Yep, we all got together on through PM and decided to let you sweat it out!
I've never built a craftsman kit, it's on my list of "one of these days", even though I don't have a spot for such a structure on my "modern" lay out, a diorama would be fun. I just love to model things and build things.
I had to Google what you have, and I think I found it, a freight house type building, with a seperate crane on a loading dock structure.
It looks a little Europeanish, buy hey! thats where are ancestors came from, and like you said, they built what they knew.
The place is Rock Ridge, so maybe take it a little farther, and make it look like what the native stone in the area would be, or at least in color.
I hope you let us in on your progress!
Mike.
My You Tube
I know what you're doing here. You're gonna wait until I really screw something up and then say, "You shoulda done this and that. Everyone knows that."
Chip
Building the Rock Ridge Railroad with the slowest construction crew west of the Pecos.
About ten or twelve years ago, I bought quite of few eBay "lots" of craftsman kits, ranging from wood to plastic. From those I picked and chose kits from my era, the 1890's--mostly offerings from Muir Models and Campbell's. The rest I turned around and sold on eBay.
One model I kept, even though I figured it wasn't quite right, was a freight office and crane by Wills Craftsman Kits I figured would look good on a team track. I rationalized it by saying that people in California came from all over and a stone building might be out of place, but some tradesman from across the pond probably just built what he knew how.
So today, I opened the kit up and was surprized to see that there were just sheets of plastic with either stone work, bricks or flagstones. They figured it was up to me to cut everything to size and make it all work.
They did provide a sort of a template sheet and with dimentions (all metric scale of course) and they provided a booklet that made suggestions of how I might make the cuts and glue things together so things have a half-way chance of working out. The book told how to make sand blocks and a cutting table for when I had to make circular cuts and stuff with a jeweler's saw.
Now after reading that book, I figure I can at least fake a good job. My pappy always told me that the difference between a master and an apprentice is that the master can make his mistakes look like they were meant to be that way.
But I would be remiss if I didn't call upon the experiences of those of you that have gone before where I am about to tread.
So what tips, tricks, and techniques would keep me from learning the hard way? What should I avoid?
Thanks in advance.