  Using my hobby knife I then cut into the Sculptamold ground.

To kill off the bright white color of the plaster I gave the foundation a wash of my India ink mixture and glued it in place.  I then mixed up some more Sculptamold and filled in the area around the foundation, shaping it as I go.  Here we have the final ground shape.  The next thing to do is apply some more brown paint. 

You will notice that the storage room has a roof on it.  Truth be known, I was working on the foundation and the roofs at the same time and not sequentially as this article suggests.  Having said that let me show you how I made my roofs.  First I made a bunch of roof trusses.  Not a lot of work there - just cut and glue.  Using the cardboard from a recently emptied Swiss Rolls box I glued the trusses to it.

Here is a trial fit to see how things are going.  So far, so good.

I then glued cardboard to the other side and put the assembly to the side for awhile so that I could start on my corrugated metal roof panels.  In a future article I will describe in detail how I made them but, for now, a brief description - cut aluminum foil into a bunch of smaller pieces of a desired size, lay a piece across the groves of a metal file and rub it with soft balsa wood such that the grooves in the file forms grooves in the foil, and then dry brush paint with a couple of dirt and rust-like colors.  (Tip: Be careful when you later turn the fan on because these things go everywhere and picking them up is not fun.)

I thought I was going to go crazy painting all of those panels but I kept with it because I didn't not want to come up short later and have to get everything back out just to make 9 more.  (In actuality, I had to make about twenty-seven more.  sigh...)  Drawing lines on the cardboard helped me keep my panel rows straight when I glued them on.  The gluing of the panels went quickly.  I brushed on some glue in an area I wanted to panel and, using my tweezers, picked up a panel, put it in place, pressed lightly with my finger, and then grabbed another one.  Once again - rinse, lather, and repeat.

The storage room was to have the same type of roof.

Here is the completed building and this is the best picture I have of it right now.  I will get some more and post them here when I do.

Thank you for taking the time to read my article. I hope you found it helpful, interesting, or at least humorous.

'Railroad' vs. 'Rail Road' vs. 'Railway' ...which is it???

I have seen each of the following but have never understood the difference:

- Railroad
- Rail Road
- Railway

When I was coming up with the name for my layout, now called The Coffee Valley Railroad, I debated between using 'Railroad' and 'Railway' and finally resolved the issue with a coin flip.  But the question still lingers - what is the difference?  Is there a difference?  Why would one use Railroad instead of Railway?

I have googled all I can google and have found nothing that addresses this in the slightest bit.

Wiktionary notes that railroad and railway are synonyms which leads me to believe that the use of one over the other might fall back to unofficial meanings or preferences.  If so, what would those be?  Where does 'Rail Road' come into play?

Can someone - ANYONE - provide any insight?

Thanks

More Pics Of The CVRR

I plan on posting more about my layout as time goes by but, until then, you can view some pictures that I have already placed on my Facebook photos page:

Coffee Valley Railroad
The Making of Mountains
Miscellaneous Pics
Trees
Couple of Red Brick Walls
Asphalt Road
Control Panel
Granite Block Retaining Wall
Smittie's Engine Shed

How I Made My Sagebrush Trees

A couple of years ago I started to pursue the task of making trees for my layout. I did not want plastic-looking trees. I wanted the look of real wood and figured the best way to get that would be with, well, what else but real wood. I scoured the internet looking for tutorials and such and in those searches I found some images of trees which had been made from sagebrush:http://www.fsmtrees.com/images7/finishedTree2.jpg
http://ryan.skow.org/tutorials/trees/pics/treeCloseup.jpg

Sagebrush is "a coarse, hardy silvery-grey bush with yellow flowers and grows in arid sections of the western United States and Western Canada."

This is exactly what I was looking for but, living on the East coast, obtaining sagebrush to work with is very difficult (it does not grow locally and I did not want to buy pre-packaged items due to the cost). So I figured I would have to resort to Plan-B and shortly thereafter I found another source for trees which I will write about in the near future. Recently, however, I realized that a friend had moved to New Mexico...New Mexico has tons of sagebrush...this friend is a good friend...hum...2 weeks later the mail man brings me a large box of...can you guess?  Yup!  SAGEBRUSH!!!

Using the Sagebrush Tree Tutorial as a basis for my implementation, here is what I did...

First a couple of pics of the sagebrush as I opened the box.

I grabbed a branch and a pair of wire cutters and got to work.  Inspecting the branch I selected smaller-sized "sub-branches", ones that looked about the size of tree I wanted, and clipped them off.  Sub-branches which had interesting bends, twists, and other unique characteristics won out over regular looking ones. 

The sagebrush was green when it was shipped to me (e.g. not "dead" wood) so there was some leaves which I did not want on my tree (as shown above). Given that, and the fact that these were still "live" items, I decided to dry them out so I baked them in the oven at 300 degrees for about 15 minutes. This would not only dry out the natural leaves it would also kill off any bugs and dry the branches out.  Be warned - there might be a lot of smoke that comes out of the oven and an extreme smell that might bother some people so do this when you can have doors and windows open.  I placed them on a cookie sheet and in the oven they went.

After they came out of the oven I knocked off the baked leaves and had twigs remaining. 

The approach I will take for "planting" these trees is to make a hole the size of the trunk and glue the tree in place (as opposed to placing a pin in the base of the tree as my guide tutorial instructed).  Taking this approach into account, I was sure you cut a trunk long enough to allow part of it to be buried in the ground of the layout.

Before I go any farther let me give a run-down of the rest of my supplies. First is cheep hairspray and some poly fiber.  The Suave hairspray came from Kmart and was about $2.00 for the can and the fiber was some I had purchased some time back while attending a model train show.  I do not recall the cost.  This particular fiber is brown which, I felt, would be a good color to use (as opposed to green).

Here is a close-up of the fiber.  I looks kind of like steel wool.

For the tree's foliage I used some Woodland Scenics' products.  On the left is their blended turf, in the middle is an older bag of a darker green turf, and on the right is their Earth product.

I started by pulling off small chunks of fiber:

Then, using tweezers, pulled each chunk apart into a larger ball shaped piece:

I then place the tree in my Sagebrush Tree Holder of Science (nods to Bill Nye the Science Guy).

I take one of the balls of fiber and stretch it over a lower branch (it is better to start with the lower branches and work your way up).  I did not put a lot of effort into securing it to the branch - just stretch it over and wrap some fibers around to help hold it in place.

After placing all of the fiber it may not look quite right and your gut may tell you that you need to add more and to make it look 'better'.  Fight the urge to do so.

Take the tree and spray it with the hairspray.  Spray from a distance, arm's length, so that the strength of the spray will not knock the fiber off and spray enough so that beads of liquid form on the fibers.

Now it is time to apply the foliage.  First I held the tree upside down and sprinkled a light dusting of the brown Earth onto the underside of the fibers.  Second I held the tree upright and gave it a sprinkling of the darker green foliage onto the tops and side of the fibers.  Lastly, I gave it a lighter sprinkling of the light green foliage onto the tops of the fiber clusters.  It is important to note - do not apply too much.  You should be able to see through the fiber clusters.  Here are several shots showing my results up to this point:

When done with the foliage, I gave it a final light covering of hairspray to hold everything in place and set it aside to dry.

Once the hairspray had dried I took a sharp pair of scissors and clipped off any wild fiber strands that did not look right (some of those wild ones are visible in the photos above).

I was excited about how good the final product looked and it took very little time to do.  Actually, this is one of those tasks that you can do while watching TV because (1) it requires little attention and (2) being distracted by the TV are you giving it little attention to the trees and are less apt to try to hard to make it too 'right'.

I will post more pics when I get them.  Meanwhile how about some behind-the-scenes shots?  Here are a couple of random pics I took while making the trees.  First, my photography area:

And my work bench: