Scratch Building the Robertsdale Engine House - Conclusion

With the engine house more or less complete, the final touches included super detailing and adding lights in the engine house.  I bought a set of Miniatronix 12 volt bulbs with brass lamp shades that I thought would look cool suspended from the roof trusses.  The plans indicated that the trusses did not go all the way to the peak, so there was adequate room for the wiring above the truss cross beams.  I used a spare wall wart transformer for the 12 vdc.  A hole was bored with a  pin vice in the center of each cross beam, for a total of 4 lights.  

I ran the leads to the end of the structure furthest from the doors, where it is almost impossible to see the wiring.  I drilled a hole in one corner of the engine house floor and the 2" foam base on which it sits large enough for a  piece of plastic tubing.  The wires from the transformer were threaded up the tubing into the engine house and connected to a two prong mini plug. The wires from the lights were similarly connected to the mating plug.  

The four 12 volt bulbs shed an unexpectedly nice amount of light inside the engine house, visible even in daylight, as seen in this photo.  Note the studs visible on the inside wall -- a detail often omitted by modelers.  The light really makes them pop.

At night, with the room lights off, the effect was even more spectacular.  I was really pleased with the result!

I wanted to superdetail the shop area in the addition at the rear of the engine house.   Though I had no interior photographs from when the building was in use, the plans clearly showed that the tracks ended just past the rear wall of the engine house itself.  That left almost 40 feet of space for shop equipment and supplies.  Since the roof was removeable, I decided to set up a small but adequately equipped machine shop for light repairs.  Shelving from Rusty Rail castings was placed against the wall farthest from the aisle, so it would be clearly visible.  I had a small collection of typical machine shop tools, including a sheet metal brake, punch, grinder, lathe, even a small steam hammer.  I placed these around the floor with a variety of workers.  Here is a photo of the finished machine shop.

There were a few small details left to add  to the main building.  I cut the smoke vents from 5/16 square styrene tube, with a small square cap on top, and painted the vents black.  The vents were located in the front of the engne house, near the doors, indicating that locomotives would have had to back into the building.  The plans also clearly showed three brick chimneys along the peak of the roof.  I used castings from Tyche for the chimneys, then added metallic flashing from B.E.S.T. around the base of each vent and chimney.

All that remained was to add scenery.  I had painted the immediate area around the structure black.  I brushed on matte medium, then sprinkled finely sifted cinders that I collected on previous trips to the East Broad Top.  This gave a typically grimy appearance to the surrounding area and along the two sets of tracks.  Since I model late summer on my railroad, beyond the the cinders I used a light yellow static field grass, along with various kinds of ground cover and trees.  Steps were consructed from ties soaked in brown Hunterline weathering mix and placed at the two side doors.  I added a variety of weeds from Noch, trees, old ties, barrels of grease and oil and trash cans here and there.  The result was, I might say, satisfying.

I hope you enjoyed my little scratch building project.  If you are ever in the neighborhood, you are welcome to drop over and see the rest of the layout, which is about 75% complete. 

Scratchbuilding the Robertsdale Engine House - Part 3

 With the roof trusses in place, I constructed the roof panels using laser cut sheets of variable width shake shingles from Bollinger Edgerly Scale Trains (B.E.S.T.).  The sheets come in 4x12 and 6x12 sizes, which meant I had to cut and paste sections together to shingle the 60 foot long engine house and the 40 long extension and shop.  I made one side of the roof 1/16 inch less from eave to peak, and butted the shorter panel to the panel facing the aisle, eliminating the need for a roof cap.  I really liked the appearance of the shakes, and began to think about what color to make them.  Here is a shot of the engine house from the front.  

And here is a photo from the rear.  The roof is not yet on the extension.  The holes in the roof are for the smoke vents, which I made from 5/16" square styrene tubing

With the roof sections cut and assembled, my next thought was what color to make them.  I had painted the sides with a red primer from Home Depot, and liked the look.  I first tested a spray can of roof primer from Home Depot -- the color was designed to color flashing and roof pipes in an aged brown.  But when I sprayed a scrap of leftover roofing, the spray paint came out too thick and dark.  So I tried various weathering mixes from Hunterline, including brown, gray and driftwood.  I liked them all, but decided to go with a light gray that resembled the weathered color of shake shingles one sees here on Cape Cod.  The label said the dye was mixed with alcohol, so I felt safe brushing it on the wood shingles.  I brushed it on both sides just in case, to prevent any warping.

At first it looked great, but then I noticed that the wood was starting to warp anyway.  I quickly laid the panels flat on a sheet of glass with lead weights.  But then I noticed that the warp was more severe along the eaves than the peaks, giving each longitudinal roof section a fan shape.  The eaves were expanding lengthwise more than the peak!  I attributed the difference to the laser cuts that made the bottom of the roof thinner than the top. I quickly checked the bottle of weathering mix and found that the mix  was only 70% rubbing alcohol!  It pays to read the label carefully.  The mixture was 30% water!   I thought the shingles -- which were not cheap -- were ruined.  I left the roof panels on my workbench and went to bed.

To my amazement, when I lifted the weights off the next day, the warp had largely disappeared!  As the water content evaporated, the wood returned to its original shape.  There is still a subtle warp, so that the bottom of the roof sections sag slightly in the middle -- a nice touch, as it turns out, making the roof look a bit aged and sagging slightly like a wood passenger car.  The light gray stain turned out rather nice.  Here you can see the engine house on the layout with the roof in place.  The smoke vents have been painted and installed.  The styrene foundation is also visible.

And here is a photo of the entire structure with all roof panels in place.  This is the view seen by visitors, since the left side of the building faces the aisle and there is no really good view of the opposite side.

In my next post I will show how I wired the engine house for lights and added additional roof detail along with shop equipment and workers in the rear extension.

Scratch Building the Robertsdale Engine House - Part 2

 As I explained in part 1 of this series, I wanted to build the EBT two stall backwoods engine house in Robertsdale, Pennsylvania, at the southern end of the railroad.  The main shop facilities were in Rockhill, where the railroad had an eight stall round house and turntable, a car shop, locomotive shop, machine shop, foundry, blacksmith shop, and just about anything you might need to build, repair or service the railroad.  

But Rockhill was more than 20 miles north of Robertsdale and the coal mines on Broadtop Mountain.  If one of the EBT's fleet of 2-8-2 steamers needed repairs, it made sense to have a small service facility available at the southern end of the line.  The board and batten engine house was built around 1875, at the same time that the EBT was building the Robertsdale depot and company store.  

There are very few photos of the engine house when it was still standing, so I turned to the FEBT Company Store for a set of drawings based on field notes from William J. Karl made in 1973 when the building was still standing.  The set of 7 drawings was a godsend.  They were extremely well detailed, and included the floor plan, wall plans, the site plan and roof plan, front and rear elevations,side elevations, main door and vent stack detail. And best of all, they were drawn in HO scale!  This vastly simplified construction of the model.  After cutting out and assembling the walls, I was able to set my model directly on the plan, as seen here:

Since the engine house was built before the EBT bought its fleet of modern 2-8-2 locomotives, the tolerances between the engine and doors were extremely tight.  Being able to set the building on the floor plan helped keep the tracks within the proper clearances.

I decided for the sake of structural integrity I would set the sills on a concrete foundation -- in this case a 1/8 inch sheet of styrene painted a weathered gray.  Using the plans for a guide, I carefully marked out the stalls, then cut out the spaces for the tracks.  I tested the fit on a flat surface to make sure the tolerances were correct, then glued the walls to the foundation with ACC cement.

The plans indicated that the roof of the main building was supported by a series of 6 trusses.  I followed the plans and constructed four trusses that were then placed where the plans indicated they were located.  The front and rear trusses were continued up to the peak of both ends to strengthen the assembly.

At this point I was able to place the structure on the layout where it would go when finished.  The laser cut shake shingle roof panels from B.E.S.T. would rest on the trusses leaving enough space above for wiring the lights and for a roof beam to run from one end of the building to the other.  I will continue the construction in part 3.

Scratch Building the Robertsdale Engine House

The East Broad Top Railroad runs south from its junction with the Pennsylvania Railroad in Mount Union, to Robertsdale and the coal mines on Broad Top Mountain.  Robertsdale was a bustling little town in its heyday, with a large and well stocked company store, a concrete block depot, another concrete block structure that once held the coal company offices, and an impressive new office building across the street.  Robertsdale also boasted a wye for turning the coal trains, an enclosed water tank, and an engine house.  The engine house was the most enigmatic structure, having fallen into ruin in the early 1990's, about the same time that the company store was razed.  

I was hard put to find any photos of the engine house, which was a two stall board and batten structure just south of company square.  At the EBT Fall Reunion in 2014 I walked what was left of the roadbed with Ric Case and Ron Pearson, who took me on  a short tour of where the engine house once stood.  There was virtually nothing left of the building except some of the concrete foundation.  Later I ran across some old photos from the 1990's that were all I could find of what the structure looked like.  Here is a picture taken in 1992 of the front foundation looking out at the approach track.

The best photos I found of the actual structure were low resolution and very grainy. Here is a shot of the front and side of the building.It's hard to make out much detail.

And here is a shot lookng up at the front of the building.

I had reserved a special place, right on the aisle, for the Robertsdale engine house on my EBT railroad, but the information I had to go one was pretty sparse.  Then I discovered that the FEBT Company Store had a complete set of drawings of the engine house based on field data taken in 1973 by William J. Karl, when the building was still standing.   I ordered the complete set of 7 drawings in HO scale.  What a find!  The drawings showed all sides of the structure, plus the interior, roof trusses, the works!

I decided to model the engine house using scribed board and batten siding -- which I happened to have a lot of in my stash of modeling supplies.  The drawings specified that the roof was made of wood shake shingles, so for the sake of realism I purchased several sheets of laser cut cedar shake shingles from B.E.S.T. modeling supplies.  By Christmas 2020 I was ready to start work.  During the week between Christmas and New Year's Day I cut all the sides and  punched out holes for the windows and doors. I ordered several sets of Tichy 6/6 frame windows 36" wide by 64" high, item TTG8024, which were just about the exact size of the engine house windows.  After cutting out the sides, I spray painted the exterior with red primer from the local Home Depot.  I installed the windows, and began to assemble the building, which measures out to about 100 feet long incluiding the rear extension.  In the next post I will continue with how I constructed the roof trusses, foundation, and interior.