Hi folks! I was itching for something to do on the layout yesterday and didn’t feel like slinging plaster, or painting, or making trees. So, I decided to sit down and peruse through my collection of mags and books for some inspiration. I came across the February 1983 issue of Model Railroader and this neat little article on making “Sanford and Son’s Junkyard”. (geez; I received this issue in the mail when I was a sophomore in high school!) I had forgotten all about this project, but 27 years ago I had dog eared the page for some reason or another! I decided to have a go at it. Better late than never I suppose! It has been quite a while since I scratchbuilt any structures and it was high time. Most of the Model Railroader articles in those days seemed to have the dimensions and/or the scale drawings of their project articles much more frequently than they do today but this particular article had none. So I decided I would use the WASSG method to come up with the size of the walls and such. This stands for Wild And Somewhat Scientific Guesstimate. WASSG. I rummaged around in my scratch building supply box to come up with the materials. I originally thought to make the structure with styrene but I didn’t have much to work with in the box. In fact I didn’t have much building material at all left except for a sheet of bass wood. So, by default, that became the product to use. After all wood is easiest to model if you use wood to do it with!
Next, I marked off the measurements for the walls, the false front and the floor and cut them out with an exacto blade. I dug into the scrap box for some suitable doors and windows and came up with some leftovers from other kits. I the marked and cut out the openings for them. I then took a straight edge and the backside of the blade to scribe the individual boards. The blade wandered a couple of times but that was ok as I
Boy, they made no attempt in that article to match up with the exterior shots from the opening credits of ‘Sanford & Son’ itself. Of course, those exterior shots do not match up with the interior layouts used for the actual show, but still.
This morning I added some chunks of styrene to the corners and floor to serve as additional bracing. Warping and swelling from sprays of water I use for scenery construction could compromise the structure in the future so making sure everything is braced well is a priority.
I then brush painted the interior a flat black to eliminate the potential of the walls glowing when interior light is added. While I had the brushes out I painted on some window shades with an olive green onto the backside of the acetate.
And lastly for today I added the main roof support beam.
To prevent warping you could have sealed both sides of the wood. Since you are building such a “delicate” structure, a little warping will probably be prototype.
Great start, used to watch the show, way back when.
OK, this is my final comment on the building not looking like the show (show intro clip - wonky sound). As you can see, it’s a standard commerical storefront building, stucco maybe (or just painted concrete) with a big display window which does not match the interior sets in any way [:P]
However, this is your building and you already have gotten some good advice. Just call it ‘Steptoe and Son’ or something…[(-D]
Just some “over coffee” ramblings over the relation of this structure to the actual sitcom…I’m not sure why the author of the MR article chose this name for the business other than maybe he was a big fan of the show! I myself always liked it as well. There was times when the exasperated Big Dummy Lamont and Fred had me in absolute stitches! ("It’s the big one “Lizbeth! I’m coming home to ya!”) But, I won’t be naming the structure “Sanford & Son”. 1st of all, the building doesn’t even remotely look like the one in the show. Secondly, the show was set in L.A. (I think) and my layout is set in New England. Also I haven’t seen any little plastic people that resemble Redd Fox! But I think I have a pickup truck that I can beat up pretty good!
To be very honest, linking the model to a well remembered and beloved TV show of similar premise provides a point of identification for the layout viewer, regardless of the model’s lacking precise appearance, or locale ID. Really, it’s all in the name. I’ve always found that visitors get a big kick out of spotting things they “recognize”, or can identify with from personal experience, on the layout. Such items serve as a good conversation ice breaker for those totally unfamiliar with the hobby of model railroading when first visiting the layout. I expect that is why many hobbyists do include one, or two, such scenes on their layouts.
Well, to be fair I was going to say that the article author didn’t name it Sanford & Son Salvage (the name on the store in the show), so he could weasel out that way…until I saw in the article where the author states he used a tarpaper roof since that’s all that ‘Fred’ could afford - (and so inducing 2 phrases yet to be heard in 1983 - “D’oh!” and “Epic FAIL”). Well…at least it isn’t “W.E. Snatchum, Undertakers” (yes, with the Model T hearse)
More seriously, I see the author talks about different fences and brings up the ‘Boxcar Door’ fence - I remember often reading about those in Model Railroader of the 1980s (living in the '80s), and I even suggested that recently on this forum to some guy who brought a bunch of old boxcars he really couldn’t use - but come to think of were boxcar door fences really that common in real life? BTW, when you allocate space for a junkyard, please make it bigger than what the author of the article did - that’s maybe enough ground for one of those roadside antique dealers (a very small one), but a junkyard - I’m thinking a number of rows (10?) of vehicles, plus piles of assorted stacked scrap along the edges - even for the 1940s, let alone later).
Finally, yes, Sanford & Son was set in Los Angeles, Watts to be exact, and of course some wag created a merchant’s website for them
CNJ makes an excellent point here regarding the name of the business and linking it to something familiar. I may well reconsider. Or put it up for a vote!
As far as the fence and lot goes, I will be making the overall scene at least twice as big as the author in the magazine goes. I’m not sure exactly where on the layout it will go, but I do have numerous unclaimed patches of real estate. I do like the author’s point in that the junk yard can be something that “grows” with junk as the rest of the layout is being built. Find a piece of something not making it to the workbench scrap box? Just add it to the junkyard!
Thought I’de go slightly off topic here and share with you a couple of other structures. The first one is a bank that my father built out of balsa for my first birthday in 1968. He had a layout he built for me until he abandoned the hobby a few years later for other things such as motorcycles, bicycles, fly fishing, grouse hunting, and shorebird decoy carving.
This building will always have a home on my railroad
This tower was built by me when I was 16. My 1st scratchbuild and also will never not be on my layout.
Back to the project at hand! This morning I filled in the cracks where sections didn’t match up exactly flush with Elmers wood filler, installed a little trim work, painted the blue door a charcoal gray to better match the windows, added an interior light, and flowed on a raw wood treatment stain from Micromark.
Well, I don’t know about boxcar door fences, but in the TV show American Pickers, I have seen a fence or two (in the Apalation Mountains, I think) that were made from old car parts (hoods and body panels, mainly)
Also, Saltwater Cowboy, with that beat-up pick-up, I would love to see some photos of that. I’m a big fan of old and rusty machenery, such as old cars (mabe that’s why I like all of my models of old ALCOS and GE 70 tonners extremely weathered) The way I see it, every piece of machinery has a story to tell of ot’s former glory, hidden under each layer of rust. Unfortunately, I think I ma be taking it too far that P-40 looks way too clean right now[(-D]
Well, a couple days away from the project as work interfered 2 days and an absolute terrible stomach virus wrecked me for a day and a half. But I was back at it again this morning to catch up where I left off.
I did some rather heavy handed drybrushing of an acrylic yellow as the buildin’s base color and lighter drybrushing of some browns to dirty it up a bit.
I then decided an electric meter was in order. Used a snip of scrap styrene and a small piece of clear styrene from an old kit sprue. Then attached the conduit simulated with some wire.
Then I painted the trim grey and added the sign as well as the front door overhang made with nothing more than a piece of black construction paper.
Now I’ll get back to it and start to think about roof construction, additional signage and weathering and send Fred to scope a suitable piece of real estate! Once Fred reports back, I’ll be able to determine the foot print for the entire scene and get my dimensions for the fence.
Next 4 shots show each side as I’ve progressed this morning. I added some advertising signs, Made the back room roof with a piece of bass wood and covered with roofing material of construction paper. Made the main building roof out of cardstock and that same paper. Made a chimney from a piece of stripwood and some brick paper and another splinter of wood to represent the vent for Fred’s indoor plumbing. Followed it all up with a heavy india ink alcohol wash. So, this part of the project comes to a close and the process will begin for phases 2 and 3. The lot construction and the surrounding fence.
Well Fred finally got back to me after picking out a lot to have his junkyard occupy. Now he needs some fencing to contain all his collections.
1st one will be 13" long. Decided upon stripwood as the material of choice to construct a board fence. Board by board by umpteen zillion more boards! Some will be cracked, some will have knot holes and other forms of disrepair. Some may be missing altogether and patched with…hmmm. Maybe a boxcar door! So precicion in measurements isn’t top priority and this should go somewhat quickly. The fence will be roughly 8 scale feet high.
These next 2 pics are of a smaller fence I made with this method for a previous layout. Maybe Fred will salvage some of this for his!
