One of the first buildings to be erected in Robertsdale was the "company store", constructed on the western side of the EBT tracks between 1874 and 1875. The store was demolished in 1993. While the miners and townsfolk referred to it as a "company store", in fact the store was never operated by the railroad or coal company because Pennsylvania law prohibited coal companies from operating their own stores. In order to get around the law, the coal company leased the store to a merchant who then paid the coal company a percentage of the profits. (Information on the company store is taken from When Coal Was King: The Robertsdale Store by Ron Morgan (c) 2011). The picture below was taken in 1993 after the store had been boarded up for almost 30 years.
Construction of the original sandstone block building was completed in the fall of 1875 by the Rockhill Iron and Coal Company in conjunction with the completion of the EBT from Mount Union to Robertsdale the previous year. Besides specializing the sale of mining tools, black powder and other items used in area mines, the store also carried a wide range of general merchandise, ranging from clothing, hardware and food to candy and toys for the children.
No model of Robertsdale would be complete without including this imposing stone structure, which stood at the center of town for more than a century. But there exist no commercial kits for the company store, so it was clear from the beginning the building would have to be scratch built. Fortunately, the Huntingdon County Heritage Committee had approved an Endangered Historic Building Study of the company store in 1995, copies of which were still available from the County Building Commission. Also a series of articles based on this study appeared in the Timber Transfer, a publication of the Friends of the East Broad Top (FEBT) in 1995, so there was ample information available, including a complete set of plans on which to base an accurate model. Here is a view of the store's south facing entrance.
The first step in building a model of this interesting building was to convert the plans to HO scale. Once the plans were drawn up on graph paper, the next step was to find windows and doors from Tichy and other sources that closely matched the originals. It wasn't possible to find an exact match for window and door dimensions in every case, and in those instances the modeler's rule of "close enough" produced a reasonable facsimile. The walls were then cut from a sheet of 1/16 inch styrene and the window and door openings cut out with an Exacto blade. The unique porch and steps were built from two resin casting sets of stairs glued back to back.
The walls were assembled using Plastruct Plastic Weld cement. Lengths of 1/8 inch square styrene were cemented as braces for the corners, and along the tops and bottoms of the walls to keep the thin styrene sheet from bending. More problematic was the challenge of duplicating the sandstone block walls. Some modelers, like my friend, MMR Dave Crement, have built outstanding copies of the store by carving their own stone walls. That was not an option for me, so I began looking around for another solution.
It was then I stumbled across a new product from Micro-Mark -- innovative photo-realistic building papers that are printed with a special process that raises the surface of each individual stone above the "mortar lines". And for easy, quick application, the sheets come with a peel-and-stick adhesive on the back. According to Micro-Mark, the sheets even accept weathering powders and air brushed colors for weathering and aging! I ordered several sheets of HO scale brown cut stone that closely resembled the sandstone blocks of the store. I also ordered a couple of sheets of medium gray shingles that looked a lot like the store's original slate roof.
Care has to be exercised, of course, when applying the adhesive papers to the model, especially since the building was longer than a single sheet of stone blocks. It was necessary to line up two sheets as closely as possible, to avoid an artificial looking vertical seam. I tried to place the seams where there were several windows and doors to disguise the seam as much as possible. In the following picture you can see how the seam was located where the line would be interrupted by a window and a door.
Can you find the seam in the following picture? (Hint. It runs down from the cutout where the dormer window will go and is interrupted by two small 6-pane windows.)
The next challenge was to construct the three window dormer on the long east side of the building (the window once provided light for an atrium and staircase from the first to second floors) and the standing seam metal roof on the west side wing. Fortunately, I was able to find a three window set from Tichy that fit perfectly in the dormer. The metal roof had to be pieced together by trial and error. Here are the results:
Working out the shape of the unusual standing seam metal roof was challenging. I used cardboard to get the precise shape of the room panels, then used the cardboard as a pattern to cut out sections of Evergreen 4522 metal roofing. After assembly, the roof was spray painted zinc chromate red -- a close approximation of the original metal roof.
Final details included the addition of fascia board and sofit panels around the roof, aluminum foil "flashing" in the valleys of the dormer, railings on the steps and signage on the front windows. To give the impression of a busy store, I cut out pictures of the inside of a a turn-of-the-century drugstore, mounted them on styrene, and set them back a quarter inch from the window, giving an appearance of depth.
I was pleased with the way my company store came out. It will make an impressive addition to the cluster of buildings in Robertsdale's "company square". The stone block railroad station completed in 1914 will stand across the street from the store. On the opposite side of the tracks will be the old Robertsdale post office and the imposing office building of the Rockhill Iron and Coal Company. The EBT company buildings will be surrounded by a cluster of simple gray company houses that made up this coal mining town in the mountains of central Pennsylvania.
No comments:
Post a Comment