The Plasticville freight station. A good -- but not great -- track side structure. |
But although the structure filled the space, something was missing. The station didn't have much character on its own, and without lights, the stretch of track it abutted seemed kind of dark.
Finding a replacement wasn't easy. The layout's pretty cramped, so whatever I chose had to be very small indeed. And the Ameri-town 503 Trackside Shed was just that. A simple structure with a very small footprint. Perfect! Construction was pretty simple, although I did a few modifications.
The joints along the sides were pretty flimsy, so I reinforced them with square plastic rods. Set into the corners, the rods help keep the corners perfectly square, and presented a larger surface area for the glue to bond with.
I knew I'd be placing a light inside the shed, so I took steps to ensure it only shown through the windows. The windows, like all the other structures on the layout, have vellum inserts. I have neither the time nor talent to construct miniature interiors for all those buildings.
I spray-painted the interior surfaces with flat black paint. After I finished gluing the shed together, I lined the interior roof joints with electrical tape to get a perfect seal. As you can see in the finished photos below, those two steps did the trick.
Initially, I was just going to set the shed directly on the table, but then decided to build a base/platform for it. The base was constructed by gluing three pieces of foam core together.
I marked where the door would be when the shed was placed on the platform, and made sure I didn't glue the area between the edges of the foam core and the mark.
After the glue was dry, I cut a section out of the top layer, then a smaller section out of the middle. Since they weren't glued, the scrap just came right out, and voila -- I had steps leading up to the door.
At first I thought I could just get by with spray-painting the platform gray to represent concrete. But that didn't look very convincing. So I covered the rough edges with some of the embossed brick paper I had left over from the billboard project. It actually worked pretty well.
By cutting along the brick outline... |
...the joint was hidden when I glued the strip to itself. |
The rest of the project was pretty simple. I drilled holes through the platform and the table for the light wires. The light socket itself was fastened to the table with a long wood screw that went through the platform and into the wooden table top below.
I'm happy with the way the shed looks... |
...especially at night. |
Those colors, BTW, weren't selected at random. The Montpelier estate in here in Orange County, VA has used the same green-with-white trim paint scheme for all their outbuildings since the 1960's -- including those next to the railroad tracks at Montpelier Station.
And if you look carefully at these photos, you'll see my next project. When I started, I used black construction paper to represent roads. Over time, the paper's absorbed moisture and become wrinkled. Time to move to a more realistic -- and permanent solution.
The original inspiration. Most of the buildings at Montpelier also have white doors. |
Sure, the shed looks great. But see the way the pavement warps up on the left? That's the next project. |
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