In-ko-pah RR: The Dos Manos Depot

[wbill76]

Sometimes there are dead ends in model-building but you don't know it until you go all the way down the path...it was worth a shot to see if you could cast them faster than scratching all of them. Either way, those tiles are going to look nice on the roof.

[Ray Dunakin]

After spending a few days cutting up styrene tubes and turning them into Spanish tiles, I was ready to start gluing some to the main roof of the depot...

I'm using Dynaflex 230 paintable sealant to secure the tiles to the model. Naturally, the concave, "bottom" rows of tiles must be put on first. I began by gluing a single tile at the beginning of each row, in order to test that the spacing was correct. I determined that spacing them on 1/2" centers would be just about perfect:




The bottom rows must be placed with the narrow end of the tile facing "downhill" on the roof. I goofed and did the first row, on the right, the wrong way around. Since it's on the end and not very noticeable, I just left it that way:




After all of the bottom tiles were glued in place, I left it to dry:




Then it was time to add the top rows of tiles. First I used more Dynaflex 230 to fill the spaces between the bottom rows. I only worked on 2-3 rows at a time:




Each of the top tiles was partially filled with sealant prior to placing it on the model:




The top tiles are placed with the narrow end "uphill". Excess sealant can easily be cleaned off with water and a small, cheap, craft paint brush:




This side of the roof is now complete. It took 200 individual tiles for this. I figure in total, it'll take at least 1000 to do the whole job:

[John Everett]

Built like a true Californian! Now get yourself down to Seaport Village for some "tile-roof color reference" and a Gyro at the Greek Islands Cafe. (They validate parking!)

[Leon]

Great SBS on the mold making Ray! To bad about the process being slow and messy.

[Leon]

WOW....Beautiful work on the tiles Ray! They look great.

[wbill76]

Well now you know how many more tubes you'll have to cut up! Worth the effort though, tiling job looks the part.

[Ray Dunakin]

Thanks guys!

I finished putting tiles on both sides of the main roof, and capped the ridge. The gaps under the ridge tiles were filled with Dynaflex to simulate mortar:




I managed to tile most of the north side of the baggage room roof, then ran out of styrene tubes and couldn't make any more tiles for a while. So while I waited for an order of tubes, I went to work detailing the interior. I built some stairs out of 4mm and 1mm Sintra, plus some .020" styrene for the baseboard. Here's a shot of the stairs under construction:




A few years ago I bought some 1/24th scale balusters from a dollhouse supplier, and put them away until I found a use for them. Much to my amazement I was actually able to find them now that I needed them. I drilled a hole in the bottom of each, and glued in a short piece of brass rod:




The handrail was made from a 1/8" styrene tube. I sanded two sides of it flat, and plugged the end. Then I drilled holes into the underside and fit it over the tops of the balusters. BTW, the floor is a photographic image printed onto self-adhesive vinyl:






After I built the stairs I sprayed them with white primer, followed by a very pale, yellowish color to match the walls. When that dried I masked it to paint the dark trim color:




The interior walls will have wainscot. These were made from .020" thick, V-groove styrene sheet, with trim made from styrene strips. This one is designed to fit the stairs. The wainscots were not glued in place until after they'd been painted:




Here's how the room looks so far. The stairs are finished and painted, though not yet glued into place. The wainscots and other trim have also been painted and installed:






I still have to make the crown molding, the ticket counter, and other furnishings.

[Leon]

WOW.... Beautiful work Ray! Very realistic looking.

[John Everett]

This really is wonderful, Ray.

[panzerjager2]

Great work Ray, very nice detail

[wbill76]

Very nice work on the stairs and trimmings. Love it, especially since you had the chance to use some 'stashed' materials in the process.

[Ray Dunakin]

Thanks!

I made the crown molding from strips of quarter-round, L-angle and .020" thick styrene. These were cut and mitered to fit each wall, then painted, prior to being glued in place:




Originally I had planned to just have a simple ticket counter. But after I built the counter, I found some photos of depots with ticket windows built into a kind of room divider with door, separating the customer area from the station agent area. I liked the way these looked and decided it might be a good choice for my depot. So I whipped up a crude mockup made from scrap matt board:




The divider/ticket window assembly was built up from various strips of styrene. Here's a test-fitting:




The rear of the ticket window will be partially visible through the bay window on the south side of the depot, so I built up both sides of the door, plus a separate piece to fit around the windows:




The security bars for the ticket window were made from .020" and .030" styrene rod. It might have been better to use brass but this was easier to work with and a lot less sloppy than my rudimentary soldering skills would have done. The bars were painted to look like polished brass"






Here's a close up of the finished ticket window. The rippled privacy glass was made from .015" slide cover glass, with clear gloss medium dabbed on the the back to create the rippled look:






And here are couple shots of the room with the divider/ticket window installed:






Here's the back of the ticket counter. This will only barely been seen so I didn't put too much effort into it, however I do plan to add a few items setting on the counter:




The interior still needs a safe, stove, signs, lighting and other details, which will be added later. For now I'm going to go back to work on the roof so I can get that finished and start painting the exterior of the building.

[Leon]

Beautiful work Ray! Great idea with the security bars and rippled glass.

[John Everett]

It's so good it makes me angry!

[Deleted]

Truely amazing!

[jsteinman]

[Ray Dunakin]

Thanks, everyone!

I had hoped to be a lot farther along on this by now, but some major family issues have kept hobby time to a minimum. Anyway, I did manage to paint the floor of the waiting area. I used custom mixed, flat, indoor/outdoor house paints to make it look like terra cotta "Saltillo" tiles:

[Leon]

Floor tiles look great Ray!

[Ray Dunakin]

There are times with a project this big, that it really starts to feel like it's sitting on my head and crushing it. This is one of those times. I had hoped to be nearly finished with the depot by now, but there's been too many other things going on and even when I do get to work on it, it just seems to take forever.

But anyway, I finally started making some progress on painting the "stone" walls of the depot. I began by giving all the walls a coat of thinned, sandstone-colored house paint:




Next I brushed on a dark concrete color. Before it dried I wiped it off with a paper towel, being careful to leave as much paint as possible in the mortar lines. This has to be done one small area at a time, or else the paint will dry before you can wipe it off:




The walls are supposed to look like a very light sandstone, similar to this:




So I had to go over each stone with another coat of sandstone paint, using a fine brush. I mixed in a small amount of white to lighten it slightly, and varied the mix so that the stones aren't all exactly the same shade:








Next I applied thin washes of various shades of rust and brown. To finish it off, I lightly dry-brushed the whole face of the wall with a mix of white and sandstone. I still need to go in with an extra fine brush to touch up some of the mortar lines, but I'll do that later:





That's one wall done, and only about 37 quintillion more stones to paint. Or so it seems.


I did get started on the next portion:

[Leon]

First wall looks good Ray! The different shades give it character.

[wbill76]

It may be tedious but it's producing a very realistic result, Ray! Every project has it's burdens to bear, looks like the stones are it for you on this one.

[Ray Dunakin]

On Saturday we had an open house for our club, the San Diego Garden Railroad Society. Although the depot wasn't finished, I put it out anyway and got a few photos of it on the layout:








Then back to work… I needed to find a way to paint the stone walls faster. I decided to try dry brushing the base color to get most of the stones covered, then just touch up by hand as needed. I tested this out on a wall inside the covered waiting area, where it wouldn't show too badly if it didn't work out. Fortunately it worked pretty well and did speed things up a little. Here's the wall after two coats of paint dry-brushed on, followed by touching up individual stones:




Next I added various shade of color to a few random stones, then finished it off by lightly dry-brushing the highlight color. It ended up a good match for the one wall I had previously painted the slower way:




With that settled, I continued on to the more prominent walls, taking up where I had left off. In this photo, on the left are the stones that were hand painted. On the right is an area where I've applied one coat of dry-brushed color:




Here's the same wall after a second dry-brushed coat and touch up:




And here it is finished:




Another area done the same way:








And here are a couple shots of how it looks so far. Still have a lot to do but at least it's progressing at a somewhat more tolerable rate:








That's all for now. Enjoy!

[Leon]

Beautiful work Ray! I really like it.

[dennis]

This is brilliant, well done Sir.

[John Everett]

Holy cow, Ray!

It's a fair guess that your railroad buddies were impressed.

[Deleted]

There aren't many words to describe this kind of work .......... so I'll just say WOW!

[k1w1]

Fantastic work. Wow those stairs turned out great.

[multicam]

Really looking amazing Ray!

[vlpbruce]

I echo everybody else here Ray.
This is just fantastic.

[auldyin]

Just read through this whole post, and I'm gobsmacked. Fantastic is a lowly word for this. Thank You for sharing your skills