With lousy weather and a grandson to keep busy I got in a rare Sunday work session. While I worked on the station, he painted Nessie lime green and got one side of the Ravine covered with the first color coat with a rock wash of black, white, gray, yellow, India Ink, water and alcohol. It makes a warm gray wash that gets into all the nooks and crannies (I just had a yen for an English Muffin).
Even without any further coloration or treatment, suddenly all that sculptamold looks like rocks...
While he was doing that I was building the remaining shed roof brackets. While I was holding the longest diagonal brace with all the carving, the part broke right at the narrowest point. It didn't completely sever so I first used a small amount of liquid cement. That got it stuck back together, but not strong enough. Then came a drop of thin CA and hardener. I was still unsure about the joint and this is going to support the shed roof. It needed metal reinforcement. I drilled through the middle about 3/16" into the main body with a .032" drill in a pin vise and then inserted some 0.032" brass rod with a drop of CA. That part will not break at that point again. To make sure the others don't suffer the same fate they too got the metal reinforcement. My son in law orthopedic surgeon does this all the time to peoples femurs.
With that out of the way I finished shaping all the parts and glued them together the same way as I did for the street side brackets.
Three very distinctly different sized brackets for the track side.
I held one of the small brackets up to the place where it would go on the building only to realize that there must be one missing. The roof length was too great for just three brackets. After checking the print, sure enough, there are two small brackets holding up the short part of the roof over the ticket office windows. There are four of them!
With one of the small brackets already completed, making another was not difficult. in fact, I'm getting pretty good at them. In this case, I left extra material on the end of the diagonal brace to better hold onto it when shaping. Once the contours were all done, I cut it to length and trued up the angle.
So here are the FOUR track-side brackets completed.
All of the major parts of the exterior are now complete except for the drainage troughs on the shed roofs that tie into the downspouts. According the print, these roofs did not have normal shaped gutters. I'll add them before installing the roofs. I don't think I'm going to make a newsstand for the interior, so all interior parts are now complete also.
Next up comes masking and painting the exterior.
I'm going to hold off installing the brackets and the shed roofs. Instead I will mask the places to which they will be glued and paint the entire exterior. I will paint the brackets separately. After that I'll glaze all the windows I'll put down the parquet flooring. On top of that will go the interior walls, and finally I'll construct a second floor.
Lighting will be contained in the second floor. Right now I have 5mm warm white LEDs, but I think they're too bright. I'm going to get some 3mms and try them out. I can always revert back to grain-of-rice bulbs. One of them is already installed to light the outside balcony porch. That light had to be install when I first started this project 7 years ago. These LEDs need current limiting resistors since I'm powering them with a 12 VDC power source. These resistors will be installed in the second story also. I'm only going to light one room on the second floor; the room with the balcony. I have some miniature furniture to use up there which is the Station Master's living space.
When that's all done, then and only then can I install the shed roofs. Lots to do!
