I left the cars sit for a day and was intending on spraying Krylon primer on the fire house, but after looking at the instructions again, and studying the model, I realized that I had some more heavy work to do on it and painting would not be a good idea. It was a gorgeous day outside with the temp a balmy 73 degrees, but it was quick breezy and spraying would have been sub-par.
I first had to fix the broken window mullions. Lee was nice enough to include the right sized styrene stock to make those repairs. The first one was to replace all mullions in one sash on a second floor window. I made a very small cross-lap joint to fasten the pieces together and then fit them to the opening. Unfortunately, it came out a little warped. This side will be facing the back of the layout so I'm not going to mess with it.
The second window repair was a front window. Here just one mullion had broken out. Of course in the act of fitting this one replacement, I broke another mullion and had to replace both. In this case, it came out square, although there's some excess CA to be shaped if I so desire. That's the problem with resin, you can't use plastic solvent cement to joint, you must use CA.
I then prepared and joined the tower to the engine house. To get a good fit I had to thin down the tower's wall thickness with a coarse sanding stick. I then clamped it to the main body and applied thin CA both inside and outside of the joint. In a few minutes it was solid.
Lastly, I turned to the roof. Again, there was a lot of man handling the model and fitting that needed doing and if it was painted it wouldn't have been good.
The roof pieces were made oversized and had to be coped into the tower and front overhang adjusted. The walls are neither dead flat nor perfectly square so the cuts had to be custom measured for both roof halves. I first trimmed them so the rear roof overhang was flush. Then I took a piece of 1/8" X 5/16" plastic stock and while holding it against the tower, drew the cutting lines on the roof halves. After cutting on the jig saw and final sanding, I was left with about a 1/8" overhang on the back side, which looked good.
Les Lewis shows building an attic ceiling, additional pieces with the roof pitch and long purlins that support the roof. He cut a large hole in his so the lighting would be up in the attic, but since I using those flush mount LEDs I left mine solid. Before putting the attic together I had to mount side supports that would hold it all.
Les used 1/8" styrene. I didn't have any sheet big enough so I made it out of a sturdy piece of 3/16" Masonite I had lying around. Again, the building is not dead on square so I had to custom fit and cut the final fits.
The Masonite's nice and rigid so no additional bracing was necessary.
Onto this floor goes too more solid roof "trusses that had to match the end pieces in pitch and height.
My first attempt wasn't so hot so I remade it. The second still wasn't too good and was low on the back right slope. Instead of cutting another I just packed out the low spot with some balsa sheeting and then sanded it to match the contour of the resin part. The front piece came out dead on. I arranged these two pieces equidistant from the ends and marked their location on the attic floor. Here was the pieces lined up for a fitting.
I didn't have much styrene bars lying around so I used 1/4" square for the purlins. I measured and notched one piece on the jig saw and used it as a template for the other one. After a little touch up sanding I glued all of this down to the attic floor. The attic is NOT glued to the model and probably won't be. By gluing the roof halves only to this inner assembly, the entire thing can be lifted off to get at the inside.
I was now ready to tape the roof pieces together and do the final fitting for the front and back.
The fit came out better than I expected.
The left half was glue to the trusses and purlins with Gorilla glue and I was able to clamp the purlins to the roof so the it cured well.
For applications like this I like Gorilla glue since it expands as it cures and fills any irregularities.
I let this cure for a couple of hours and then after dinner went down to check it and it was solid so I glued up the other side. To clamp this I had to get to the purlins from the ends, but it held. Again a couple of hours later I checked and I had a complete solid roof. Before gluing the roof in place, I did have to sand the top edge of the side walls to get them to conform to the roof pitch. I also had to sand the roof peak mating surfaces so they too would join neatly.
The results were very satisfying.
Here's the entire roof removed to show how it hangs together.
Lastly, here's that critical back edge fit.
With the floors built and the roof fitted, I can now spray the primer and get ready for the burgundy brick-color coat. I will use sheet rock joint compound for the mortar lines after the paints dry. Unlike the chimney on my train station, where I used the water-based joint compound on water-based paint, here it will go over solvent-based Krylon.
The building is quite heavy. Resin is heavy and that chunk of Masonite doesn't help. But this is a good thing since it sits nice and flat on the baseplate.
