I’m about to start attaching the walls of my Walthers Modern Roundhouse kit soon followed by the roof. I’ve noticed the roof is composed of several pieces that lay on the top of the walls and/or the roof supports inside. There isn’t a lot of contact between the roof pieces and the walls or roof supports. I’d like to make the roof removable, but am stumped on how. I’ve thought of gluing the roof sections together, edge-to-edge, but that seems a little weak to me, like the roof might break apart when I try to lift it off the building.
Mine is nine stall. I made the center “monitor” sections removable in three pieces. Also the front and rear sections come off as well. I have nine, three-segment sections that are removable. They fit very nicely and do not “leak” light since there is a cove molding around the edges.
I set the two outer sections in place then hold these down with the center section. I glued strip styrene on either side of the joint which secures the outer sections.
I really don’t have detail photos of how I did it. I’ll see if I can get more photos as time permits. My roof segments are securely glued and they fit remarkably well to the walls and inside beam supports.
I also have the 9-stall Walthers Cornerstone modern roundhouse. I completely assembled it and painted it, but I did not glue down the roof sections. They just rest in place on top of the wall partitions. Fits like a glove.
I have a CMR roundhouse with similar roof construction and faced the same problem. I bought a large piece of bullion board at a local craft store and used the supplied roof sections as a template and made a single section roof for both front and rear sections.
I’ve only had to remove the rear section a couple of times in almost 20 years but it sure is easy to remove and put back.
Mel
Modeling the early to mid 1950s SP in HO scale since 1951
I did glue all the roof panels together and while quite flexible it never broke apart. Mine is removable, I put a thin strip of camper (foam)tape along the front and the back that allows a snug fit when I push the roof on. I have taken it off several times and it is no worse for wear.
Hi there. I glued strips of styrene underneath on the joints. To compensate for the increased thickness, I scraped off and filed the top of the wood frames. It’s solid as a rock…
You glued the panels together at the seams with no backing? Each panel has ridges along the sides to line it up with the roof support and I’ve noticed that some ‘adjustment’ is needed to get the panel properly in place. Your ‘one-piece’ panels settle into place without ‘adjustment’?
Along the right and left edges, I glued a thin piece of styrene to combat light leakage, made it look like flashing.
On the front and rear edges, under the roof I used truck canopy tape cut down to very thin strips. It was carefully placed and I can gently push down on the roof when installing it and the foam rubber tape does a friction fit holding the roof flat.
I have had the roof on and off many times with no issues.
Yep, each roof panel is just resting in place, and it works just fine. Been that way for 15+ years and never a problem, no warping, no nothing.
I chose to keep the roof panels unglued so that I could reach the rails inside the roundhouse to clean them, and I do that about once a year. Having the roof panels loose is also a big help in the event of a derailement inside the roundhouse. This can sometimes occur with steam engine pilot trucks or trailing trucks.
More power to anyone who glues all of the panels together into one giant roof section. With a 9-stall roundhouse, I cannot imagine dealing with such a floppy monstrosity.
As has been pointed out, the design of the roundhouse makes the joining of roof panels together a challenging undertaking. The wall partitions are higher than the roof panels which sit up against the wall partitions, so you need some sort of support underneath the roof panels which is all but impossible because of the position of the wall partitions.
I DID add “battens” to both sides of each center section. These battens overlap each of the outer panels and simply makes the joints look neater. I forget what size Evergreen styrene I used. Maybe .080 x .125?
The yellow is Kapton tape that I didn’t bother to remove after the wiring was done.
Well, all this talk of removable roofs has me over-thinking things tonight.
My roundhouse will be nearly bisected by the backdrop. I will have some creativity in store to get the roof cuts right and have the visible portions removeable.
Sorry for the late reply… I actually scraped and filed away the plastic when the structure was built-up. I used an Xacto blade to scrape off the plastic then I filed it smooth. It was a tedious job, but well worth the effort.
My roundhouse was built from a Korber kit (resin castings for the walls, stripwood for the roof supports, matteboard for the roof panels and a bag of gravel-like material to create a tar & gravel roof).
I gave the stripwood, matteboard, and gravel to a friend, then used .060" sheet styrene to create a floor (with faux inspection pits), and used .125"x.125"Evergreen strip material to create roof support posts, with gusset plates intended to receive the roof trusses (photos will enlarge if clicked-upon)…
I later realised that it would be difficult to guide the trusses into place between those gussets, so simply sliced off the portions which extended above the top members.
The kit instructions recommended ca to hold the front and rear walls together, but because they were a poor fit, I opted to use Evergreen H-columns and JB weld for a much sturdier assembly. The side walls were one-piece resin castings but also a poor fit, so I used screws to attach them to the front and rear walls…
countersinking the screwheads, then covering them with JB weld. I then scribed mortar grooves into the filler, and airbrushed the entire exterior with orange Pollyscale paint, later using pre-mixed drywall mud to add mortar detail.
I hemmed and hawed about how to make the roof removeable, but finally decided to build the trusses, using more Evergreen strip material, and the upper portion of the main sidewall as a pattern for the correct profile.
The asse
Dunno, if you have the Walthers Cornerstone Modern Roundhouse, it sure does seem a lot easier to just set the roof panels in place without gluing them.
Simon, my reply is not to challenge your experience. If the unglued roof panels easily fall off, then they easily fall off.
That said, in my 15 years experience with the Walthers Cornerstone Modern Roundhouse, no unglued roof panel has ever fallen off. Looking at the design of the roof, each stall consists of three roof panels, each at a different level and unconnected to one another. The roof panels which run horizontally across all of the stalls each set into their own position. So, I am puzzled as to why yours fall off at all, let alone easily.
Rather than gluing the roof sections only edge-to-edge, how about also using a glued-on piece of strip styrene, perhaps .020"thick x .060" wide as a batten. Painted the same colour as the roof, they won’t be all that obvious.
To keep the roof sections from sliding off, you could cement small blocks of styrene to the underside of the roof panels, in positions adjacent to outside walls or to the trusses supporting the roof. That could make the roof a snap-on and snap-off operation.
The roof on my roundhouse uses the support trusses as a “key” for alignment and the installed roof is simply “trapped” in position, by the upper portion of the walls.
