And Wawa station finishes another step forward to completion.
While the lower story was brick, the upper level of the structure was clad in cedar-grain asbestos shingle siding. I reproduced this with strips of grey cardstock. It took a little while, and my technique rather refined as I went along, but I’m generally happy with the result.
A number of ACR structures used this type of shingle siding, so expect to see this sort of finish again on other future projects…
A bit more work with paint and gravel and the roof of the station is now surfaced.
As noted in a previous post where the slope of the roof was built up from styrene sheet, the “flat” roof is not, in fact, actually flat but does slope in order to provide drainage. That slope is in fact there, although with the gravel surface added, it almost completely visually vanished, except in that one subtle spot in the corner where the roof actually slopes against the top of the wall. (That reminds me, I need to go in yet and actually add a couple of round plugs to represent the drains, as well as a vent pipe for the toilet plumbing. All easy bits to add…)
Actually flat or not however, the technique for making the tar and gravel roof is pretty simple. After applying a thick brush coat of black paint (just regular flat black acrylic) and while the paint is still wet, sprinkle on a liberal coating of gravel and let sit. I used some fine ballast which I sifted to make sure I was only left with the finest grains. The effect is good, however it’s still a bit coarse actually for a gravel roof. I may yet scrape this off and re-do it with finer hand-sifted natural materials – I’ll have to sleep on that idea yet for a bit – but the technique is still sound.
You’ll also notice I sprayed the Sylvan Green colour for the trim before doing the roof, as the trim borders the roof surface, and that would be more than a little bit impossible to mask and spray after the fact. The bold green colour on the upper walls though will not last – only the trim is actually this colour, and light grey siding is yet to be applied to the wall surfaces, so the station will have one last drastic colour change for completion.
I also got some painting done on my Wawa station build this weekend.
Wawa station was a light buff coloured brick on the lower story. The model was coloured by first spraying the model with grey primer and then drybrushing the brick colour over the grey, leaving the brick faces coloured and the mortar lines in grey. The brick colour is two different shades of tan-brown craft store acrylic randomly mixed together on a pallet. (Comparing to a printout of a screen capture image of a video, I picked out a pair of colours called “Honeycomb” and “Coffee Latte” – these were just eyeballed against the printed image.)
A little grimy weathering when the station is more complete will further blend the colours.
I’ve been taking advantage of free time over the long weekend (“Family Day” civic holiday in Ontario today) to tackle the next major construction piece of the project – the “flat” roof.
In actuality, the roof is not quite flat in order to allow rainwater to properly run and drain and not build up on the roof and cause rot, leaks or other problems.
The architectural blueprints show how the roof slopes away from the edges to drains. On the upper roof over the second story a 2×6 board on edge establishes the height of the roof at the edge of the roof, sloping down to “zero” at the central drain. Construction details are: 7/8″ sheathing flat on the second story roof/ceiling joists, 2×6 support at perimeter (with successively cut down supports to allow roof to slope), 7/8″ top sheathing and finished with a tar and gravel surface.
This first photo (above) shows the styrene 2×6 strip added all the way around the perimeter of the roof. The second story roof was actually divided into two drainage areas, so an additional pair of support 2×6 strips run down the centre of the roof dividing it into half.
Roof sections made of .020″ thick styrene sheet being added.
Short pieces of .020, .040 and .060 styrene strip help support and reinforce the joints between roof sheets.
Roof sheets completed, and joints touched up with spot putty. The slope effect ends up actually being pretty subtle overall, but is obvious in the indented corner on the second story, as well as over the passenger waiting room wing where the drain is at the edge of the roof and everything slopes down to this point. On the large open area of the baggage room where the entire roof slopes to a central point, the effect is difficult to see without laying a straightedge on the wall caps, but the modeler knows it’s there!
The final finish work to the roof will involve a bit of trimming around the chimney and wall caps, and the final surface will be a representation of the bonded tar-and-gravel surface of the prototype. This however, will likely be one of the last steps after painting the rest of the structure.
Construction progress on the Wawa station continues to move forward. A major (but relatively simple) step in the progress is applying the brick texture to the lower levels of the structure, as well as constructing the brick chimney.
In these first two photos, we see the brick sheet in progress of being added to the lower story of the structure. I had some sheets of Plastruct HO brick that I’ve been using on this station; similar brick sheet products are available from JTT, N Scale Architect and other sources.
The brick sheet is cut to size, window and door openings roughly cut out and glued to the structure core using liquid plastic cement. Then the windows and door openings carefully cleaned up with needle files.
Fashioning the chimney is slightly more interesting, as the core is build up from various “4x” (4×12, 4×8 and 4×6) styrene strips and then laminated with the Plastruct brick texture sheet.
