Bernhards Random Ramblings BACKUP

[ Untergroeningen posts ]  [ part 13 ] In the last couple days I focused on the roof and adding some building details. I cut the Auhagen corrugated roof pieces to size, added gutters I made from U-profile ABS, and primed the lot with Tamiya primer. I used old PollyScale CSX Gray to paint the roof. The paint reacted with the primer and produced a nice irregular weathering pattern. I decided to leave that and followed up with a light application of gray and light brown weathering powders. A strip of 0.060 x 0.080 Evergreen styrene covered with a strip of 0.010 x 0.125 styrene works well as roof ridge. Next I turned my attention to the roof of the machine shop. After test fitting on the module, I decided that cutting the roof at an angle to line up with the backdrop as originally planned is not necessary and I could cut the roof edge at the long wall of the shed. Then it was time to face the fact that the wall I made for the machine shop is too short. Close review of the prototype p...

 [ Untergroeningen posts ] [ part 12 ] Yesterday, I glued together the shed walls, primed and painted the roof trusses and glued them to the walls. I started working on the roof sheets, but before I can fit them, I need to glue the water tower to the building body. And before I can do that, I had one more window I needed to add. Drilling a hole, and cutting out the window opening with the nibbler is easy, but requires care and attention. The window frame and support pieces were already painted yesterday, so I just needed to do a few touchups around the frame and the wall opening to make it look nice. Finally, the big moment gluing the parts together. Contrary to pictures I showed in the last few days the building is now glued into one piece.  [ part 14 ]

 [ Untergroeningen posts ] [ part 11 ] With the window openings cut on the interior walls yesterday, I started today with spray painting the walls a nice faded, yellowish offwhite color. I mixed this from 12 parts white, 3 parts grey, and 1 part yellow. The airbrush helped with creating the uneven, slighly messy look I was after. I glued the windows into the walls using Testor's Clear Parts Cement, carefully aligned the interior walls, and glued those as well. A few bottles of paint help keeping everything aligned. While the glue set on the walls, I painted the inset walls of the water tower in PollyScale Mud. I also painted the wood beams of the shop walls in dark brown, stained the wooden top of the water tower, and painted and installed the side doors. Next up was building the roof trusses to support the roof. Since I need at least 4 trusses, I made a simple jig from styrene. The trusses are built from Evergreen 0.060 x 0.080 styrene strip. I temporarily set up the walls and p...

[ Untergroeningen posts ] [ part 10 ] The locomotive shed has large windows and I'm planning to eventually add interior lights and furnish the inside. For that to look nice, I need to add interior walls, so that the rear side of the Auhagen panels and the window plastic is hidden away. I used the outside wall as template to scribe the outline of the wall and the window openings on 1/8" styrene sheet. I scribed the lines deeper along a metal edge and cut an X into the window openings to snap off the inside pieces. I cleaned up the edge with the Xacto knife and emory board.  The view from the "inside" with the windows loosely put in place is coming out exactly as I had hoped for. The 1/8" sheet is thick enough that you can see the inside ledge of the wall through the window from the outside. With one wall finished, I made the second wall the same way. Now that I was confident in what I was doing this went much faster. I'm planning to paint the inside wall a ...

[ Untergroeningen posts ] [ part 9 ] As I was messing around with the mortar wash I decided that the red plastic base was just too red to get the colors I was after during weathering, so off to the paint booth I went and airbrushed the wall panels and water tower.  I used Vallejo 71.037 as the base, and a light overspray with 71.033. The latter was completely pointless, as you will see in a minute, but looked nice in the paint booth. The insets of the water tower will be brush-painted with PollyScale Mud at a later time. Then I went to town with washes to create an uneven and varied look for the bricks. I used washes from Mud, Flat Cement, Red, Orange, and Light Rust, starting with 50:50 color to water, and a bit more watery as the experiments went on. I also varied techniques along the way. At first I wiped off the wet washes of the horizontal panels to get more definition of the mortar lines. Next I let the washes sit for longer periods of time before wiping off. I was not too...

[ Untergroeningen posts ]  [ part 8 ] This weekend I wanted to make progress on the locomotive shed. I started with sizing out the sidewall for the machine shop behind the shed. I have almost no photos from what the shop looked like in Untergroeningen, but I do have photos of a model of a similar WEG facility, which gave me a better idea of the wood frame pattern used. Sadly, I don't have much space on the module to show much the shop. It will be mostly hidden behind the water tower. I measured the space and cut a template from paper to make sure I got the dimensions right before cutting it from plastic.  I compared the photo above to a similar perspective at Vergessene Bahnen (bottom of page) and decided that my building is too tall. I knew that before, but it's just too much. So I cut off 6mm brick foundation from the bottom the Auhagen pieces, which is about as much as I can take off before the windows start to look silly. They are still too big compared to the original,...

[ Untergroeningen posts ] [ part 7 ] While the ballast dries, I'm working on the floor of the locomotive shed. The idea here is that the floor will be permanently mounted to the module, while the locomotive shed will remain removable, at least for the time being. The floor will get a concrete look with the rails embedded in the (styrene) concrete. The flangeways need to be quite wide to conform with NEM 340. The single Code 40 rail will provide power to the locomotive. I'm hoping it will be less obstrusive when the floor is painted. [ part 9 ]

[ Untergroeningen posts ] [ part 6 ] With the mainline track in place , I can finally figure out exact placement of the locomotive shed on the module. This also sets the parameters for how much of the loco shop I will be able to build. (Spoiler: Not a lot.) I tested clearance with the longest car I have, the middle car of a BR 614 DMU. My rendition of the locomotive shed came out a little bit too tall overall. I might have been better off scratchbuilding the building altogether. Oh well, it should still be a fine building once completed. Because of the non-prototypical curve to the Welztalbahn connector, I had to angle the locomotive shed away from tracks a little bit, which in turn requires a slight S-curve in the track leading to the shed, which -- to my utter surprise -- is also present in the prototype track arrangement. Cool! [ part 8 ]

[ Untergroeningen posts ] [ part 5 ] After I went through the rather involved experience of cutting Auhagen BKS panels for the water tower in part 3  with an xacto knife, I remembered having read about how "nibblers" make cutting window openings much easier. I'm still planning to scratchbuild / kitbash the Untergroeningen station building and certainly was not in the mood to make the dozen plus windows I will need the same way I made the cutouts on the wall sections. It looks like there are only a couple models of nibblers out there, normally intended for cutting thin sheet metal. Should work fine for plastic. So I ordered the more common model. I tested the tool with a scrap wall panel and installed an Auhagen door in the scrap piece. With a little bit of practice I was able to make straight cuts. Alright, moving on to the panel where it matters. Based on a prototype photo I chose the smaller Auhagen door for size and marked the location on the panel. In less than a mi...