The Coffee Valley Railroad: 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.