Building the EBT Roundhouse -- First Attempt

As I said in my previous post, I have been looking for a way to construct the EBT roundhouse for some time.  By chance I made contact with Stone Mill Models and its owner, Michael Rebeiro.  Rebeiro had been listening to a conversation on Yahoo's Narrow Gauge Chat group, and offered to produce the walls for the roundhouse by laser cutting molds and casting the brickwork in epoxy resin.  We agreed on a very reasonable price and the deal was struck.

Rebeiro's biggest challenge was the front of the roundhouse, which is rounded to conform to the 65 foot turntable that sits in front of the roundhouse.

From field notes and from the HABS/HAER drawings in the Library of Congress, the dimensions of the building and the distance from the center of the turntable to the roundhouse is precisely known.  It was simple geometry, then, to calculate the curvature of the front wall, which in HO scale worked out to approximately a 20 inch radius.  As Rebeiro explained, the problem was casting a curved resin wall from epoxy resins that are semi-liquid when poured.  His solution was to cast the front of the roundhouse flat, then gently heat the casting and gradually bend it over a round object with a 20 inch radius.  But what to use?  He looked at a variety of curved surfaces, and finally settled on a snare drum with the required radius!  I was delighted with the result.

Rebeiro's plan was to cast each side wall in one piece.  The rear walls would be composed of eight identical sections, individually cast and cemented together.  Interior brickwork would be added on the wall visible from the aisle once the building was finished and installed on the layout.  He also offered to include laser cut windows and doors, along with a full set of templates for each of the eight stalls (including the service pits), templates for the roof sections, roof trusses and a set of ventilators for the roof.  When I received the first shipment, it consisted of all these parts:

In my excitement, I set up the front wall on a flat surface and tested it out with several of my HOn3 engines to see how it was going to look.  Almost immediately, I realized that there was something wrong.  The EBT's 2-8-2 mikados and the M-1 gas electric doodlebug barely fit through the doorways.  And the top of the locomotives scraped the curving brickwork.  Clearly, the doorways were too small.

I contacted Rebeiro and we discussed the problem.  He quickly realized that there had been an error in calculating the dimensions of the doorways.  But it wasn't just the front wall.  Enlarging the front wall meant that the entire roundhouse had to be enlarged, new molds and templates laser cut, and new walls constructed.  What I liked about working with Rebeiro was the sense that we were a team, working to create a structure for EBT modelers that had not been available previously.  This was just a glitch in the creative process.

While Michael was redesigning the walls, we discussed some of the other details on the roundhouse.  He had not been able to come up with a way of designing the roll down corrugated doors seen on the prototype.  As it turned out, I had picked up some similar doors at a train show a few years ago, thinking that they might work for the roundhouse.  I sent one of these doors to Rebeiro, who was able to modify it to the correct size door for the doorways.

In one of several conversations, Michael asked if I intended to paint the interior walls white, like the prototype.  I was at a loss for words.  I have been in the EBT roundhouse a few times over the years, but the interior lighting was dim, and I couldn't for the life of me remember what color the walls were.  But checking some of the photos of the roundhouse that I had shared with Rebeiro, I suddenly realized that the inside of the structure was painted black up to the bottom of the windows, and white from there to the roof. The colors are clearly visible in the following photo.

As we discussed painting the model, Michael made a surprising suggestion:  He would paint the walls, inside and out, and use photos for marketing purposes once we had finished our collaboration.  He also suggested adding the lean-to shed on the right side of the structure that was added in the 1930s to house the EBT's small fleet of trucks and busses.  And he would hand deliver the finished product to my door once it was finished!  I was stunned.  I had simply been looking for a way of reproducing the roundhouse walls; instead I was going to receive a complete kit, assembled and painted!  Not being one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I said I would be delighted!  In my next post, I will share photos of the structure as it was delivered, how I developed a plan for mounting roundhouse and turntable on the layout, and the method I worked out for installing the track, building the roof, and lighting the structure.