Once I had completed installing all of the windows, I began work on the roof.  My first step was to use and x-acto knife and trim all of the roof panels so that the seams were fairly straight and smooth.  I found that a slight sawing motion provided the best results.  Do not worry about small divots and such as they will be covered by the copper roofing paper.  Any large gaps I filled with squadron putty (I used a little green, but found that as it was an old tube, it was really hard, so then I switched to the white).

After filing down all of the filled areas and any other rough areas I masked everything  but the roof sections so that I could use contact cement.  As I have mentioned in previous posts I prefer using 3M’s super 77.

After waiting a couple of miniatures I installed the strips for the copper roofing.  I only installed it on the Mansard sections of the roof as per the directions.  At each corner I used a strip of the cardstock to cover each gap.  As you can see I used the Scotch blue painters tape to hold each of the strips into place.

Once I had all of the brick paper glued into place, and the windows and door openings had been cut out, I started working on the roof.   I made sure to test the fit of each piece before gluing it in place using the Elmer’s wood glue.

Going back to cutting out the windows, I found that the easiest way to do this was to stab in the general area of the window with a hobby knife, and carefully cut around the edge of the cardstock.  I also found that using a slight sawing motion had the best results.

For the mansard portion of the roof the overlap on the panels match the placement of the wall panels below.  After gluing all of the mansard sections I glued the top in place, and once it had dried I used a hobby knife and cut top to match the panels as needed.  Installing the tower panels brought about quite a lot of cutting and fitting.  There was one panel with a bit of overlap at the final part, but once I had tapered them  into each other it balanced out.  The top section was very challenging as the pieces did not fit together very well.  I had to make slight adjustments to two of the large pieces, and had to custom cut panels for the D and E sections.  In hind-sight it might have been easier to cut a little bit from each of the other panels to make them fit, however it looks OK.

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Doing the top portion of the roof in this way most likely made the pitch of the upper roof different than the kit, but looking at examples elsewhere it is not an issue.

I continued the construction of Dorothy’s house, using the Micro-Mark magnetic gluing jig to hold the bottom of the walls while they were being glued.  At the top of the walls I used the the blue painter’s tape to hold the walls until the glue dried.  I found that using Elmer’s wood glue works very well on the cardstock walls, and that you usually only need to hold it into place for a couple of minutes.

After getting the walls glued to the top and bottom floors I waited for them to cure and then added the interior floors, making sure to line them up with the wallpaper on the inside.  I found that the magnets for the jig happened to be the correct height to hold the first floor at the correct level while it dried.  The floors are made by using the embossed sheet, which I glued to the cardstock using the 3M contact cement.  I then painted them using PolyScale roof brown, as I think it matched the color of that type of floor quite well.

After painting the area between the first floor and the sub floor a dark color I glued the remaining walls in place.  I did not glue the back wall on as I am considering putting an interior in this house.  Here is the picture of the building with all of the walls in place:

The next step will be to paint and install the brick paper.

]]> http://www.railroadredux.com/2010/02/ss-ltd-dorothys-house-part-2-walls-and-floors/feed/ 0 http://www.railroadredux.com/2010/02/ss-ltd-dorothys-house-part-1-cardstock-walls/ http://www.railroadredux.com/2010/02/ss-ltd-dorothys-house-part-1-cardstock-walls/#comments Sun, 07 Feb 2010 15:00:03 +0000 Dom http://www.railroadredux.com/?p=174

As a Christmas present my wife gave a the Scale Structures Limited model, Dorothy’s House.  This is a cardstock and cast metal craftsman model of a brick house with all of the fancy “gingerbread” decorations.

Upon first opening the box it was slightly intimidating to see the sheer amount of parts, which were separated into different bags.

I read the instructions completely and then dove into the kit.  The first step was to indentify the walls and floors and cut them from the rest of the cardstock parts.  I then used 3M contact cement to glue the “wallpaper” onto the inside of the walls:

In the picture you can see the large amount of parts in their respective bags.  Also you can see how I turned the pieces right side up so that I could trim the wallpaper to fit the panels.

Once I had put the wallpaper on all of the walls I was able to start construction.  I used the the magnetic jig from Micro-Mark to assist in building the walls. By using waxpaper in the jig I was able to easily remove the model once the glue had dried.  Per the suggestions in the manual I did not glue the back wall (the large one) in place as I want to be able to remove it to add furniture and people at a later date.

For glueing the walls to the floor panels and each other I used Elmer’s Wood Glue.  The 3M blue painters tape was very helpful in holding the various wall panels together while drying.

In the next post I will show how I completed the remaining wall panels and installed the floors.

]]> http://www.railroadredux.com/2010/02/ss-ltd-dorothys-house-part-1-cardstock-walls/feed/ 0 http://www.railroadredux.com/2010/01/union-ice-company-completion-of-ice-dock/ http://www.railroadredux.com/2010/01/union-ice-company-completion-of-ice-dock/#comments Tue, 19 Jan 2010 07:41:44 +0000 Dom http://www.railroadredux.com/?p=149

After installing the final section of the dock I cut out and assembled the railings on the cork board.  Once these had dried I glued them onto the edge of the dock using Elmer’s wood glue.  I then assembled the ramp leading down from the opening in the wall by using the provided scale lumber.

The next step was to fabricate the rest of the ice skid along the length of the dock.  Using more scale lumber I cut the pieces to length and glued directly on to the deck.  I created stops at either end using scrap pieces.  I set the blocks of “ice” on the skid to see how the final look will be.  If you look next to the opening in the wall under the cooling tower you will see where I added a ladder for roof access.

About the only thing left on this model is to glue the gravel on to the roof panels, and then weather the entire model, which I most likely won’t do until I place it on a layout or diorama.

In previous posts I have talked about using a cork board when building certain model parts, especially docks and things of that nature.  I decided that I should share some of the things that I have learned in using this.

The chief advantage of using a cork board is that you can place the templates included in the model (or drawn by you as the case might be) onto the cork and cover it with a sheet of wax paper.  The section of the model can then be built right over the template without damaging it, at the same time the cork allows pins to be used to hold parts into place.

Here is a picture showing the first step in building an extension to my ice dock for the Union Ice Co. kit:

As you can see in the picture I use the pins to keep the parts in alignment until the glue has dried.  This allows me to use a slower drying glue, such as the Elmer’s Wood Glue – which gives me plenty of time to make sure that the parts are aligned to match the template.

The next step was to lay out the stringers, on which the frames will be glued.  I also added the cross bracing to one side at the same time, after allowing them time to dry I can use a hobby knife or razor blade to remove the frames from the wax paper after I have removed the pins.  The wax paper makes this relatively easy.  I then glue the cross bracing on the opposite side.

The next step is to glue the frames into place on the stringers, using pins as needed for support.

Once the part has dried I can remove the completed assembly from the cork board by removing all of the pins and then using the hobby knife as needed.  The final cross bracing and deck can then be put on.

After adding the long expanse of the ice dock on the Union Ice Company kit, I decided that I was going to extend the dock in a “T” shape to meet the building instead of just installing a ramp for the ice.  I used the template for the original ice dock to create the needed parts, though I ended up using slightly smaller material (what the hobby shop had available).

Here is a picture showing the end of the existing dock, which I added a Plastruct stairway and railings as the wood looked too “cluncky”.

I then assembled the filler piece for the dock on the cork board and inserted the completed piece into the gap, using a bottle of paint as a weight to assist in gluing the piece into place:

Here is the completed addition to the dock, waiting for the ice ramp and railings to be installed.  My logic behind making the change in the ice dock was to make it so that if a block was stuck, the workers would be able to walk over and fix the problem without needing a ladder.  Also I added a small ladder going up from that level to the shorter section of the roof, which I will show in a later post.

For the ice loading dock for the Union Ice Company kit I followed the directions for the most part.  The only change that I made was to make the bracing the same for middle uprights as the ends.  I did not like how the small supports recommended in the kit looked after building the first upright.  I used additional scale lumber from Northwest Short Line to provide the needed material.

The second picture shows how I used a cork board and pins to build the ice loading platform right on top of the instructions, which are covered by wax paper.  This technique allowed me to use the pins to secure each piece into the correct place while I was waiting for the glue to dry.

This picture shows how used bottles of paint as weight to glue the completed platform into place.

I have continued the construction of the Union Ice Company, learning many things along the way.  This kit has been especially interesting due to the fact that it is built using cardstock for the major components.  One of the most important things that I have learned through building this kit is the importance of making sure that each component is glued to others while being as square as possible.

Here is a view showing the interior walls of the kit for the office area:

And here is the back view of the building after I completed construction of the walls, notice the right side of the picture shows the cooling tower:

In the next post I will cover the construction of the loading platform for the reefer cars.

I recently bought the Union Ice House kit from a yard sale at the local model railroad club.  The kit I have was made by California Model Co. but I have seen it under a couple of other names as it is a very old kit.  I chose the kit because it was a cardboard type kit and I had no experience with building these.  The chief thing I have learned so far in the construction of this kit was that you can never have enough clamps.  At the suggestion of several people I used Elmer’s Wood Glue to build this.