Middletown Tower: Walls Done, Trim to Come

Made some more progress on my "scrapbuilding" project tonight . . .

First new wall glued in. You can see the horizontal braces which place the wall in the same plane as the original kit wall, and the vertical braces/splices which glue to them and hold everything together.

Another view. The width of the front wall goes from one corner of the original wall to the other. The side walls will fit inboard of the front wall.

I decided to add some inside-corner braces for added strength. I would usually use 1/8" or 1/4" square strip, but there wasn't enough room given the length of the horizontal braces (I didn't think that far ahead), so I used .060" instead, two of which are sitting on there on the cutting pad ready to install.

Installed corner brace. I've become fan of the Model Masters cement - it's thicker than the Tenax and includes a needlepoint applicator.  So it's easy to just put a fine bead on on a part and add it to the model.  It sets up fairly quickly too - though not as quickly as Tenax. I use Tenax when I can clamp the part in place first and then flow it into the joint. I couldn't clamp these corner braces though.

All three new walls glued up and done.

And here's how it looks as of tonight.  Almost there!

Next step will be to have the Missus help me come up with some colors to match the "original" wall & trim color (BION I'm colorblind, so the help is most welcome - and needed!). Then it's just a matter of painting the walls & trim and then gluing the trim to the walls.  Oh, and I have to reattach the roof and add "glass" to the windows. I haven't decided yet whether I'll add an interior - but since it's October on my layout, maybe the steam heat will fog up the windows a bit...

I hope you're enjoying this (re)build - it's really putting me in the mood to do some more structures.  Which is good, since I need a lot of structures on the layout - or at least mockups - to determine the final placement of my sidings & such, and to make sure my crews will still be able to operate effectively with the new "obstructions."

But one thing's for sure - this little cut-down tower isn't going to obstruct much of anything!

Wordless Wednesday #31

More Middletown Tower: 15 minutes really IS long enough

After yesterday's work think session, and even though I realized that progress doesn't always have to be measured in what you actually accomplish, I still regretted not having gotten anything tangible done. You hear and read a lot about how you should always have a variety of projects ready to work on, so you can always accomplish something. Well, I admit I'm not all that good about following that advice. I don't have "10 minute", "20 minute", and "30 minute" project trays like I read about some super-organized folks having. But if you, like me, have something in progress most - if not all - of the time, you just might be able to move the ball forward, even if only a little bit.

So last night, after the guys went home, I had the missus join me in the hobby room/den, put on an old-time radio show for us to listen to, and sat down at the workbench while she read her book. Here's what I accomplished:

I cut up some braces/splices from .060x.188" styrene and cemented two of them to one of the end walls. You can see the two sides of the end wall at the bottom of the pic. Those strips on the inside of the new clapboard will provide stiffness and additional attachment points.

I may have mentioned it before, but in order to determine where exactly the new end wall sections must fall in order to accommodate the trim piece and still meet up properly in the corner, I had to glue another original side on.  The Right Clamp makes short work of this. But this project has also made it clear that I need to get myself another Right Clamp. It'll just make things easier.

Yup - that's all I did last night. Just about 15 minutes' worth of work. It takes a long time for glue joints to set up and cure properly - and that could easily happen overnight. But to glue those joints only takes a few minutes.

Tonight presented a different challenge: I got home late from an after-work meeting. I was tired, brain dead, and only wanted to flip through a magazine (RMC) or watch some (TrainMasters)TV. You know the drill as well as I do. But, building on last night's lesson, I figured "I could at least glue on a couple more splices." It turned out not to be quite that straightforward, but - again - I spent only about 15 minutes (actually +/- 17 mins, not that I was timing it or anything...)

As suspected, once I got the original walls mocked-up/glued-together, I discovered the new endwalls will need to be even narrower than expected. The new styrene is just placed here for illustration - note that the corner joint on the original wall has both a flat surface and a 45 degree angle. This is one of the pitfalls of "scrapbuilding." As always, you can click on the image to enlarge it.

This is where the new styrene wall will have to be glued. Note the overhang to the right, which will have to be trimmed. But even more importantly, note the remaining 45 degree angle to the left. I can't move the new wall any further left to close that gap since it would "walk up" the angle and come too far forward (proud?) of the original wall. Fortunately, it looks like the proposed 1x6 (scale) trim will cover that gap.

And I did get around to cutting yet more braces/splices (love my Chopper!) and gluing them in. You can see all the components here, including the strip of trim at the bottom there.

Yes, it's true. I can attest to the fact that all you need is 15 minutes to make some progress on one of your model railroad projects - provided you've got something ready to go. Don't make the mistake - as I so often do - of thinking you always have to have a huge block of time to accomplish anything. As you know - or will certainly discover - those huge blocks of time are far too rare to count on for regular progress. But these little bits of time - 15 minutes here, 5 minutes there, 20 minutes some other time - will all add up in the long run. And, best of all, they'll result in much more progress than you thought possible.

Progress does not always equal Accomplishment

I should be frustrated about yesterday's work session, but I'm not. Roman & Pieter came over for the afternoon and I had a long punch list of to-do items we could go through. I still have it. Nothing's crossed off.

Having a variety of to-do items is nice since then, hopefully, there's always something that folks are interested in doing. Unfortunately, other than some super-simple items which really didn't merit our combined effort (like "snip coupler pins off engine #3304" "change bell ring rate"), the remaining items all seemed to require something that I didn't have ready - either in terms of supplies or thought.

Lack of supplies is the more frustrating. I should have enough on-hand in order to accomplish the listed task. Like paint. I need to pre-paint some structure parts before assembly, and I didn't have the right paint in stock. So one of the things Pieter and I did was go to the store and get some paint. But we didn't paint anything.

Lack of thought - well, that's a little frustrating. It's frustrating to realize you didn't think through the implications of a certain approach and as a result you're stymied. But trying to avoid "lack of thought" all too often leads most of us - me, certainly - into Analysis Paralysis. You end up going to the basement and spending all your time staring at the layout. Thinking, but not doing.

But I've found one of the antidotes to this: Having somebody else over to help you think through things. With another perspective, and another suitcase of experience to offer, having a friend or friends over to stare at the layout with you will - more often than not - aid your thinking, and keep you from falling into the Analysis Paralysis trap.

Roman worked on some photo backdrop ideas (another source of frustration, which I'll discuss - perhaps - in a future post), but he and Pieter helped most by helping me think through some things: structure choice & placement, road additions, industry siding modifications, and - yes - backdrop options.

The fact that we didn't "accomplish" anything during the time we were together is really beside the point. We were able to get together for a dedicated block of time to discuss the layout, its future, what we want to accomplish, different approaches. Those kinds of discussions are extremely valuable, and help move the ball further. Even decisions about what not to do are, in their own way, "progress."

So thank you Pieter and Roman for coming over yesterday. I know we didn't accomplish much, but as far as I'm concerned, we made a lot of progress. And that's always the result of a good work session.

(that all said - I promise to make up a bucket of Ground Goop for the next work session.... ;^)

On the Valley Line Today. . . in 1949

"RAIL ACTIVITY INCREASED BY DERAILMENT
Two Long Freight Trains Pass Through Town During Day

Rocky Hill - Early Wednesday morning (August 17, 1949) a 50-car freight train drawn by two diesel engines passed through Rocky Hill as a result of the derailment of a freight train at Bolton. Traffic had to be rerouted through Middletown and Rocky Hill to Hartford for the Boston to Hartford run. A second train equally as long, but drawn by only one engine, went through Rocky Hill shortly before noon. The unusual activity on the line caused considerable comment as only three trains a week with few cars pass through the town normally.

Station Agent James W. Whitty announced that effective September 1, the freight office hours will be changed from 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Monday through Saturday to 8 a.m. to 5 p.m Monday through Friday."

And that's the News on the Valley Line, August 17, 1949

(Makes me wonder whether the trains left the Midland in Willimantic and came down the Air Line to Middletown.  If they did, they would have had to back down that sharp quadrant track at the diamond to then be able to go north through Rocky Hill to Hartford.  Wow!  Though I suppose they could have gone down the Norwich & Worcester to New London, then west to Old Saybrook and then north.  Either way, it was quite a detour!)

(Special thanks to Bob Belletzkie for the article - and if you want to know ANYthing about stations on the New Haven Railroad, RUN don't walk to his website at http://www.tylercitystation.info/)

Middletown Tower Project: "Scrapbuilding" Walls

Looks like progress on my Middletown tower project is on about a once-per-month schedule - not quite as "quick & dirty" as I expected.  But now that "Mockup Structures" has floated to the top of my to-do list for my next operating session, this project is back on the front burner.  Click here for the previous installment on this project - and continue reading for the progress that I made tonight.

After cutting the walls down to closer-to-prototype height, and removing the wall sections that had unneeded doors & windows (see this post), it was time to "backfill" with reconstructed walls of clapboard styrene. 

I got a total length of the clapboard needed by setting the walls side-by-side and then used a square and ruler to score and snap the pieces.

Cuttin' up

While the score & snap method is certainly fast, and using a right angle ensures the wall is square in one plane, the cut doesn't always result in a square edge.  A NWSL True Sander (1st time using this Christmas present!) squares the cuts up nicely.

The clapboard sheet styrene is thinner than the thickness of the original walls, and I wanted to brace new to old, so I decided to thicken the clapboard walls with some strip styrene.  To determine how thick those strips should be, I needed to measure the thickness of the original walls, including trim.  While doing this, I also measured the width of the trim so I could match it on the new walls.

I kept track of all the measurements on a Post-It.  Clapboard thickness is .035" and I'm using a scale 1x6 (.011x.066) for trim.  Adding the new trim (.011) to the new clapboard (.035) results in a thickness of .046".  The thickness of the original wall, including the thickness of its trim, is .069".  So the thickness of the styrene strip backers need to be .023" (.069-.046).

I used scale 2x8s for the backers/braces.  At .022" thick, that's close enough to .023" for me. Using Tenax 7r liquid cement with a microbrush made this step go quickly. The braces that will strengthen the joint between the old and new walls will be glued perpendicularly to these backer/braces.

Final step for the evening was to go ahead and glue two of the original walls together using a Right Clamp. While this step seems a bit out of sequence, I think having at least one corner done will help me determine where/how the new clapboard/trim corners should go together.

Since I wanted this joint to set up fully, I decided to leave it overnight - and call it a night. I hope you're enjoying this blow-by-blow account. I'm not sure whether this project would be considered kitbashing or scratchbuilding. I "re-kitted" a tower, essentially making it scrap, and have then been building it back up using those "scrapped" parts and some new styrene.  Hmmm.... maybe I'll just call this process "scrapbox building" or - better yet - "scrapbuilding." :^)

Roman and Pieter are coming over for a work session tomorrow, so I hope to have some more layout progress to post in a day or two - so stay tuned!

Research Resources: Aerial Photos

After seeing my post on Time Travel with Maps, RichS reminded me in a comment to that post of another resource - www.historicaerials.com.  This is an amazing website that has gathered together many - if not all - online resources for aerial photos from across the country and, better yet for the historic prototype modeler, from different eras.

For what I'm interested in - Connecticut specifically - you can also go to the University of Connecticut (UCONN).  They have aerial photos for different years for most places in Connecticut and most of them are available (as .tif or pdf files) through the UCONN Map & Geographic Information Center (MAGIC) website: http://magic.lib.uconn.edu/ . This link should bring you to a page where all the online Aerial Photograph collections are listed: http://magic.lib.uconn.edu/connecticut_data.html#indexes.

For example, if you choose the 1934 aerials, if you click on Map Preview this will bring up a search box where you can search by address: http://magic.lib.uconn.edu/mash_up/1934_aerial_index.html . Once you've found your area, click on the red flag. One of the options will be to download a file.

For more about Connecticut's aerial photos go to http://www.ctstatelibrary.org/topics/aerial-photos.

But beware: it is SOOOOOO very easy to get "lost" back in time when visiting these sites and lose tons of modeling time. Ask me how I know. But it is really just so cool to take a virtual fly over of the countryside as it was 70 years ago. At least in Connecticut's case, you discover very quickly how few trees there were (it was still very agricultural back then). But even more interesting - and frightening until you realize what happened - is seeing the photos of railroad lines with two trains on the same track heading toward each other! Thankfully, that's just the result of two photos that were taken on separate days overlapping each other. But the first time I saw it, I was pretty shocked!

I hope you'll enjoy these resources and will get some good modeling information from them.  And thanks again to RichS for reminding me of where to find them!