Nice work if you can get it!
Lee
Route of the Alpha Jets www.wmrywesternlines.net
Lee;
You do very nice work there. Mine are still in the boxes (two SS LTD Sterling roundhouses, one Korber roundhouse with extra stalls, and one South River Modelworks model). I have method to my mania, though... I am retiring in two years (or so I think) and with somewhere around a hundred "craftsman level" type kits, I should be busy until they pat my face with a shovel. What a thought: Buried alive in my shop for the winter! Ahhhhh, paradise. And what roundhouses I can create!!
Rich
Thanks for that great reference, Marc... Wish I'd seen it a couple weeks ago!
I'll be working on the exterior walls of mine shortly. I'll keep you posted.
Hi from Belgium,
I agree with you, if you want to build a big roundhouse it coulb be very expensive.
Scratchbuilding is , I think a good way to make a big roundhouse even it's not a easy building to build.
If you have time take a look at this web site; this layout was featured in GMR 2005 and his owner is scratchtbuilding his roundhouse. You can find some ideas to build yours.
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/cajonpass52/index.htm
Good luck.
Marc
Thanks, Mike! I'm modeling around 1970... all that safety stuff was taken care of by the use of common sense back then... I'll have to see if I can find some color photos of the interior of the Elkins roundhouse to see what it might have looked like. I've seen a bunch of interiors of Hagerstown, and aside from the ever present "Safet First" signage, I don't see much in the way of markings on the floor...
But that would make for some nice details...
Some inspiration. From the Janesville, WI roundhouse.
The yellow area around the pits is 18-24" wide.
Mike WSOR engineer | HO scale since 1988 | Visit our club www.WCGandyDancers.com
Here's where we are so far...Lee
Looking good, Lee. I love those signs. I'm using them as raw material for my large concrete viaduct.
Nick
Take a Ride on the Reading with the: Reading Company Technical & Historical Society http://www.readingrailroad.org/
The sheet styrene (other than the corrugated sideing and brick sheet) is all from big signs I "liberated" from a trade show. (I was a vendor, I paid my fee, and after the show was over they were just tossing these 8" x 36" signs into the trash!)
I've got a bunch of orange LED's, but they're a little too orange... I like the idea of the clear roof... but I don't have that material in stock, and I'm trying to this whole thing without expending any new pennies...
How'd that song go? "TV killed the Railroad Modeling star"?
Lookin' very groovy! Is all this styrene Evergreen? I-beams and tubes?Is it going to keep hanging over the edge (or is this your "temporary" service as you build in stages?)
If you're not going to light it, you might want to check out this guy Rich C's stratchbuilt:http://www.trainboard.com/grapevine/album.php?albumid=559&pictureid=6969he used a clear plastic for the roof, dusted it with flat black to simulate tar, but overhead light still gets through.(Some other picts show it off better).Groovy effect!But I'm always a sucker for those hard orange industrial lights (more Romantic!)
Thanks for taking the time for the diagram and documenting all yr work!--Mark
M.C. Fujiwara
My YouTube Channel (How-to's, Layout progress videos)
Silicon Valley Free-moN
Diehl,
The Heljan kit has always come in the desired 6 stall arrangement, unfortunately it's a pretty Euro-looking building. I had considered buying one of them and just rebuilding the exterior walls, but the roof-line wasn't what I was after.
McFunk,
I used CA to secure the rails, but there's also a physical bond that increases the surface area for the glue to hold onto. Here's diagram of what I did...
I used my fine tooth razor saw to cut a narrow channel at the edge of the finished floor that the bottom flange of the rail nests into to increase the stability of the track installation. Through painting and other handling, it's held up pretty well.
Did you just CA the rails to the styrene? Any special kind of bonding? My experience with N rails and CA is POP!
wm3798 I'm complaining about the price because I think it's excessive, and I don't think they give you much in the basic kit. If it was $20 cheaper or came as a complete roundhouse, I would have considered starting with it and kitbashing. But 3 stalls doesn't make much of a roundhouse, especially for $60. It's like, here, buy a locomotive for $60... oh, you want wheels too? That's another $60... I know there's lots of folks out there who don't have room for more than a couple of stalls, but those folks are called HO gaugers, where everything is too big in the first place! There's no excuse for an N scale roundhouse to be less than 6 stalls. If someone needs a smaller round house, then lucky them! Lots of trusses and parts for the junk box. By the way, I have the same complaint about the Atlas roundhouse kit, which is sold the same way. Lee
I'm complaining about the price because I think it's excessive, and I don't think they give you much in the basic kit. If it was $20 cheaper or came as a complete roundhouse, I would have considered starting with it and kitbashing. But 3 stalls doesn't make much of a roundhouse, especially for $60. It's like, here, buy a locomotive for $60... oh, you want wheels too? That's another $60... I know there's lots of folks out there who don't have room for more than a couple of stalls, but those folks are called HO gaugers, where everything is too big in the first place!
There's no excuse for an N scale roundhouse to be less than 6 stalls. If someone needs a smaller round house, then lucky them! Lots of trusses and parts for the junk box.
By the way, I have the same complaint about the Atlas roundhouse kit, which is sold the same way.
The basic kit is a complete roundhouse, and the three stall size of both the basic and add on kits goes way back. Three stalls, even for a small roundhouse, was considered an absolute minimum. It would be a challenge to find any company that sells anything larger as a single kit. At one time Suydam marketed their roundhouse add on as one stall units, but quickly changed to a three stall kit, finding that it cost almost as much with the packaging and handling to sell a one stall compared to a three stall kit. I agree that $60.00 for kitbashing foder is high, but few people do extensive kitbashing on such kits, they're usually built as instructed or with varying levels of added detail. Maybe in your world "there's no excuse for an N scale roundhouse to be less than 6 stalls," but forcing everyone else to buy a six stall kit when they only have room for three would seriously cut sales.
Actually your complaint about the Atlas roundhouse should be bigger than the one for the Walthers. Atlas forces you to build it in three stall increments, unless you want to do major surgery on the floor sections. At least the Walthers one allows for stalls to be added in singles. I even traded off some of the excess parts from mine.
Lookin' great, Lee!
I was just diggin' the floors: the almond is a great base. I probably would've just gone with grey, but yrs looks fab!But then you had to go and make a great wall, too!I'll have to remember about the printing on transparency trick (have a ton left over since my school got lcd projectors & got rid of the overheads).
Thanks for sharing!--Mark
Anyway, here's the next phase...
wm3798 That is a nice feature, but I'm not building a brick roundhouse! Lee
That is a nice feature, but I'm not building a brick roundhouse!
Then why are you complaining about the cost of the Walthers roundhouse kit? Isn't it a brick prototype?
I'll be working on the walls today, so I'll post some progress photos when I get back to you later. Here's the pictures of last night's work.
I have the HO scale version of the Walther's turntable, with their roundhouse (I built the 9 stall version), and it has one feature that I've never seen before in a model kit, the wall sections have an inner and outer piece, giving brick detail to both sides of the wall. A bit more difficult to assemble, but since the doors are large and usually open, the side wall detail at least are noticible. Add a removable roof and interior detail, and Walthers has saved you the work of doing the brick detail to the interior.
Made some more progress tonight. I don't have room on my current platform to include the warehouse building behind the roundhouse, so I'm in the process of adding a sixth bank of windows to the right side so it matches the left. If I ever get around to building Elkins proper, I can always edit it again. (I love styrene!)
I also got the tracks all wired in, and basically finished the foundation so it's ready to paint. Pictures next time.
grizlump9be careful with the blasphemy. remember, MR and Walthers keep their shoes under the same bed. remember the simpsons episode where bart was going to get booted in the butt for a crime in australia? his mom thought it was a cruel punishment and was told "disparaging the boot is a bootable offense".grizlump
be careful with the blasphemy. remember, MR and Walthers keep their shoes under the same bed. remember the simpsons episode where bart was going to get booted in the butt for a crime in australia? his mom thought it was a cruel punishment and was told "disparaging the boot is a bootable offense".
grizlump
Thats like saying the management of MR is a kin to the KGB or Secrete Police, Walthers is merely a heavy advertiser in MR and nothing more.
I have a heavily modified Heljan roundhouse (truncated to 4 stalls and shortened for a former, much smaller layout...) but the brick walls and arched windows just make it look wrong for my prototype and era.
The WM built large roundhouses, but skinned them mostly in glass and corrugated metal.
This is the look I'm shooting for, which is easily done with Evergreen stock. I'm making the windows by photocopying the 2-D drawing onto a clear transparency to put behind the larger sash frames.
It looks like your a pretty good scratch builder so your under taking should be a lot of fun. I will agree with you that sometimes it feels like we are held at the mercy of the Walthers catalog but that is not really a fair statement. You can use just about any roundhouse kit for that tuentable. A Heljan perhaps of a CMR for example there are also many craftsmen kits that offer some really nice stuff. I built the Walthers Roundhouse in HO with two extension kits so I feel your pain. No sooner had I had completed it my wife found a bunch of HO stuff forsale on Craigs list near where we live so I took a ride to fine a treasure trive of great stuff left over from the former home owner/model railroader. I bought amonst other things a Heljan Roundhous and 130' diamond scale turntable for $50. The guys work was inpecable and just the way the kit was designed it far exceeded the Walthers kit 10 fold. I then picked up 5 extension kits for $60 at a train show. There are a lot of options available other then Walthers
nice work you have there. i like your approach and location of your roundhouse and table.
Great start, Lee! I also have a scratchbuilt roundhouse somehwhere in my future, though probably not for 1-2 years. I've collected a few old Model Railroader articles (from 1951, '56 and '81) that I plan to use as guides. But I look forward to following your approach and progress. Please keep posting pics as the project moves along!
BTW, since frugality seems to be at least one motivating factor for this undertaking, it would be interesting to find out what you expect this project to cost you, compated to the $100+ for the kits.
Good luck!
First, let me state that I think the N scale Walther's built up turntable is the best thing since sliced bread and chunky peanut butter. There's no way I could have faked my way to a model that looks or operates half as good as this thing does. It was worth every penny.However, despite the fact that the roundhouse they produce to accompany the turntable looks fantastic, I think it's a total rip off that you have to buy over $100 worth of kits to get a roundhouse that's a halfway decent size. To my way of thinking, I'd rather pay $60 for 6 stalls in one package than $50 for 3, then $30 for 3 more, and $30 more for 3 more....So, being a total cheapskate (despite the fact that I seem to be perpetually broke anyway) I've embarked on an ambitious scratchbuild using some sheet styrene I have and a bunch of Evergreen stock.I did some more work on the round house last night, building the floor and installing the tracks.There are two layers of sheet styrene making up the base, including the main foundation, then the wedge shaped sections between the tracks. I cut everything on a paper cutter to get the cuts as straight as possible. I added the inspection pits using Evergreen strip. I'll add some steel steps into the pits once I paint the concrete.The thickness of the sheet is perfect, I think it's .050, which allows the .055 rail to poke just far enough above the surface that it looks flush, but is easy to keep clean without marring the soon-to-be painted surface.Here it is in the context of the turntable and the rest of the Ridgely terminal. As previously noted, the roundhouse will be based loosely on the Elkins facility. I have to do an inventory of what strip stock and siding I have available for the construction of the building. I want to make the roof removable to show off interior details and for track cleaning purposes.Lee