I continued contrustion of the module by clamping the first cross member and screwing it into place.  This is one of the chief advantages of using the L-girder type construction.   It allows cross members to be easily moved if the design of the layout requires it.  I used a countersink bit to pre-drill for each of the screws so that I would not splinter the lumber.

I continued this process for the rest of the crossmbembers, just using equal spacing to start with.  I have not yet figured out a track plan as I am still in the process of building some of the chief industries for this module.  My intention at the moment is to model a meat packing industial siding, showing many of the different parts of the same industy.  My intention is create a small module that would be fun to run a small switching operation on.

Note that I have put some cross bracing in place.  I did not like the way they turned out so I will be be replacing them at some point.  For now they provide the needed support and I will leave them as is until I get further along in the building process.

I decided that it was time a built a module section of a layout at home in order to have a place to display the models I have built so far.  I researched several methods of benchwork construction and decided upon the l-girder construction.  I made this decision for the excellent combination of strength, relativly low cost, and low weight.  I began construction by first gluing and then using screws to attach the boards in a L shape.  This has the effect of creating much of the strength, while at the same time providing a place to screw the crossmember s to.

I screwed the parts of the legs together, not using glue as I intend to make the removable in case I have to move the module.  I then assembled the legs onto the two main joists.  One of the most import things during the assembly process was the use of a square, to make sure that everything lined up correctly.

After the glue had dried on the roof paper I removed the tape and began by touching up all of the roof.  I then dry-brushed several layers of color on the roof panels.  I used two colors of green and then used a dark gray and a light gray which I also used on the gravel portion of the roof.

I then began to cut the various pieces of the roof to the neccesary shape, using hobby cutters to cut them slightly over sized.  I then used a hobby knife and files to fit them in the needed spots.  I used them to cover the edges of the roof panels.  I dry-brushed the colors of the chimney to represent stone.  I intend to paint the trim later.

After I finished installing all of the copper sections of the roof, I painted the top section of the roof using floquil’s roof brown.  As I did not mask the top section when spraying the contact cement, it left a little bit of texture.  My only intent was to save time when masking as it would be covered by the fine ballast.  Once the paint had dried I painted on Woodland Scenic’s Scenic Cement on to the roof.   I then held the model over a small box and sprinkled the fine ballast into the glue.

After knocking off the excess ballast I used a medicine dropper to float extra scenic cement into the areas needed for complete coverage.  I painted the white areas of the roof with a color to match the rest of the copper roofing.

After waiting for the glue to dry I dry-brushed the copper areas of the roof.  I did this by using five different colors, starting with a dark green, then a lighter green, followed by a dark grey for shadows, and then a light grey and a final very light coat of white for the highlights.  The green was only on the copper sections of the roof, the grey highlights continued onto the gravel on the roof.

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.