Looking at the layout I decided I had a bare patch that needed a structure or two. An industrial structure to generate some traffic. I brought this weary structure back from a train show. Heljan. I could not find it in my 2013 Big Walter’s book, either it is old and discontinued, or later than 2013 (doubtful). Brick is an ugly color, and the big splashes of dirt don’t help it.
So a nice paint job. Krylon or Rustoleum rattle cans, red auto primer for the brick, dark gray auto primer for the roof. I touched up the brick with Floquil boxcar red, which matched the auto primer perfectly. All the windows, and their glasing were glued in so hard I feared breaking something if I pried them out. So I masked each window individually. Tedious but doable.
It still needs some stuff. Interior lighting. Some freight on the loading dock, plus some workers. Maybe a larger loading dock. With a roof over it to keep the freight and workers dry during a New England weather? Downspouts. Signage. For which I have to pick an industry. Machine shop? Foundry? Furniture factory? Steps leading up to the personnel door. Perhaps a largish brick stack. Ideas will come to me.
Oh yeah, I remember that kit, and to me it always looked like an effort to make double use of parts intended for a different kit, a roundhouse. I have some vague recollection that Model Power might have offered it for a time, too.
But anyway it is shown in the 1988 Walthers HO catalog as a Heljan item, 322-362 selling for the grand total of $8.79. They called it a Steel Supply Warehouse and indeed that elevated center portion would seem ideal for an overhead crane meant for lifting very heavy or bulky steel sheets or fabrications. True, the large dust collector (?) on the roof does suggest furniture factory or other factory dealing with wood, but to me it seems misplaced if indeed the center portion is for a traveling crane - I have seen factories where the dust collector is off to the side and not on any portion of the roof.
And yet if there is a traveling crane in the center of the building, where do they get the stuff to lift up – or ship out? An access door where one (or two) of the large arched windows in the center side is would seem in order, for rail or for trucks.
In N scale a counterpart kit was just called a Machine Works. Walthers website shows it on the retired models portion:
The odd “swirling” look of the raw plastic was not unknown back then, when there was an effort to “weather” kits simply by mixing another contrasting shade of styrene into the molds. Sort of like marble cake. It was, I think you agree, unconvincing. Unlike marble cake, which is excellent. [dinner]
I’ve also come to learn over the years that the swirling is also caused by someone not taking the time to clean out the molding machine between color changes. I remember a lot of those old Heljan kits, but did they actually claim that it was supposed to have a weathered effect?
I didn’t think that the main brick colour looked all that bad, but the swirls of other colours really ruined the look. Your paint job improved things dramatically. [tup][tup]
There are lots of towns, not too far from where I live, where buff-coloured brick is quite common, and since I named one of my towns after a real town in that area, I thought that the train station might look good in buff brick…
I don’t intend to do the whole town in that colour, though…maybe a few of the storefronts.
Some older kits, quite reasonably-priced compared to the very nicely-done ones offered nowadays, can be made into very acceptable structures which don’t look out-of-place among the newer offerings.
A friend gave me this kit, one of several identical ones he had picked up, in a lot, off Craig’s List…
My layout is an around-the-room style, so I built the kit using the rear wall as part of the wall facing the aisle, doubling the size of the building…
The new, unseen, rear wall, all of the interior partitions, and the roof were done using .060" sheet styrene - bought in 4’x8’ sheets, it’s an economical way to modify or scratchbuild structures. I added a few details like the loading dock and roof dormers, and used Plastruct shingle s
Wayne, I recognize the old Gruesome Casket/ drug store/ Ramsey Journal et al kits strung together. Haven’t seen a pic of that building before. Nice job.
What did you use for the gable end, since those kits have a flat top? I see a sign has been strategically placed over what I assume is a seem.
Wayne, That’s a truly nice bunch of structures. Your signage is very good looking.
I like red brick better than I like yellow brick. I can think of many very handsome red brick buildings. The only yellow brick buildings I remember over the years were ugly modern factories, slab sided, no trim, flat roof, or Nevins Hall in Framingham, a weird shaped building to fit a weird shaped lot. I never liked Nevins Hall, even though we did my graduation from middle school in it.
Nice work! Some 35 years ago I picked up a box of not very well cared formodel rr things… In it was that building, partially built. I moved and got away from modeling for awhile. It still awaits some action. Never realized thet the tank was part of that kit. Will have to look it up.
Your question prompted me to take another look to refresh my memory. The long side of the warehouse is comprised of four long walls from the Journal/drugstore kits, and one short wall. Another two short walls were used on the ends of the warehouse, and the fourth one was cut up to form the gables, as you guessed.
As for the signs, David, I did some myself using dry transfers, but my brother did the artwork for the majority of the other ones, including the decal that makes up the long sign on Bowyer Industries. Most of those he printed on his own commercial-type printer.
He also did the artwork for the latest batch of signs, but sent them to a commercial printer which he uses for his own business needs, and they’re mostly destined for use on the partial upper level which was recently added to my layout. It’s a work in-progress, although not much of that has been happening lately.
Here are a few of the latest ones - most need to be Dullcoted and all need to be weathered. All are based on local industries which exist, or once existed, in or near my home town…
Rich, a lot of kit structures use mostly multiples of the same doors and windows. If they’re not too large, get a roll of wide masking tape, and, working on a sheet of glass, put down strips of appropriate lengths, sticky-side-down, placing each successive strip directly atop the previous one. I’d guess that three or four layers would be suitable, but a little experimentation will determine how many will work best.
Measure one of the windows/doors which are to be masked, then transfer those dimensions to the tape. Using a suitable straightedge and a sharp blade (X-Acto or ordinary utility knife) cut through all layers of the tape, then peel off each identical piece in-turn and apply to the structure.
If the windows in question are larger in both directions than the widest tape you can find, you can still mass produce the masking by doing each window in two (or more) pieces, applied with one piece overlapping the other(s).
After I assembled the main parts of this structure from two Walthers American Hardware kits, modifying some aspects of it…
…I airbrushed all areas that were meant to represent brick…
The brick areas were then masked and the entire structure airbrushed to represent concrete. Some areas, especially those on the one end where strips of sheet styrene had been addded to represent concrete framing not on the original castings, had to be masked to
