Model Of The Month: Time to build Union Station!

I thought so, either that, or they were some really ancient ones. The do make excellent clamps, and are impervious to glues, pain, and the like! :)
 
ASL 1-AA FST STNS.jpg I HAVE STARTED CARVING AND INSTALLING THE FOAM MASONRY. This is slow going but will look really good once the "stones " are painted. I had to darken the photo with graphic converter to try to show some of the cut stone detail.



doing the stone facade would go way faster without the buttresses, but they are needed to make this thing right. I will try to get some photos of how I do the stones, buy when I do It I'm using both hands and can't operate the camera, maybe I can carve some at the club, and recruit a cameraman.
 
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ASL 1-A1rocks!!!!.jpg this is going to take a while

Carving these foam rocks one by one, and gluing them on is going to take a very long time. I am starting to develop some streamlined procedures that may help. right now to get an idea about what this is going to look like I'm working on the buttresses and the flat wall on the tower end at the same time. I'm thinking I could get a lot faster if I did the flat wall first, and then did the buttresses .




I slapped some acrylic paint on the "stones to see how they look. I really like this apple barrel pewter gray, the paint in the photo is wet, and it darkens some as it dries, all in all it is a little two dark for limestone, but then I can highlight the high spots, dry brushing them with a lighter mix, and this paint will give me the darker shadows in the recesses, letting the texture show.


I use this paint a lot in scenery for my gray rocks, again it is slightly too dark, but scenery colors fade over time, so being a little too dark to start with turns out to be a blessing.


This is looking really good though!


Bill Nelson
 
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ASL-AA-1bc stns#2.jpg ASL-AA-1bc stns#2.jpg My original plan was to cast the arch detail, but I wasn't satisfied with any of my atempts at making the masters so for now I'm making individual arches, sure they don't meet my full approval, but each one will be ***** up in it's own unique way.

the progress on this is slow as *** but I'm really liking the look, after about two hours of cutting and gluing rocks one is ready to run out of the building, but if I can pace myself, perhaps by the spring time we will have an awesome structure to anchor the scene @ the big yard.
 
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AASL-1A RCKS#5.jpg ASL-AA1aUS tl wndws#1a.jpg more progress

I have made a lot of progress. I'd love to keep working on this but I need to sleep so I can work tonight. My manager has fixed my schedule so I can have Friday night/ Sat Morning, and Sat night/ Sunday morning next week and each week in the future, but to get there I'll have to work each night till next Friday night, ten nights in a row, so sleep now is needed, but here are some picks, this is just getting better and better!
 
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AAASL 1a-crvg stn #1.jpg AAASL 1a-crvg stn #2.jpg AAASL 1a-crvg stn #3.jpg AAASL 1a-crvg stn #4.jpg ALsl -A1a 1twr wl #1a.jpg I got Tyler to photograph the process o f cutting some foam stones with my camera at the club last Monday night, and he did a fantastic job. this is what the building is looking like now.


For cut stone it is important for the height of each stone to be the same, so I use the width of the foam to make the height of the stone. I cut a rectangle of the foam material to give me the length of stone I want. I cut some off the edges of each stone at close to 45 degrees 45 degree (I painted the stone in the photo to show better, cause the white foam hid the details of the process). after I have cut close to a 45 degree all the way around, I chop up the face of the stone a little, and then trim it off the rectangle, and start on the next stone. once I have five or six stones I get the tachy glue out and glue them in place, after a while I come in and paint the stones with Apple Barrel pewter gray. I give it several coats so the acrylic paint fills in any little holes in the foam.



I'm loving the look I am getting, but the process is slow.



Bill Nelson



Bill Nelson
 
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Very nicely done Bill and good pictures Tyler. I appreciate this photo story as I could not make choo choo club last PM.

The very careful workmanship reminds me of the stonecutters of old who built the majestic European churches.

Keep up the good work.

Tom
 
AAASL=1US 1sttwrwl#a.jpg more foammasonry

After working on my airplane car load last week, I got back to carving foam and gluing the "stones on the front face of the tower. Am working up the buttresses, which are a pain, lots of cutting and fitting.


When I have the whole front face of the tower covered, I will be approximately 1/8th with finishing the stone facing; so this won't be quick. I am really liking the effect though. It is going to take me another several months to get the terminal done, and no telling how long to build the base, the platforms, and the road
 
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This really is a beautiful building you are making here. I hesitate to call it a model. It's way past that. This kind of fabrication and skilful sculpting is fantastic. :)
 
Thank you for the complements. I do try to approach modeling as an art form, and this has been a stretch project, where I am making myself learn new techniques . also this is a project where the first early results far exceeded my expectations , which makes me want to work extra hard to meet or exceed the early quality in any later work. on a big project like this, that turns into a lot of extra work.


The extra work should pay off though, as this building will certainly be a focal point for our big yard @ the club, this building could easily be the single structure on the club layout that is most visually dominant.



It has been a while since I had a project that challenged me this much, the last one was my Surry Parker log loader/skidder project, which was a big project not only for the scratchbuilding and kitbashing involved, but in the crazy idea I had to built two, instead of one. that massively insane build is documented in the Unique logging and mining equipment thread, over in the logging mining and industrial railroad category, starting on page 3 toward the bottom.


http://www.zealotmodels.com/forum/showthread.php?t=157175&page=3


so here I am getting into another long term project.



Bill Nelson
 
AAASL-1aaUS wl#1a.jpg I got almost all the stone work done on the end wall of the tower. Note the saw toot edge on the ends of the wall. this will allow the stones to overlap as I do the other walls. the stones stick out a little farther than they need to, that way, I can trim them down to get a good fit.



I thought the photo needed a little something to anchor it, so I snagged my little 3 foot gauge 0-6-0T . Some of the work I did to this little locomotive is documented in the narrow gauge section, on the HOn3 engine shops thread. this critter was so authentically detailed , it came with link and pin couplers. It is is so small there was no room for KD's so I outfitted the link and pin coupler pockets with dummy couplers. No way I'm going to deal with link and pin couplers in HOn3.



When I paint the foam stones with Apple barrel acrylic paint (pewter gray); I loaded it down heavily, this fills all the cracks, and hopefully seals in the water base glue so humidity won't cause the structure to warp, or the stones to fall off. in places the paint is still wet, as reflects more than it will later. some of the little white spots you see are the flash reflecting in wet paint. if any white ( or yellow) foam shows later, it will get touched up.
 
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res911 said:
This final picture looks good. Have seen you do some amazing work. Keep it up.
Click to expand...


Thanks, This has turned into a big project. That is a good thing, as I'm kind of stalled on my home railroad while I work on plans to tear out about 2/3rds of it for a more workable design. I do large amounts of planning, and I want to be sure the next plan will work better than the last, and look good too.


Bill Nelson
 
AAASL!a-brgrtray #1.jpg AAASL!a-brgrtray #2.jpg AAASL!a-US trng t cnrnr #1.jpg free materials, and rounding the corner.

Friday Morning , again, marks the beginning of my weekend. My chain saw is in the shop, with a stuck air inlet valve for the gas tank, so today's jobs included working under my kitchen sink to find a leak, and working on Union Station. I had thought the leak was a drain leak, as the drain pipe comes in at an odd location. Running new drain pipes in my 130 year old kitchen, I had to avoid a unplanned yellow poplar 2 X 10, which is actually 2 x 10 inches, unlike that stuff they try to call lumber nowadays. That and putting the sink directly under a new octagonal window, turned my drain pipes under the sink into a genuine monkey puzzle . with the nature of under sink storage, there was too much stuff down there, so I figured stuff pushing on the slip joints caused a drain leak. after getting it all cleared and cleaned out, it turns out the leak was on the supply side, where the hose to the sprayer fastens to the sprayer.


The next wall of the tower is going quickly, as the corner between two buttresses was done with the first wall.


On my list for tomorrow, haircut pick up chain saw , and shop for plumbing supplies. In the mean time I rounded the corner and started to do stone work on the possum Hollow side of the Union Station.

a good surplus source for closed cell foam, like what I'm using to cave the stonework from, are old meat trays . Instead of throwing them out I wash them thoroughly, and cut the flat parts out. These chunks of foam carve well, don't cost you anything except the amount of time you spend washing them minus what you would spend throwing them away.


they would be ideal for smaller buildings, they have the advantage over foam core, in that there is no paper to absorb moisture and warp. The close formed closed cell plastic carves well. the yellow foam in the building comes from chicken and pork trays.
 
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gbwdude said:
I don't know if you or anyone else is familiar with the website Shorpy but it's a great site. It has plenty of vintage pictures, most in very high resolution. While I was on there today I saw this and it looks similar to your station Bill: http://www.shorpy.com/node/13894?size=_original#caption Check out the rest of the site and tags under "railroads".

Tyler
Click to expand...

Great clear picture Tyler and it does resemble Bill's model of Union Station.

I have been to the Shorpy site before and it has some great historical images.

Tom
 
AAASLA-twr 2nd sd #3.jpg AAASLa-twr2ndsd#4.jpg rounding the corner

I love Shorpies, I love good black and white photography. Most of photos on that sight are of extraordinary quality, and the subjects can be very interesting, and occasionally instructive to those of us trying to re create the past in miniature .

Today I got out and got a hair cut, picked up my chain saw from the shop, and cut up two large Maple limbs from a tree that was standing dead, until it blew over a couple moths ago, so the wood is pre seasoned, warming my dinning room as I write. Cloudy, the Harlequin Great Dane is very appreciative.

Well besides the work I got done, I had some fun with foam masonry. In the photos of me carving stones, I was working in the air. I have found I can work carving stones much faster and with better results working on a cutting board. I have been estimating how many stones of what size I need, carving out 30-40 at a time, before going to work gluing them down. this improves the speed of the foam Masonry. I made huge progress today. won't make this much progress tomorrow, as I will be sleeping most of the day getting ready to go to work tomorrow night @ 11:00 pm, but I'm very excited with the progress I made today.

by my estimate I'm just shy of 1/3rd of the way done with the masonry, which is way ahead of where I thought I'd be by now.
 
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Awesome, and those burgers were an incredibly accurate, most like like! )
 
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