The ;paint shop has doors at both ends, and the plans available from the FEBT show that both doors were approximately 11 feet in height. However, the plans are wrong, as the 11 foot height would be too low for much of the EBT rolling stock. A visual inspection of the two ends showed that the doors in the south end were considerably higher than the doors in the north end. When I built the paint shop, I estimated the southern entrance was 14-15 feet in height.
The paint shop is accessed via a spur track which runs along the banks of Jordan Creek behind the sand house and tower. The west side of the building is supported by a concrete retaining wall, which I did not include in my model.
As can be seen from the photos, the paint shop is made of clean, lightly colored brick, well pointed. I decided to model the prototype with laser cut brick sheets from Monster Modelworks, a relatively new company offering both structure kits and various types of laser cut siding for scratch building. I selected the "clean" brick siding along with matching corners.
As mentioned above, the paint shop is 90 feet in length, which turned out to be a little too long for the space I had available on the layout. I decided to shorten the building by one single window at each end, reducing the length to 76 feet while preserving the appearance of the finished structure. Since the Monster Modelworks brick is available in a 6" by 12" sheet, I determined that one sheet was just enough for the model.
Building the Model
The Monster Modelworks brick sheets have an "up" side stamped on the reverse side. The 1/8" corners also have an "up" side, so that the sides and the corners can be matched. The laser cut brick work is neat, precise and very well done. The panels come with color variations in the unpainted wood that looked so realistic I was tempted to leave them that way!
Using dimensions from the FEBT plans, I laid out Tichy #8056 38" x 92" 9/9 double hung windows on the back of the brick sheet and marked the openings with a sharp pencil. Using a small chisel blade and hammer I carefully cut out the openings for the windows and the door. The 1/8" thickness helped me avoid accidentally splitting the basswood. I used a nail file emery board to true up and smooth the openings. Before gluing the corners to the sides, I test fit the windows and door frame.
Once I was satisfied that the windows were square, the next step was to paint the bricks. But I was not sure what colors to use, The walls were not your usual brick red; they had a pale yellowish hue. I didn't want to use too dark a color, and so I began to experiment with combinations of acrylic paints from the local craft store. I used the pieces of brick wall I had cut out for the windows to see how different paints appeared.
After trying various colors and techniques, I decided to go with the adobe base coat, which has an orange tinge to it. Then I applied very small amounts of rust unevenly using a stiff bristle brush. I dabbed the brush in a small amount of paint, then dabbed it on a paper towel to remove most of the paint. Then I touched the bricks very lightly with the end of the brush. I repeated the same process with the yellow ocher, but used it more widely over the wall. Finally, I highlighted a few bricks here and there with black and off white acrylic. A close inspection of the paint shop walls will reveal a scattering of these discolored bricks. In the photo above, the scrap of brick on the bottom right is what I found most appealing.
Having decided on colors, I bit my lip and began to paint the brick walls and corner pieces using the same technique. Here is the result of my efforts. I think the colors are reasonably close to the photos of the paint shop above. Note that the north and south door openings and the personnel door opening have squares of balsa wood glued behind them. I planned to cut the doors from scribed styrene sheet; the doors would be separately painted and would be glued to the balsa backing. This is the same technique I used with the electrical shop and air brake shop in my previous post.
My next challenge was to add the mortar lines for the bricks. Here again I tried various methods using the window and door knockouts for practice. The Monster Modelworks guidelines on adding mortar to the bricks suggested mixing rubbing alcohol and Bragdon's Lime White Mortar weathering powder, applying it as a thin wash, then drying it with a hair dryer. Not having Bragdon's powders, I used Dr. Ben's weathering powders purchased from Micro Mark. Maybe Bragdon's is different, but I was not satisfied with the result. The wash left a white residue on the surface of the brick. I also tried a wash of white water color, but all my efforts still left a white residue on the bricks. Finally, on the suggestion of another modeler I met at the local hobby shop, I drove to Home Depot and bought a $2.00 can of Durham's Water Putty.
A very thin mixture of water putty and water was dabbed over the brick wall, then dried with a heat gun on low. Although there was some residue on the brick surface, it was readily wiped off with a slightly damp cloth or finger. As the putty dried, the mortar lines gradually appeared, and the result was exactly what I was looking for. Not only that, but I now have a lifetime supply of Durham's water putty!
With the walls finished, I painted the window frames flat white and installed them in the brick walls. I also glued the corner pieces to the ends of the walls at this time, using Elmer's yellow carpenter's glue. After painting and adding the double doors and the personnel door, the building was beginning to take shape. The concrete foundation was also added at this time.
My next step was to glue the walls together, again using yellow carpenter's glue. I also glued 1/8" square stripwood along the top and bottom of each side and end piece to prevent warping.
With the walls assembled, the building was beginning to resemble the prototype ... except for the roof.
The north and south doors are heavily weathered in the photographs above. I applied a small amount of driftwood acrylic paint over the oxide red doors. The result was a streaked, weathered look that is a good facsimile of the prototype. The north doors and the personnel door were similarly treated.
The only thing remaining was to complete the roof, using techniques similar to what I did with the electrical shop in the previous post. A cardboard sub-roof was cut from mat board, then corrugated metal panels were cut from Campbell corrugated strips. There was one final problem, however; in the photos, the roof has a reddish orange color. It was not clear if the roof was painted this color or simply heavily rusted. Early photos in books on the EBT suggest that it has been this color for many years. I put out a request for information on the EBT website, but got no replies. Finally, I decided that since the building is situated a good three feet from the aisle on my layout, no one would be able to tell if the roof was painted or rusty. So I spray painted the roof the same NATO Black I used on other shop roofs, followed by a heavy coat of Dr. Ben's Rusty Red weathering powder. The result is close enough to the prototype for my purposes.
The next and last installment in this series will highlight a number of other shop buildings -- some scratch built, some kit built, some kit bashed -- where I have used techniques similar to those illustrated here to create a unified, realistic version of the EBT shops as they appeared on a summer day in the 1950's.
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