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.