Structure Build: Walthers Commissary Building Part 10

While some of the updates to the commissary building have been shown in recent posts, this post will be all about the progress on just this structure. It's come along pretty well since the last time I did one of these posts back in December. I now have the roof and awning glued in place and have started mocking up and building the interior.

A look at the front of the commissary building with the awning added.

A look at the top with the roof glued in place.

Although this is supposed to just be a background building, it will be the main attraction on my office shelf layout, so I want it to be as detailed as possible. That said, I've been planning and working on building up the interior so it will be divided into three separate floors. I haven't really decided what will go on each floor, so for now I'm just focusing on getting the rough structure of everything in place.

To do this, I'm using sheet styrene for the floor on each level. The sheet representing the ground floor is held up by some floor joists that I made out of pieces of old cereal boxes and craft wood. Above that I used the same idea to make some walls that will hold up the second and third floors. 

A look at the back of the building showing the three floors in place.

A look at some of the end walls, the top has the printed texture applied to it.

For the ground floor, I searched online and found a nice concrete texture and just printed it off on plain printer paper. Then I glued it onto the styrene sheet and it looks pretty good so far. I'm planning on doing the same thing with the walls and remaining floors. I've never built anything like this before, so I'm kind of just winging it on a lot of this stuff and hoping it works out. Up next will be figuring out how to make a printed wall to stick on to the backdrop so you see more than just a blank sky blue wall when looking inside.

Structure Build: Walthers Commissary Building Part 9

It took a little longer than I wanted, but now I have all of the major pieces glued together for the Commissary building kit. It was actually pretty easy to get everything assembled. The only problem I ran into was some of the glue running into places that I didn't want it. I'm using Testors liquid cement and it dries clear on top of the paint job, so it doesn't look all that great in a few small places. The good thing is they are in areas that will be difficult to see when this thing is done.

A look at the front of the assembled structure.

I have to say this thing looks much better than I expected it to. Not bad for my first kit build. There really isn't anything I would change about it. I like how the black stands out against the red brick color and the concrete accents help complete the look. With just a little more weathering, it will be perfect.

A look at the back of the assembled structure.

The next step is figuring out what I want to do with the roof and then the interior. I want to go with either a gravel or tar paper roof, so I've got some things to look into before I can work on that. For the inside, I've started mocking up some floors and walls using craft wood and cut up cereal boxes. I'd like to have it all made out of styrene in the end, but its looking like the cardboard might do the trick.

Structure Build: Walthers Commissary Building Part 8

Progress has been relatively slow overall on this kit, but its been a fun project so far and I'm very happy with how its going so far. Since my last post I've gotten the two loading dock door sections modified to my liking and repainted. I actually went ahead and removed all three individual door sections from both pieces, which leaves a good sized section open to see through into the interior of the building. This means I have to at least do something with a floor on the inside now, otherwise the front of this thing would look pretty strange.

A look at the front of the kit temporarily assembled to show the cut out doors.

Once that was done I repainted the two doors with spray paint. After that there was only one thing left to do before I could start assembly: another idea from Southern8099 which is painting the insides of the walls black to prevent light from shining out. I do plan to light this structure with LED's so I defintely needs to do this step. 

I happened to have some black acrylic paint sitting around so I decided to do this the hard way and paint it with a small brush. I had to paint the back of the three walls as well as the four loading dock doors. It was a pretty quick job and it works great. I took my mini LED work light and tried to shine it through from the back, but the acrylic paint stops the light altogether. I just hope all this extra paint doesn't interfere with the gluing process.

A look at the backs of the main components painted black.

The only thing I messed up was not painting the back of the window frames before gluing down the glass pieces. Now they are going to be permanently green, but that may not be a big deal because they are not exactly easy to see from the outside. The next step if assembling these main pieces. I'm hoping to get that done in the next week or so.

Structure Build: Walthers Commissary Building Part 7

Finally, Thanksgiving is here and I have two extra days off work. That means I have two extra nights of modeling time this weekend, so I'm trying to get as much out of it as I can. Most of these next few nights will probably be spent working on this kit so I can get it done and move onto finishing up the track work on the shelf layout.

So far I have all of the pieces painted and have begun the assembly process. Last night I glued all of the windows in place on the three walls and began prepping the doors for assembly. While progress has been much slower than I would have liked, I'm comfortable with where I'm at so far and its been a good learning experience. 

A look at all of the main pieces with the window frames and glass installed.

Getting the windows installed was pretty simple. All it took was a couple of drops of Testors plastic cement and a good eye to keep the pieces aligned properly. The black frames went in just fine and then the glass just mounted flush to the back of the frames. It came out looking pretty nice. I really like the look of the black.

A closer look at one of the ends with the window frame and glass installed.

The next thing I need to do is install the roll up loading dock doors. These come out of the box completely shut so there is no visibility into the structure without some modification. After seeing Southern8099's video of this kit on YouTube, I am using his method of cutting away some of the doors so you can see into the building. I'd like to build a floor to go on the inside then model the interior with as much detail as I can. 

Starting to work on cutting away some of the loading dock doors.

In the video his method was to just cut them out with an Xacto knife. That seemed simple enough so that's what I started doing. It takes a few passes with the blade to get through the thickness, but its not all that difficult. After rough cutting it with the knife, my plan is to sand it flat and repaint. I wish I would've thought to do this before painting them.

Structure Build: Walthers Commissary Building Part 6

I was lucky enough to find some extra time this weekend to get some work in on this project. I am not at the point where I have all of the major components painted and ready for assembly. The concrete colored paint I bought has been excellent so far and definitely gives the whole structure a more realistic look On a side note, I've decided that any weathering I try will be done once the structure is fully assembled. This will allow me to get started on the assembly as soon as I have some spare time for it, which is hopefully sooner than later.

Here is a look at all of the major pieces with the concrete color added. The accents on the brick walls look great and I'm really glad I decided to paint the foundation conrete as well. It just gives the whole thing that little extra bit of realism. 

Finished paint work on the major components.

One thing I did learn from this so far is to be careful how much paint you put on for the mortar lines in the brick. I found that if you let it get into the inside of the window frames it looks pretty bad when everything is dry. I ended up having to go back in an touch up a lot of the openings to retain the red brick color rather than the cloudy looking white.

My next step will be gluing in the windows then the clear glass pieces. After that it will be time to put the three walls together then assemble them with the base.

Structure Build: Walthers Commissary Building Part 5

I've slowly been making progress with the painting and hope to have all of it done soon so I can start the assembly process. In my last post I left off saying I needed to get some concrete colored paint and I did just that with a trip to one of the two local hobby shops. I ended up buying a 0.5 oz bottle of "concrete flat" from Model Master.

A look at a few pieces with the concrete color added.

So far I have painted the loading dock and stairs as well as the foundation and window sills for the two short ends of the building. I have to say it came out much nicer than I expected. Now I just need to finish the front face of the building and a couple other pieces. Again, progress is slow, but I'm getting there. Hopefully I can get all of the paint done in the next couple of weekends and get moving on the assembly. I'd like to have this building 100% complete by the end of the year.

Structure Build: Walthers Commissary Building Part 4

In my last post, I left off with completed mortar work on a couple of the red brick pieces. Well, now that work has been done for all of the remaining pieces and I have to say I really like the results. I wasn't sure about it at first, but the more I look at the finished pieces, the more I like the way they look. The only thing I would maybe change is getting some of the excess white paint out of the corners where it tended to build up. 

A look at all of the brick pieces with finished mortar work.

A close up look at the finished mortar work on one of the end pieces.

In addition to the brick pieces, I also got some painting done on the windows, doors, hand rails and dock bumpers. I picked up some more spray paint from Home Depot and got to work while the weather was nice this past weekend. I painted the windows and door frames with a flat black. Then I used a gloss yellow to paint the handrails and dock bumpers. This color did not come in flat, so I figured I could just hit it with some dull coat before I assembly everything. 

A look at the flat black windows and doors.

A look at the yellow painted hand rails and dock bumpers.

The next step will need to be getting myself a good concrete color paint to do the widow sills on the brick pieces as well as the staircase and loading dock. After that I need to paint the loading dock doors and cut out some openings in a few of them so you can see inside the building (I have some plans for this later on). Even though progress is slow, this has been a very enjoyable project. I can't wait to see it when I'm all done.

Structure Build: Walthers Commissary Building Part 3

In my last post I left off with all the parts painted with a coat of primer. Since then I've separated out the brick pieces and hit them with a coat of Rust-Oleum "claret wine" spray paint. It came out a bit darker than I was thinking it would, but I'm more than happy with it right now. I did run into one small issue with too much paint getting on a couple of sections and filling in the mortar lines. To fix that I had to wash off the wet paint and try it one more time. That seemed to work and I had all of the brick pieces ready for the next step.

A look at all of the brick parts after initial painting.

A close up look at the brick texture after painting.

The next step was figuring out the best way to paint the mortar lines white. In the video from Southern8099 he used a 50/50 mix of acrylic paint and alcohol and just brushed away the excess. I tried that and am still not sure I really like the results. The biggest problem came when I was trying to wipe away some of the excess with a magic eraser and it actually began bringing up the red paint making the mortar turn pink. I think I will try a 50/50 mix with water and some dish soap to help the mixture flow into the cracks. 

I say I'm not sure if I like the results because one of the smaller pieces I tried actually came out looking perfect. This piece can take the place of one of the rolling doors on the loading dock. I'm not even sure if I am going to use it, so it made for a good test piece. It looks great and doesn't really have much of the pink effect from the red paint mixing in. 

An example of a piece that looks great with the mortar lines painted white.

A side by side comparison of my first attempt at painting the mortar lines white.

So for now my next step will be trying to fix the pieces I don't like. I will also try the 50/50 mix with water on the other pieces that I haven't started yet. Hopefully something will work and I can move forward with this project and get to some assembly soon. In the mean time, I've been doing some brainstorming and think I have some tweaks coming to the layout for this project. Nothing major, but some things that will affect the overall look of it.

Structure Build: Walthers Commissary Building Part 2

My last post showed what came included with my Walthers commissary building kit and I left off where I had everything cut away from the sprues and sanded. Well, I made some good progress over the weekend and really like what I have going so far. Even though this is a pretty simple kit, there is a fair amount of work involved, but that's good because it gives me something to focus on for now. 

Before I could think about painting anything, I took all of the parts and cleaned them with dish soap and water to make sure there were no oils or dust left on them. Then I laid them out to dry on some paper towel with a small fan to speed along the drying process. Once that was done I need to find something to hold all of the small pieces. 

What I ended up doing was taking a couple of scrap boards from my basement and putting strips of blue painters tape inside out. This gave me a good amount of hold, but not so much that I risked damaging the finished paint. Here is what they looked like with all the parts attached to the tape.

My makeshift part holding boards with blue painters tape.

I learned from watching a few other modeler's videos that priming these types of parts is a good idea, so that was my next step. In order to do that though, I needed some spray paint so I went to Home Depot and picked up some grey primer as well as a nice dark red for the brick sections of the kit. 

The paints I chose for this project from Rust-Oleum.

Here is what the pieces look like after hitting them with the primer.

The first set of parts with primer on them.

The second set of parts with primer on them.

One thing I was kind of worried about at first was getting too much paint on the brick surfaces and losing some of the detail. Well, I have to say that will not be a problem. Even after a generous helping of primer on the brick pieces, they still look great. I'm not even worried about adding several coats of red to this. 

The brick pieces still look perfect even after spraying them with a primer coat.

Now I need to separate out all of the brick pieces and get them ready for the red paint. I think I may just stick with the primer grey for the loading dock since that needs to be concrete anyway. The window and door frames are still TBD for now, but I'm leaning toward a very dark grey or even black to help contrast the red brick. 

Structure Build: Walthers Commissary Building

As a birthday present to myself, I went out and finally bought a kit for the Walthers commissary freight transfer building. This one seemed to be the best choice for my office shelf layout project and from what I've seen on YouTube is a pretty basic kit. There are actually two excellent videos for this build: one from user Southern8099 and another from user BNSF9382. These videos have been a huge help to me so far in preparing for building my kit.

A look at the box for the Walthers Commissary / Freight Transfer Building kit

Once I got the kit home the next step was unboxing it. The first thing I found was the instruction sheet, which is shorter than I expected it to be. All of the steps are listed on the front and back of this single page. Everything you need is there, I just imagined it would've been more of a booklet than a single page. Other than that it was just a bunch of different size and shape molded parts attached to five separate sprues. 

A look at the contents of the box.

The next step was getting everything cut away from the sprues. To help with this I bought an Excel sprue cutter from Hobby Lobby for $10 and it was definitely a good investment. It made cutting the parts extremely easy, which meant there was less sanding to do after removing them. There were some parts that required sanding, but that was easy enough with a simple sanding block. 

So far I have everything cut, sanded, and ready for primer and paint. I just need to decide which colors I want to go with. I'm pretty sure I want to have a red brick building. Other than that, I may go with black or grey windows/doors and likely a concrete color for the loading dock area. Now I just have to get the paint, find some time, and hope the temperature stays warm since I have to do any spray painting in my backyard.

Structure Mock-Up: Walthers Industry Office

This is the third Walthers building I've thought about including on my small office shelf layout. I found it while searching for the others and thought it might be a nice addition to one of the corners of the layout opposite of whichever large building I decide to go with. Plus, this is a really cheap kit so it might be a good one for me to practice with.

Walthers Industry Office building kit.

Instead of making prints with the computer, I decided to do it the old fashioned way this time and got out some graph paper and a pencil. I took the overall dimensions listed above and started drawing the four sides of the building. Since I was unable to get very detailed dimensions from anywhere on the internet, I was assumed the back is flat and the steps on the front are not parts of the 4.75" dimension. For a mock up, I think this will be alright, but I know there is going to be some discrepancy between mine and the real thing. I will just have to hope its close enough. I did find a YouTube video showing this kit being assembled and it looks like there is a storage shack that sticks off the back a bit, so I could probably leave that out if I really need to so I can squeeze it onto the layout.

A look at the four sides of the building drawn on paper.

Once I had everything drawn out, I cut the paper down a bit and glued it onto the back of another cereal box. The next step was cutting the pieces out with an Xacto knife. I used a straight edge to help keep everything nice and square. The only difficult part about this step was working with a well-used blade, so some of the cuts did not come out as clean as I had hoped. Its only a mockup, so its not all that critical anyway.

Starting to cut the pieces out with an Xacto knife.

The easy part was doing the outside perimeter cuts. The hard part was getting to the doors and windows I decided to put on the front and sides of the building. I know I don't really need them, but it seemed more fun to do it with them. Once I had the four pieces, I glued them together with some Gorilla glue, which led me to my first real problem: there was noting to keep the walls from bending and collapsing this way. To fix that, I cut and glued in a piece of styrene poster board at the bottom. This gave it some structure as well as a nice flat bottom.

A look at the four sidewalls glued to the styrene poster board base.

The next step was putting the roof on. I thought this would be easy until I realized I actually needed it to be set down just under the tops of the side walls. That led me to cutting some support pieces out of some extra wooded barbeque skewers I had laying around. These worked pretty well to support the roof piece once everything was glued in place.

A look at the supports I added for the roof.

The rest was easy, all I had to do was cut the roof piece to size and glue it in place. Again, this is only supposed to be a mockup so I don't need any real level of detail. I just needed to have something to place on the layout to see if this is in fact a kit I would like to include. Here is how it looks on the layout.

A look at the finished mockup on the actual layout.

That's it for this one. I'm thinking I want to go ahead and buy this kit just to have something to try out. It sells for around $15 so I may even end up with two just in case I mess something up. Now I just need to decide if I want to look into any other structures, or call it good and go with this and the Commissary building so I can get moving on this thing.

Structure Mock-Up: Walthers Heritage Furniture Building

As I mentioned in one of my earlier posts, the second building I want to include, the Heritage Furniture kit, is a bit taller and has some tricky areas with the covered loading dock. Knowing that, I decided to try something different here and went with simple cardboard. I got that idea from another great modeling channel on YouTube: djstrains. Click here to go right to the video that shows exactly how this process works. 

Walthers Cornerstone Heritage Furniture background building.

To make this build a bit easier, I used a 3D CAD software (Unigraphics NX 9.0) to mock up the rough shape then printed off 1:1 scale views for all the outer pieces I would need to cut. Once I had the prints, I went to work cutting the pieces from recycled Froot Loops and Mini Wheats boxes. 

A look at the scale prints generated from my approximate 3D model of the structure.

The easiest thing I found to do with these was tape them down onto pieces of the cereal boxes and cut around the printed lines. This meant I was cutting through the paper and the cardboard at the same time, so it helped keep things consistent and saved me one step. 

Getting ready to tape down the 2D prints onto pieces of cardboard before cutting.

Once all the pieces were cut, it was pretty easy to assemble them. I just too some masking tape and taped the inner corners together until the full perimeter was secured. The only piece I did differently was the top. I made that out of the poster board I sued for my first mock-up. This gave the whole thing a bit more rigidity, which comes in handy as I constantly move it around trying to come up with the perfect track plan.

A look at the finished structure from the back. 

This one will not be getting any paint. I didn't even cut out all of the windows in the interest of saving time. Even without those, it will serve its purpose in helping me finalize the layout for my shelf project. I'm actually leaning towards not using this one just because of the unknowns that come with getting the clearance right. I don't want to build up my track and realize the cars won't fit into the building. We'll see though, I haven't completely made up my mind yet. 

A look at the finished mock-up on my shelf layout.

While this one may not be as nice looking as the other mock-up, it came out pretty nicely. I really like using these mock-ups before just going out and spending $30 or more on a kit that may or may not even work well with my track plan and layout. I've got one or two more of these to try before I can finish the track plan, so I'm hoping to get to those soon. 

Structure Mock-Up: Walthers Commissary Building

When it comes to my office shelf layout project, I've gone through several ideas as far as which buildings I want to work with. The only problem is deciding which ones are going to be the best fit. So rather than buying them and hoping they work out, I've decided to mock some up with styrene poster board and cardboard to see how they will fit. Plus, this way I can physically lay the track out to see how I want things before nailing it down for good.

The two building kits that I've been thinking about doing are both from the Walthers Cornerstone series. One is the Commissary / Freight Transfer background building kit and the other is the Heritage Furniture background building kit. I chose them because they are just about the right height to fit on the shelf and are not too deep so they won't eat up the entire depth of the layout. I'm hoping to fit both in, but I'll have to wait and see. Up first was the Commissary building. 

Walthers Cornerstone Commissary/Freight Transfer background building.

When I first decided to mock this one up I thought using 1/8" thick styrene poster board would be the way to go, so I headed up to Dollar Tree and bought myself a couple of large sheets. I ended up going real low-tech on this one and just took the overall dimensions of the stock building and cut some sheets to size. I just wanted to capture the size and shape, so I wasn't concerned about all the minor details. After a lot of cutting, some sanding and gluing, I was well on my way to a good representation of the kit.

A look at the rough shape of my Commissary/Freight Transfer building before adding the loading dock.

After putting together the four sides and the roof, it was time to move onto making the loading dock and overhang. For the loading dock, I did this by cutting some narrow strips and gluing them together into an L-shape. I then glued that to the front of the building and added a couple of small rectangular pieces to fill the gaps at either end. For the overhang, I cut the triangular end pieces first then glued the two long strips to those making one large piece. I then glued that right to the front wall and called it good.

A look at the front of the structure mock-up.

For some finishing touches I thought it would look nice having something to represent the windows and loading dock doors. To do this, I just cut some scrap cardboard from a cereal box to sizes that looked about right, then just super glued them right to the surface of the styrene sheets.

A look at the end of the structure mock-up.

The whole point of this thing was to have something that I could thrown down on the base structure to help plan the track layout. I was using SCARM to do this before, but I'd much rather go with something you can see and feel to plan my track layout. It may be a bit more work, but I think it will be worth it. Here is a look at how much room this will actually take up on the layout. Now I just need to work on the placement.

Trying out the mock-up on the layout for the first time.

This thing came out much better than I had hoped and it will serve its purpose just fine. I even went ahead and added a little bit of paint for fun. It's not quite done yet, but you get the idea. I may or may not end up using this kit, but at this point it looks pretty good. Only time will tell though.

A look at the front of the structure with some paint added.

That's it for now, just need to add a little bit more paint and it will be all set. Up next is the Heritage furniture building.

Nursery Wall Layout Update: End of the Line

It's a few weeks later than I originally had planned on, but now I can say I finally have the layout done and on the wall in the nursery. I'll admit I was kind of worried that it would not turn out like I wanted, but in the end it was perfect. It's nice to sit back and admire all the work that went into it now. Sure there are a few things I would do differently if I had the chance, but all that matters is what's done and what's done is pretty nice if you ask me.

This post will just be a lot of pictures of the layout. Up first are a few looks at the entire layout.

A look at the final layout mounted on the wall in our nursery

A straight on look at the full layout

One of the best parts has to be the repaints I did on the houses and church. I had never done any kind of model painting before so this was definitely a learning experience. It was a ton of fun though and the results were exactly what I was looking for. Here are some pictures of the two houses.

I love how the new paint makes this one standout from the background.

The yellow on this one came out looking spectacular.

A look at the small fenced in horse area.

One last look at the two houses together.

When it came to scenery for this one, trees were the easiest thing I could come up with. While I would've liked to have sunk all of them into the baseboard, it was just easier to glue most of them down. The only ones I did sink in were the Woodland Scenics trees I bought at the train show.

One of the pre-made trees I glued down to the grass mat

One of the Woodland Scenics trees I made from the kit I bought

The only structure I didn't do anything with was the station, although I did need to super glue a few pieces back together after dropping it on the table top. Besides, I liked the way the red goes with the yellow and blue of the two houses, so I saw no reason to change it.

A look at the passenger station and platform

Another look at the station and platform

The other structure on the layout, the church, is one that came out surprisingly nice. I wasn't sure on the paint scheme at first, but after getting into it the simple black and white was definitely the way to go. It looks classic and simple, exactly what we were going for with this project.

A nice view of the church sitting nicely on the hill I created.

A closeup look at the tunnel on the right end of the layout.

A closeup look at the tunnel on the left end of the layout.

The only thing left to take a closer look at is the train itself, the real centerpiece of the layout. It definitely fits the overall look we were going for with this layout. I really like the bright colors of the cars and the caboose I repainted.

A closer look at the train sitting in front of the church.

A closer look at the front of UP #4441.

One last look at the center piece of the layout.

So that's it. I had a lot of fun with this project and it's got me hooked on model railroading once again. Now I just need to decide what my next project is going to be. I'm leaning towards another static shelf layout like this due to time and space restrictions. I think a full table layout may still be a ways out for me, but you never know.