Bubba's Barber Shop (and Pool Hall)

The old Post Office in Robertsdale has gone through many changes over the years.  Built by the East Broad Top as a permanent home for the U. S. Post Office (which had occupied a corner of the Company Store for many years), the building also housed several apartments and community meeting rooms as well as a parade of small businesses.  

In modeling the building as it was in 1950, I noticed that there was a large plate glass store window on the right side, ground floor.  What sort of business might have occupied such a prominent space?  I learned that among other things, the building had been home to a barber shop.  What a coincidence!  Several years ago I purchased some painted figures on eBay: a barber with his mirror, chair, sink and even a client!  At the same time, I also bought an HO scale pool table and rack, with a pool shark bending over to make his shot.  Hmmm.  Which should it be?  A barber shop?  Or a pool hall?  Since the structure sits right on the edge of the layout, it was an ideal location for either of my miniature businesses.  But which one?  Aha!  Robertsdale was a small country town.  Businesses often offered a range of products and services.  The Company Store, for instance, also had a gas station fronting Main Street.  Why not a barber shop and pool hall combination?

And so the idea of Bubba's Barber Shop and Pool Hall was born!  Bubba was the name of my daughter's gray tabby, and since all the grandchildren had their names on various structures around the layout, I decided that Bubba deserved similar recognition. 

Inserting the barber shop/pool hall into the model was trickier than I thought.  There were number of internal supports and braces that had to be worked around.  I built up a box from .020 styrene sheet, leaving the ceiling off.  A floor of grooved styrene was cut to fit and painted to resemble wood.  A quick search on Google found some vintage wallpaper that was downloaded, cut to size and glued to the walls with the same scrapbooking adhesive from Michael's that I used on the company office building next store.  The barber's chair, sink, mirror, and hot towel steamer were cemented in place with Walther's Goo.  On the other side of the room I affixed the cue rack to the wall and the pool table and player to the floor, also with Goo.  A Tichy door from the scrap box was glued to the back wall for access to the bathroom. 

A removable ceiling was cut to sit on top of the shop and hold a pair of miniature 1.5 volt bulbs for lighting.  I bought an inexpensive AA battery holder and a mini-SPST throw switch from Radio Shack for around $5, glued the holder in place, and wired the two bulbs in parallel.  Since each of the bulbs has a current rating of 40 ma, the parallel hook-up pulls a current of 80 ma.  The switch was installed to save the battery for visitors who want to see the interior of Bubba's shop.

The mini-bulbs were inserted in a pair of green shades and suspended over the barber chair and the pool table.  With the lights dimmed over the layout, Bubba's Barber Shop and Pool Hall casts a warm glow from the plate glass window, inviting passers-by to stop in for a shave, a haircut, or a quick game of billiards.

Bubba's is fictional, of course, but even though I model the East Broad Top as it was in 1950, there is still room on the layout for a little tongue-in-cheek humor.  That's what makes model railroading fun for me; at the same time, it creates little pockets of interest for visitors to enjoy and remember.

Completing Company Square

Incorporated in 1872, Rockhill Iron and Coal Company (RICC) developed the coal and mineral resources on the east side of Broad Top Mountain in southern Huntingdon County, Pennsylvania.  The company town of Robertsdale was laid out in 1873 and 1874 near several coal mines the RICC was developing.  Robertsdale's "company square" served as the economic and social anchor for this coal mining community.  In previous posts, I have discussed how I scratchbuilt the Company Store, erected around 1874, and the Robertsdale Post Office, circa 1915.  I also built the distinctive stone block station, built in 1914, from an upgraded kit sold by the Friends of the East Broad Top (FEBT).  That left only one remaining structure: the RICC office building -- the most unique and challenging structure in "company square".   Here is a photo of the building today.  After the EBT shut down in 1956, the Post Office moved into space on the first floor.  Company records are store on the second floor.

The company office building was constructed around 1916 on the east side of Main Street, south of the East Broad Top tracks.  The two and a half story building features brick corbels at its cornices, as well as decorative brick quoins, lintels, sills and door surrounds.  The structure was originally valued at $2,000 in the Huntingdon County tax records, making it the most expensive single building in Robertsdale except for the Company Store.  Here is a view of the rear of the building, the side that will face the aisle on my layout.

There is no kit for this building, impressive as it is.  And scratchbuilding would prove challenging to say the least.  The building is constructed of Sears and Roebuck poured stone blocks, like the old Post Office and the Station; however, the decorative brick trim makes this considerably more complicated.   How could I model such complex brickwork, especially on the corners, where the bricks are interspersed with the stone blocks?

Fortunately, the FEBT offers printed sheets of the stone blocks and brick trim, in several scales.  I ordered a set of prints in HO scale, and received a mailing tube with two large sheets of paper stone and brick siding.  The material was more than enough to cover the building.  Brickwork for the corners, lintels, sills, cornice and chimney could be easily cut to size with a straight edge and Exacto knife.

With the problem of the brick and stone facing resolved, the project could move ahead in much the same way as the old Post Office building in my last post.  I used Gary Hart's indispensable field notes to measure and cut styrene sheet to the dimensions on the drawings.  Aside from the fancy brickwork, the building is basically a large rectangle.  After the walls were cut to size, holes for the windows and doors were cut out.  Here are Gary's 1989 notes for the office building.

The field notes also helped solve a dilemma regarding the double doors that today open out onto the porch roof .  In conversations with long-time residents of Robertsdale, no one seemed able to explain why the doors were there.  A notation on the field notes, on the other hand, specifies that the doors were a recent addition, and that in 1956, when the EBT closed down, there was a double window in the center of the building facing the tracks.  Accordingly, I cut an opening for windows rather than for a door, since I model the year 1950 on my layout.  I also found a photo from the late 1940's of the end of the building facing Main Street.  That photo shows that before the EBT shut down, there was no door on the end of the building.  It was clearly added later for the Post Office.  As originally built, the two ends of the structure were identical, with two double windows on each floor.  This is how I built the model.  Here the styrene has been spray painted with a gray primer to make it easier to see. 

Once the basic shell was assembled with spaces for doors and windows cut out, the next step was to glue the paper stone and brickwork to the styrene.  Here, however, I encountered another potential problem.  The sheets of stone blocks have to be applied first, then the decorative brickwork on top of the paper stone walls.  I fretted over the best way to glue all these layers onto the styrene shell without smearing or messing up the beautiful lithography. 

If you read my previous blog about the Company Store, you may remember that I had covered the sides of the structure with textured stone block paper from Micro Mark.  These special papers come with a self-adhesive backing, making assembly a snap.  But the paper from FEBT was not self-adhesive, and I was leery about using a water based adhesive -- like white glue -- on paper.  Once again the modeling community came to the rescue, when I learned from a fellow narrow gauger on the Yahoo! HOn3 Chat group that Michael's craft stores carry sheets of adhesive paper with backing on both sides!  Designed for scapbooking, you simply lift off the backing on one side of the adhesive, press on the image you want to preserve, cut around it, and peel off the backing on the other side.  You can then press whatever it is onto a page ... or in my case, a styrene wall!  Michaels carries two kinds of sheet adhesive -- an acid free 8 1/2 by 11 sheet called Recollections and a smaller sheet by the name of PEELnSTICK. 

Armed with several sheets of double-sided adhesive, I simply laid the precut sheets of stone block onto one side of the adhesive, cut off the excess, peeled off the back and PRESTO! Self adhesive stone and brickwork!  Here is how the building looked with the stone blocks and brick cornice applied.  I have also inserted the windows to see the full effect.  Windows were Tichy #8159 double and #8161 triple units, which were very close in size to the prototype.    I couldn't find a front door with side lites and transom like the original, so I made up the entrance from styrene strip and a standard Tichy #8197 5 panel door and frame.

The biggest challenge was in placing the brick trim on the corners of the building.  On the one hand, the corner brickwork meant that I didn't have to butt up the paper stone blocks exactly on the corner, since the corners would be covered by vertical strips of brick interspersed with stone block -- three rows of bricks between each block.  When done properly, the stonework on the corner strip blends with the stonework of the wall, giving an illusion of depth.  But it proved very tricky to line up the two sheets of stone blocks at the corner so that the brick and stone block trim fit precisely.  To give me a little more leeway, I decided to cement the corner strip in place with Aileen's Tacky Glue, so I would have time to adjust the trim up and down for  an exact fit.

With the cornice and corner trim in place, the rest of the brick trim was easily applied.   The result was every bit as impressive as I had hoped. 

This concluded the construction of the basic two story building.  In real life, the front of the building faced the EBT tracks.  Unfortunately, on my layout, the building lies between the tracks and the aisle, which means that the viewer sees the back of the building, as shown above.   There was simply no room for it to go anywhere else.  Fortunately, the rear of the building, though somewhat spartan in detail, remains interesting because of the two rear projections, the small window and door, and the chimney, all of which help to give the structure definition.

The last phase of constructing the company office building was the hip roof.   For the most part, I was able to follow the same process I used to build the old Post Office.  But there was one significant difference between the two.  The two and a half story office building has dormers facing both ends, each of which also has a hip roof!  Fortunately, the building was constructed so that the peak of the dormer roof is on a line with the peak of the main roof, so I was able to cut front and back roofs as a single unit including the roof of the dormer.  I found two small 6 pane windows in the scrap box, and with a little styrene lap siding, created the front and sides of the two dormers.

By now the RICC office building was beginning to look somewhat finished.  Only a few more details needed to be added.  As in the construction of the old Post Office, I again used gray diamond shingles from B.E.S.T.   It was tedious work on a roof this size, and the end dormers required a good deal of trimming and fitting, but the results were pleasing.  Here you can see the end of the roof on my workbench.  The B.E.S.T. shingles are a terrific product, and they are self-adhesive!

With the roof complete and the windows glazed, the only details left were to add the front and rear porch roofs (I covered them with a reddish tar paper from Builders in Scale) and the chimney.  At this point the structure looked nice, but maybe a bit too nice.  After all, the RICC office building sat only a few feet from the EBT main line for nearly half a century, and there was bound to be some weathering from all that smoke and soot.  So the final step was to apply streaks of white and black pastel chalk with a soft brush, first on the roof, then on the sides of the building.  It was hard to deliberately discolor a model that had taken weeks to construct, but the final result was much more realistic, and made the entire project come alive on the layout.

This concludes my discussion of how I built the four iconic structures in Robertsdale's "company square".  The next posts will explain how I detailed, scenicked and weathered this little coal mining town in the heart of the Alleghenies.

Scratchbuilding the Robertsdale Post Office

Background

In my last post, I wrote about the pleasures of scratchbuilding -- one of my favorite parts of the hobby.   My latest project is to recreate the cluster of buildings owned by the East Broad Top Railroad in the company town of Robertsdale on the east side of Broad Top Mountain.   There were four structures in what came to be called "Company Square" -- the massive company store built in 1875, the stone block station built around 1911,  a two story office building that held the coal company offices, and a plain stone block building constructed around 1915 that once held the Robertsdale Post Office. 

In recent years, the old Post Office has been acquired, along with the Depot, by the Friends of the East Broad Top Railroad, who have converted both buildings into a museum.  The Post Office has moved to the former EBT office building across the street.  The old Post Office had a varied and often colorful history.  Located on Main Street, across the EBT tracks from the depot, at times the building also housed a barber shop, a shoe shop, company offices, and apartments.  Upstairs rooms were used at times by community organizations for meetings, and during at least one coal miners' strike, these rooms served as an informal "lock-up" for the company police.  Here is a photo of the building as it appeared in the 1950s, the period I model the EBT.

Preliminary Research and Challenges

As you can see, the building was not in the best shape at the end of EBT operations.  Modeling the structure was a challenge, since while there are many photos of the Company Store and the Station, very few photographers thought this plain rectangular building worth the time to preserve on film.  Even determining dimensions was problematic.  It appeared I would have to estimate the size of the building and the location of doors and windows by counting the stone blocks, which measure 8 by 8 inches and are 16 inches long.  Furthermore, I could not locate any good pictures of the sides or the back of the building.   How was I going to scratchbuild a structure with only the front to go on?

The last problem was resolved when I posted an appeal to the Friends of the East Broad Top .  Adam Watson, a fellow EBT enthusiast, lives in Broad Top City, not far from Robertsdale, and volunteered to photograph the building the next time he drove through town.  A day or so later, I received the following photos:

The photos were a godsend.  Now I had both left and right side views as well as a full frontal picture of the building.  There were no pictures of the rear of the structure, but I reasoned that since no one would see the back anyway, I could trump something up.  Of course, I still had the challenge of determining height, width, and window and door sizes.  Also, I noticed that the long plate glass photo of the building in the 1950s was missing in the 2012 picture. 

The mystery of the plate glass window was solved when I discovered that the FEBT had restored the building to its original configuration.  The plate glass window was a later addition.  But since I model the EBT in the 1950s, I decided that I would include the plate glass window.  By coincidence, I happen to find an HO scale barber shop on eBay, along with a pool table and player.  The building was intended for the edge of the layout, and it would be fun for folks to peep in the window and see the Robertsdale barbership and pool hall, just down the street from the station!

About this time I encountered another stroke of luck.  A fellow EBT modeler, Dave Crement, sent me several pages of field notes made by Gary Hart in May of 1989.  The notes included a full set of measurements of all the dimensions, INCLUDING THE BACK!  This was the first time I had any idea of what the back of the building looked like.  One discovery was a 4 by 6 foot "porch" on the second floor, accessed by a door.  I guessed that the porch was an emergency exit -- possibly a fire escape -- which is how I decided to model it.

Construction

With photos and dimensions in hand, the next step was to decide how to model the stone block walls of this simple structure.  The EBT used stone block construction on a number of its buildings, including the engine house that still stands in Mount Union.  Fortunately, the FEBT Company Store now offers sheets of resin cast stone blocks in HO scale.  Based on Gary Hart's field notes, I decided two sheets would be sufficient.  The only fly in the ointment was that the length of the sheets was about 4 1/2 feet short of the 50 front and rear walls.  That necessitated adding a short extension to the long walls, most of which would be disguised by windows and doors.  However, the addtional piece, along with all those windows and doors, necessitated lots of bracing.  I used 1/4 inch square styrene to brace the back and sides.

Having worked with resin walls in building the Robertsdale station, I thought this would be a cinch.  However, I built the station from a kit, which came with window and door openings already in place.  The first thing I discovered about resin is that if you aren't careful, it will break -- which it did, several times, when I tried to cut the window and door openings out.  A second discovery was that neither ACC nor epoxy seems to bond very well with the resin.  I discovered this to my chagrin when several of the braces I carefully installed to prevent further breakage popped loose with the slightest stress.  In the end, I found that Walther's Goo was the best cement for this application.   With the window and door openings cut out, the next step was to assemble and square the sides.

If you look carefully at the walls (above) you can see the vertical line on the left where I added an additional 4 1/2 feet of wall to make the front an even 50 scale feet.  On the right, above and below the long plate glass window, is an irregular seam where the resin broke while I was cutting it.  My hope was that once the building was assembled and painted, these lines would be less visible -- which fortunately turned out to be the case.  Incidently, this photo shows how I do my structure modeling.  The model is set on a sheet of glass, under which is a plastic grid that I discovered at Joanne's Fabric stores.  I believe the original purpose of these grids was in quilting, but they certainly simplify making sure the walls are square.  Here is an inside view of the model showing the extensive bracing.

Once the walls were assembled, I couldn't wait to give them an initial coat of gray primer.  I use a cheap primer from Home Depot,  since I only needed to provide a base for the enamel that would color the finished walls.  After some experimentation, I decided on Model Master FS36118 Gunship Gray for the overcoat.  I then mixed small amounts of Cotman Water Colors (Chinese White and Lampblack in the tubes) and added water to make a dark gray mixture that was then brushed over the sides of the building.  The water color flowed into the gaps between the stone blocks while leaving a light residue on the face of the stone, suggesting years of smoke and soot.  I liked the way the building came out.

Notice that the line where I had added a section to the front wall is not very visible in this view.  For the fun of it, I test fit the model on the layout, where it will eventually go.  As you can see, the windows and doors have also been added in this photo.   The windows were a challenge.  I first ordered Tichy windows from my local hobby shop, based on the measurements in their catalog, as compared to the dimensions on Gary Hart's field notes.  But when they arrived, they were much too large.  An email to Don Tichy revealed that the measurements in their catalogue are for the working part of the window, but do not include the trim.  This may be the way your local planing mill sells windows, but it makes it difficult to get exact sizes for a scratchbuilding project like this.  I then ordered windows from Grandt Line, only to find that they didn't fit either!  A second call to Grandt Line finally brought the correct size windows, leaving me with several packs of windows for another project.

Constructing the Hip Roof

The old Post Office is capped with a hip roof.  The 1950 photo of the building suggests that it was roofed with diamond pattern shingles.  Gary Hart's field drawings also indicate that there was a three foot overhand and that the slope of the roof was 4/12.  Hip roofs are a bit more challenging than a conventional roof, as one has to match the triangular end sections with the long trapezoidal roof sections facing front and rear.  I have done hip roofs before, but the method was basically trial and error.  Then, as I was thumbing through some old articles I had clipped but never filed, I ran across a wonderful article from the September 1995 issue of Railroad Model Craftsman.  The article, by Jack Burgess, was entitled, "Hip Tricks: An easy way to build hip roofs without resorting to trial and error."  Just what the doctor ordered!

Basically, the technique extrapolates from known dimensions, like the length and width of the structure and certain lines of the roof when viewed front the front or side, to deduce the actual height of the front and side roof panels.  When you look at a hip roof, say from the front, the roof slopes away from you so that you can't see the actual height of it.   The view is foreshortened.  But if you look at the Post Office from the front, the line from the end of the roof peak to the end of the eave is the true height of the triangular side panel.   That dimension allows you to calculate the actual height of both front and side panels.  It's actually easier to work from diagrams, as in Burgess' article, than to explain it in so many words.  But once I caught on, it was a snap to produce scale drawings of the roof panels, cut them out, and cement them together.  Since I used styrene sheet for the roof, I was able to assemble the entire structure with plastic solvent, making for a tight and permanent roof.  The hip part of the roof was then cemented to a rectangular base to keep the entire assembly rigid.

Borrowing another construction technique from the same article, I turned the roof upside down, set the building on it and marked the position of the building walls on the underside of the roof.  I then used plastic weld to cement 1/8 square braces to the roof, so that the roof would fit tightly into the top of the building.  Building the roof this way allows me access to the inside of the structure for lighting.

The basic roof shape was now ready for shingles.  I used two packages of Bollinger Edgerly Scale Trains (B.E.S.T.) HO scale self adhesive laser cut shingles, item 3011, with a dark gray diamond cut.  It took some practice to figure out exactly how to apply the shingles properly.  The instructions provide a guide for drawing lines on the roof to make sure shingles are applied in straight lines.  As you can see from the following photo, it wasn't easy to get the lines straight, so there was some trial and error involved.

But with patience and continual checking against the guide, the roof gradually began to resemble the one in that old 1950s photo:

Finishing touches were then added to the model.  Angle structural strips were placed above and below the plate glass window to imitate concrete sill and lintel.   A photo of the entrance to the new Post Office across the street had a sign indicating "United States Post Office Robertsdale, Pennsylvania".  I cut the sign from the photo and glued it over the door of the old Post Office.  Glazing and window treatments were applied and the building was just about ready for the layout.  It still needs weathering and a sign over the barbershop and pool hall.  And I need to construct an enclosure behind the plate glass window to hold the barber chair and pool table.  I plan to add microlamps with green shades to illuminate the scene.



Conclusions

What did I learn from this project?  First of all, I learned that, as in Murphy's Law, if something can go wrong, it probably will.  At the same time, I also learned that (in most cases) even if things go badly, it's almost always possible to fix the problem -- or simply start over!  I also learned, once again, how much I rely on my fellow modelers for advice and help.  Adam Watson was willing to drive over to Robertsdale and take photos of the building.  And Dave Crement was kind enough to send me the field notes taken over 20 years ago by Gary Hart.  Finally, I have found over and over again how much I can learn from other model railroaders through the hobby press.  The article on building a hip roof was just what I needed at just the right moment. 

All in all, it underscores how this is truly a fraternity of model railroaders who help one another to make the hobby better for all of us. 

Scratching and Bashing

The March issue of Railroad Model Craftsman has an interesting piece by Bob Walker on scratchbuilding.  He talks about his first attempt to build something from scratch -- a 1/4 inch scale caboose -- back in 1956.  That got me to thinking about my own first scratchbuilding effort in the mid-1970s, building a retail coal facility.  I know the exact date -- December 1975 -- because I recently found the RMC article that inspired me in my files.  It was entitled, "Retail Coal Dealers" by Paul Dolkos, with plans for a three silo coal storage facility based on a Manchester, Vermont prototype.  Here is the first page of the article:

For some reason I was inspired to duplicate the structure in the article.  It was my first attempt to build something from scratch, and the three towers presented an interesting challenge.  (Remember, this was 1975!)  I finally ended up wrapping scribed basswood sheets around three beer cans to form the towers.  I believe they were Horseshoe Curve beer cans!  The cans turned out to be just about the right size for the RMC plans.  Then, I had to figure out how to duplicate the steel bands that held the boards in place.  Naive as I was, I used rubber bands!  The shed that went with the coal yard was more difficult, and it has long since disappeared.  But the coal elevator and towers are still around after more than thirty years.

I believe that a commercial copy of this particular structure was produced and has been available for many years.  My version was assembled from basswood with Ambroid cement.  It held up fairly well over the years, but eventually the glue dried out and the rubber bands broke, with sad results.

The model sits on a shelf in the train room, and I keep thinking that one day I will rebuild it -- but it would mean replacing the rubber bands with a more prototypical system of restraints, which I just haven't had the time or interest to tackle.  I keep the building simply because it was my first....

But not my last!  I model Eastern narrow gauge -- specifically, the East Broad Top Railroad.  Over the years I have discovered that tackling a relatively unknown prototype means there are very few models available for the layout -- even kits are rare indeed.  White Ground Models produced a dozen or so kits of EBT related buildings -- I have them all -- but many of the lineside structures exist only in photos or, if you are lucky, in drawings and plans.  So if I want to build a replica of this small south central Pennsylvania railroad, I have to do a lot of scratchbuilding and kit bashing.

Many of the available kits are models of the EBT shop complex in Rockhill, Pennsylvania.  But at least half of the shop buildings will have to be scratchbuilt, including the well known Orbisonia Station and the brick roundhouse.  My first attempt at scratchbuilding the EBT was the car shop, which had to be selectively compressed because of its enormous size.  It was a fun project, and the results turned out better than I had hoped.  I have yet to finish the corrugated metal roof.

I find that scratchbuilding and kit bashing give me the opportunity to try new techniques and materials.  For example, my efforts to build a model of the EBT's stone block enginehouse in Mount Union were stymied at first by the lack of suitable building materials.  Then a friend, Jim Vliet, sent me a closeup photo of the stone block wall, and I decided to try duplicating it. 

Using PowerPoint, I made a series of copies of the photograph, cropping them and arranging them side-by-side to produce a sheet of stone block paper.  I built the engine house from styrene, then cemented the paper stone block walls to the styrene.  Here is the result:

Not far from the Mount Union dual gauge yard I discovered a number of unique little houses, all more or less identical.  A little research found that they had been constructed by the General Refractories Company (GREFCO) for its brickyard employees. 

This was a new challenge for scratchbuilding.  There were no plans, no drawings, no measurements -- just a handful of photographs.  In this case, I drew my own plans, working backwards from typical door and window sizes to figure the dimensions of the structure itself.  Once the plans were down on paper, it was a fairly easy step to cut basswood lap siding to size and build a number of similar little homes for the layout.  These turned out well enough for Bob Brown to publish the following picture in the Narrow Gauge and Shortline Gazette.

Of course, it isn't always necessary to build from scratch.  When an existing model is "close enough" for my purposes, I am perfectly happy to alter it to suit.  For example, almost everyone is familiar with the "W. E. Snatchem Funeral Home" -- you might even own one!  I built the original plastic model per the instructions, but it really didn't fit the needs of my current layout.  Then one day I noticed that the dimensions of the house were fairly typical for a small central Pennsylvania town like Mount Union.  With a little "bashing" -- removing the small bay on the side and the dormer on the roof, simplifying the porch, and replacing the shingle roof with a standing seam metal roof -- and finally, wrapping the entire structure in "Insulbrick" siding from Clever Models, voila!  A typical Pennsylvania house:

My current scratchbuilding project is to reproduce, in miniature, the little mining town of Robertsdale at the southern end of the EBT.  Robertsdale was a company town, built by the railroad and the coal company to house workers for the mines on the eastern slope of Broad Top Mountain.  The heart of the town was a group of four buildings, usually referred to as "company square" where Main Street crossed the EBT right of way.  Only one of these buildings -- the station -- exists in kit form.  The other three must be scratchbuilt.  So far I have finished the station and the company store -- the oldest building in Robertsdale.  Right now I am working on the old Post Office building -- a rather non-descript stone block structure with a hip roof.

Fortunately, the Friends of the East Broad Top (FEBT) now offer sheets of resin cast stone blocks identical to those used in three of the four buildings in company square.  The project has a way to go, but here you can see the structure beginning to take shape:

Scratchbuilding and kit bashing are a necessity when modeling a less well-known prototype.  They can also be challenging and fun!  In fact, over the years I have been involved in the hobby, some of my most enjoyable hours have been engaged in creating "something out of nothing".  And it all began with three beer cans and a bag of rubber bands!

A Trip Down Memory Lane

Like many model railroaders, my interest in the hobby goes back to my childhood and my first Lionel train set.  The trains arrived on a Christmas morning when I was somewhere between 8 and 10 years old.  I can remember them like it was yesterday: There was a Santa Fe warbonnet A-B-A diesel lashup with half a dozen fluted aluminum passenger cars, and a massive Pennsylvania Railroad S-2 steam turbine pulling a string of freight cars, including a side dump car, a log dump car, and a wonderful milk car that popped little milk cans onto a platform at the push of a button.  Another Christmas brought an A-A F3 lashup in Western Pacific colors.  I loved to lie on the floor and watch the trains race past -- especially that massive steam turbine that was so heavy it took two hands to lift it! 

Maybe it was the next Christmas, or the one after that, but at some point my father secretly built a layout in the basement for my trains.  I remember it well: Two 4x8 sheets of plywood laid end-to-end, with a figure 8 main line and a passing siding.  There were little Plasticville houses with Christmas tree lights inside, and dad had even painted streets and green grass for the scenery.  The whole thing sat on pieces of 2x4 so that the layout was only about 31/2 inches high, and to my young eyes, it was wonderful!

As far as I know, no photos exist of that layout or of the Lionel trains on Christmas.  In fact, I forgot about trains when I went to high school.  My big love then was amateur radio, and I had no time for railroading.  Consequently, I had no idea what became of those trains, which must have cost my parents dearly in the early 1950s.   They were no more than a vague memory.

Then, a year or two ago, I received an email from my cousin Joe in New Jersey.  We grew up in towns only a few miles apart.  In cleaning out his attic he had come across  a carton filled with electric trains.  He wondered if they might belong to me!  Apparently, when they retired and moved to Florida, my parents had given those old Lionel trains away!  It took a while to arrange for the transfer, but a couple of weeks before last Christmas, a heavy box arrived at the local post office addressed to me.  I carried it home and tore it open.  At first, I was disappointed that the Santa Fe diesels and passenger cars were not there.  But then a miracle!  Wrapped in old newspapers was the Pennsy steam turbine!  It was a little beat up; the paint was chipped and several wheels were missing; but there was no doubt this was the engine I used to run around the Christmas tree as a boy!

A quick tour of the internet revealed that the S-2 6-8-6 steam turbine No. 681 was based on a prototype built by the PRR and was first produced by Lionel in 1950.  Produced from 1950-51 and in 1953, the locomotive came with the 2671W tender shown in the picture.   (Being born in 1942, I couldn't have been less than 8 years old when I got my first train set.)  The engine came with a smoke unit, headlight, and a three position directional switch located on the boiler just in front of the cab.  The locomotive was just as massive as I remembered it.

A little research found that only one prototype was ever built, #6200, delivered to the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1944.  The S-2 was the sole example of the 6-8-6 wheel arrangement.  It used a direct drive stream turbine geared to the center pair of axles with the outer two axles connected by side rods.  Unfortunately, the turbine could not operate efficiently over the engine's entire speed range.  At slower speeds, it used excessive steam and fuel.  The engine's problems and the advantages of the new diesel locomotive technology ensured that the experiment would never be duplicated.  Number 6200 was withdrawn from service in 1949 and scrapped in 1953.  Lionel, on the other hand, produced thousands of them, and they were a roaring success in the mid-twentieth century!

The box from my cousin's attic contained other memories from my childhood.  There was a gorgeous A-A pair of F-3 diesels in Western Pacific colors.  The locomotives were first produced in 1952 , when I was ten years old.

There were a few freight cars in the box, and one passenger observation car from a set I had forgotten about over the years.  The 3469 automatic coal dump car was a versatile freight car for the era, able to operate with any of Lionel's coal related accessories, and was known for its sturdiness and reliability.

The 2401 Hillside observation car was part of a passenger car set produced in the late 1940s.  It was Lionel's first injection-molded passenger car set, based on the latest streamlined passenger cars introduced on American railroads in the mid-1940s.

Since receiving the box of trains shortly before Christmas, I have located a Lionel repairman located on Cape Cod, and the S-2 steam turbine has been repaired.  The missing wheel sets have been replaced, a new smoke unit installed, the whistle repaired, and a new water scoop on the tender installed.  I hope to try it out at the Cape Cod Model Railroad Club's next open house -- it will be the first time the engine has run under power in many years.

As I said in the beginning, these Lionel trains started my interest in model railroading some 60 years ago, and it is a miracle to have some of them back again -- a genuine "trip down memory lane".  By now, of course, my interests have changed, and I model in HO scale rather than Lionel's O scale.  I also model the East Broad Top narrow gauge railroad, so the locomotives and rolling stock are even smaller!  Here is a comparison photo of Lionel's huge S-2 steam turbine in 1:48 O scale and 1:87 HO scale EBT #18 -- not a small engine in its own right, it weighed 80 tons and could pull a string of 22 hopper cars up the mountain to the mines. 

But while times may change, memories do not.  Finding the Lionel trains from my childhood, some 60 years ago, has been a wonderful and emotional experience.  I owe a debt of gratitude to my cousin Joe, for finding and sharing these wonderful souvenirs of those days of long ago.