Hi, all. I am scratchbuilding a single stall engine house (HO) and was wondering if any of you have any thoughts on modeling the wooden block ‘tiles’ that were used for floors back in the day (end grain up). I am modeling around 1950, but I’m imagining the engine house I am making was more like turn of the century.
If I remember right, the floor of the engine shop at the museum near where I live had tiles of about 4" x 8" x maybe 3" thick. Many, many thousands of them! I suppose I could cut several thousand from strip wood and lay each one by hand, but that sure sounds like a lot of work and may be just tedious enough to push me over the edge of insanity.
Has anyone tried something like this and have any ideas, or should I fall back on a basic plank floor?
It was called a wood brick floor. Easily repaired and very durable was a reason for its use over just pain dirt or some sort of asphalt.
I suppose you can get a brick sheet and color it but the mortar joints would be out of place. Using strip wood a scribing lines would be a way to go. After some painting a dirty black it would look good.
I haven’t done this but if I were to attempt it I think I would use strip wood in the dimensions I wanted and then glue up a square or rectangle of the strips, about 6" long and maybe 1" x 1" in cross section. When thoroughly dry I would slice (saw cut) 1/8 to 1/4" long pieces and then glue them together side by side to make larger areas of floor, all with end grain wood ‘bricks’ showing. This is still tedious but less tedious that doing one board at at time. Just a suggestion.
Whatever method you decide upon, it still sems to be a rather tedious undertaking. If this is just an engine house on the layout and only a small portion of floor is seen, you may work up some of the visible sections w/ the wood. I would just use sheet styrene, scribed to the pattern, painted and weathered. The styrene gives you a good base for the structure. If this is to be a “museum” quality display, removable roof etc, you may need to use a print or actually use the many inlayed wood pieces.
Schmitt - I was actually playing with this idea a little last night. I will probably give it a try first, since it will be the fastest and cheapest. I guess I won’t know how it will look until I have the structure complete and can view it with correct lighting and other details completing the scene. Thanks for the links. That texture site could be useful for a number of things.
I like this idea. I think I will try printing a floor first, but this would be a good approach too. It’s a single stall and once the inspection pit is taken out of the equation, there isn’t an unreasonable area left to cover. I have a shop area planned as well, but I’m planning on plank floors in that space.
I’m not sure I do museum quality work, but I do like to add interior details to my structures. Especially something like this that will have large windows and a huge door. It will end up on a very visible section of my layout, too. With some interior lighting, I feel like these sorts of details make things pop a little more.
I might get carried away in some cases, but I want to be able to send people on scavanger hunts for little details. I have an apple pie cooling on a window ledge for example. It’s a small layout, so it makes it a little more practical to add goofy little details.
I think that the printed floor is the best of the suggestions so far.
I would avoid scribing wood or styrene - the scribing would be grossly over-size for such a floor.
If you make up the floor boardend-by-boardend, how true could your cuts be? You’d still need to sand it smooth to prevent tripping hazards for your shop crews. After staining it and then adding 50-or-so years of grease, oil, and abuse, I doubt that the individual board ends could be seen without magnification. I do understand the desire to do it piece-by-piece, but for a layout model, I think that it’s a poor use of your available modelling hours.
You could go to your local lumber emporium, find a stack of 4x8s and photograph it end-on. Then you have the real thing to get creative with in your favorite photo-editing program.
My initial thought (driven by the availability of materials in my layout space) was to slice cuts in the end-grain of some soft wood, but the big thing about wood brick flooring is that the end grain is very evident and doesn’t even begin to match up.
Since my prototype didn’t use wood block floors, I’ll never have this problem.
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - with a rammed earth engine house floor)
Perhaps it’s just me, but when I hear the term “single stall engine house” I think of rustic, shortline, isolated stuff, dirt floors, all wood construction, tin roof, etc. The idea of special flooring for such is akin to an inlaid boxwood/mahogany parquet floor in a potting shed. Of course, it’s your engine house.
Railroad museum floors are expected to be a lot more special than single stall engine sheds.
If your road is running a one of two engine operation, then at a partial flooring might be appropriate along with a heated office and maybe a small attached machine/mechanical shop.
Thing is, a proper floor makes all the difference … also, keeps things from getting dirty if/when dropped.
Concrete/stone/brick/etc → bad news, it’ll scratch anything when dropped … you don’t want to be ruining your precision-machined (i.e. expensive) locomotive parts.
Dirt/sand/etc → you don’t want that getting into your precision-machined (i.e. expensive) locomotive bearings if you can avoid it
wood → “Soft” so it’ll not scratch stuff when dropped, also it’s comfortable to stand on for extended periods of time (well, moreso than concrete).
Single-stall engine house might not fall into the same “glory” as a 15-bay roundhouse with attached machine shop and boiler house … but it’s still the cover for a very large investment, that you’re losing money on every hour it’s not doing work.
Your assumption that the floors have had to be made from exotic imported woods is incorrect.
The flooing would most likely be made from wood cut locally. For instance Redwood, Oak and Pine depending on availability, and would likely be made from material not suitable for other uses such as beam, planks, sidings, etc.
While the flooring would not be made made and installed in a slipshod manner it would not approach the quality of an inlaid floor. Installation was probably done by “unskilled” labor and was probably no more labor intensive than many other types.
The site I posted previously has some information on the history of the paving. One of the uses into the 1900’s was to pave streets because of its durability and lower traffic noise levels compred to some n other pavemen types.
Consider this… the inside of an enginehouse - an old structure for steam locos - was filthy with dirt, ash, grease, coal, you name it. Of course we tend to model those things - that in real life were dirty - in a better light.
Anyway, one thing you might try is to scribe in the tile “seams” with the back of an Xacto blade, and then paint them like you would brickwork so as the grout lines are a different shade.
I’ve done this on a diner floor, and it came out nice. But once the roof went on and the glass windows installed, you can’t really tell.
I’m all for modeling the detailed floor. I like the idea of gluing up a number of pieces together and then slicing off suitably thick layers.
I understand the suggestions that the level of detail that you will achieve may not be visible in the finished model, but from my perspective I am more interested in the modeling aspect than what others may see when it is done. By all means put in the detailed block flooring if that sort of modeling satisfies you. It’s your buck and your bang! Look at how many people detail their caboose interiors! For what? For the satisfaction of having done it!
I am going to give the printed floor and the glued up idea a try and see which one looks more realistic. If I just can’t get something to look decent with a reasonable amount of time and effort, I’ll fall back on the plank or dirt floor.
Like you, I get much of my enjoyment from the model making and adding little details. I realize that you might not see all of those details when looking a a layout as a whole, but when people get in close, look in the windows and see the details, it pulls them into the scene and they start looking for other things. I put lights in almost all of my structures. With the lights on, you see there are details inside, even from a distance.
I try to ignore the responses that question WHY I want to add these details. I want to because I find enjoyment in it and that’s a good enough reason. I appreciate everyone’s responses with ideas on how to achieve my desired effect. When I get to that point, I will post pictures and let you see how it turned out.
The single stalls I’ve been in are concrete. I am familiar with the floors you’re speaking of, but I recall them being more of a 6 x 6 rough size in most facilities and sunk more than 3 inches–they weren’t cheap to put in. Although they were very forgiving to stand and work on, the EPA killed them.