Continuing Saga …

Trainman, Thanks for the detail.

Ron

Your welcome!

Today was fun since I was actually building things and not re-building them. First was more detail painting on the tower roof.  I also found an extra Grandt Line door for the entrance to the hose tower from the inside. I finished the chimney and installed it. Lastly, I started fabricating the cubbies that will hold the fireman garb.

I added some gloss black "tar" lines between all the rolled roofing on the tower. This really makes it look real (to me). 

The tower gutter and downspout goes just below the tar paper lip in this picture. I should dust the whole area with powders, streaking it and toning down the "newness".

I grouted and painted the chimney yesterday. Today I went back and painted the flues flat black, dusted the hole area with dirty black weathering powder and then made chimney flashing out of black construction paper. Many modelers leave out flashing, but again, I think it just makes it look more real.

This is a really closeup pic, but those bricks still look amazing. Lee, this is the 3-inch rule. Before installing the chimney, I marked out its area and scraped off the gray primer. I wanted to have raw resin so the glue would stick better especially since I wasn't going to remove the shingles themselves. I used Gorilla Glue to hold the chimney specifically for its ability to expand and fill in gaps. In some instances, the upper gap between the chimney and the roof slope should have a "cricket", which is a small triangular roof that sheds water in that V-notch so it doesn't get trapped and freeze there. Since this firehouse is in Kentucky, I probably will leave out this detail. 

I found this door and make a quick frame. To stick the door to the wall I tried a new product: Glue Dots.

I bought them at Michael's when I went looking for some more DAP Quick Stick contact cement strips that also work well. The glue dots are about 3/16" in diameter and are on a strip. You touch the object to be stuck to the dot which picks it up, and then press it to where you want it to be held. Bingo! Holds tight and instantly. Four dots held the door tightly. No slop, no mess.

I have these fireman's coats that need a place to hang them.

To hold them I'm making a series of 8 scale feet long by 7 scale feet high cubbies. There will be a shelf to hold their helmets, which I still have to make. I'm using scrap styrene that I have lying around so you see some differences in the textures. They won't be visualized at all, and will be painted fire engine red... appropriate, don't you think? They're not finished or fastened in this picture.

I'm making five. I guess I could make six, but frankly, it was getting boring. When done, I'll stick these to the walls with glue dots also. I have to make helmets and I think it's time for me to get into resin casting. I can get a full starter set at the LHS for under $50. I've been putting this off, but the helmet project makes sense to do it in resin. One master... many copies.

Tomorrow, the chimney will be cured so I can start painting the various shingles different shades of gray to make it look more like real slate. Then I'll weather it and paint the trim. I was just thinking as I'm writing this... I wanted to make the roof removable, but the gutters are attached to the roof and I will want the downspouts attached to the walls also, otherwise, they'll get broken eventually. So the roof will need to be fastened to the building. The building itself will be fixed to the base, but the base will not be glued down to the layout. I'll make a plaster socket just like the substation to blend it into the layout.

I have to produce hinges for the big doors. I've been doing some research and am quickly coming to the conclusion that these too will have to scratch built. Anyone have any good ideas?

I used to compete at IPMS National events and your building's 'brick and mortar' are the best I've ever saw. It's just incredible!

The chimney is fantastic, absolutely stunning.

Fantastic stuff.  I have never heard of glue dots.  Must get some . . . 

Andy yes, the chimney is incredible.  And, frankly, easy to copy, which I intend to do!

Remember, the great brickwork started with Les Lewis' great bricks! By using individual bricks Les was able to do two things that added to the realism. First, the act of gluing on individual pieces created a non-uniform look that replicated real life. Second, it made very sharp and deep mortar lines that lend themselves to my way of grouting.

That being said, I'm working with Andre Garcia on laser cutting the distillery. I suspect that the mortar lines will also be sharp and deep. He did a test cut for me and I'm waiting for it to arrive. It will be on MDF. From his photos, the mortar lines look pretty good. They won't have much irregularity being laid down on my computer, but I suppose I could build that in.

First of all, I got the sample cutting from Andre. It's one wall section of many for the distillery. The cutting alone will go into the hundreds. In the sample, I made the brick lintels part of the brick work, but in later revisions I re-designed them to be appliques made from 1/32" stock. The test proved that my drawing method was correct for laser cutting. Also, notice that the brick is arrayed in "Common bond" where every 6th row are bricks on end connecting to an imaginary inner row of bricks. That different row definitely caused extra drawing.

I immediately sprayed it with Rust-o-Leum red primer and applied some mortar to see how it worked. I didn't let the primer dry very long and definitely rushed it, but the results were promising and I just sent massive cutting files to Andre for the main distillery bldg and the "kitchen".

 Clearly, the Les Lewis individual brick wall looks better, but I'm pretty confident that the laser cut wall will work just fine. This was a really quick job.

After the experiment, I was back at work on the fire house. I put in the middle shelves on the cubbies, painted and then installed them.

I thought it might be interesting to see how I transfer and make precise fits in styrene. I use the digital caliper. The inside and outside jaws repeat the same exact measure, so one can measure the space between two points and use the other side of the caliper to transfer that exact distance to a work piece.

And here's where I scribe that distance to the styrene.

By dragging the point across the surface while keeping the other point in contact with the edge, the caliper works as an effective surface gauge. And don't forget to tighten the locking screw before transferring the measurement. I use the NWSL Chopper to cut the piece to length.

I taped the pieces to a piece of wood and then airbrushed a couple of coats of Vallejo bright red. 

And here's the cubbies installed using glue dots.

That is not the house's base. it's one of my cutting pads.

It was time to paint the windows. One of the advantages of having a building with the windows included in the molding is that they fit perfectly. And the drawback is that it would be very hard to airbrush them. Instead, they all have to be hand painted. I'm pretty good at the that so it wasn't a bad task. Here's the first window. The paint was still wet some what looks like misses are actually highlights reflected off wet paint.

And here's the first side complete.

To facilitate painting, kept turning the whole building 90 degrees so I was always painting on the top of the edge I was painting. This was especially valuable when attempting to line the edge between the brick and the framing.

Here's the front end.

I got some more of the 3rd side done. The tower will be "fun" to do. I will probably give a little alcohol wash on the finished frames to tone them down a bit. The iPhone registers the red as a little "hot". It more red than it appears in the pictures. The window painting will be done tomorrow. I made a scan of the main doors so I can import them into Illustrator and design some hinges. I also have to get to casting some resin fire helmets. I wonder if Artista has any?

I think the red windows are super.  What color red is that, please.  It might brighten up my fire house.

Edit: Ooops. Vallejo Red. 

I agree that the red is good for the firehouse windows and lockers.  It will look good with the fire engines.

My search for Vallejo bright red was unsuccessful, but I did find a Vallejo blood red on line that looks close to your window sash colors.  What are your thoughts about a folkart substitute?

Let me be more specific:

The actual color is Bermellon Red Vallejo Model Color #70947. I wonder if they were trying to spell vermilion? Just asking...

If fact, I have to go to the LHS and buy more.

Today, I finished the hand painting of all the windows. It was a careful, finicky job, but came out nicely. The tower and the back two windows were especially challenging since the building itself blocks my normal painting style. As it was, the results didn't suffer.

This shade of red does have a bit of orange in it.

After placing it on the layout for these next shots, I had my wife "inspect" it. She thinks that the building should be moved back to my original spot since its size blocks view of smaller buildings behind. I am tending to agree with her. I'm also going to get another set of LED track lights from Lowe's. I'm still not happy with the level of illumination on the front of the town.

I thought this would be a nice looking building, but frankly, it's exceeding my expectations. I'm still noodling the door hinges, and will probably compromise. I'll use brass tube and axles to make the actual working hinges (hidden) and make up some styrene fake hinges that will be on the door's surface. This will prevent me having to do any silly jewelry work.

Andre has the distillery drawings and cutting will proceed after York.

Again, I like the color and it appears to be just the right accent for the color of the brick.  It is an impressive building to be sure and a nice addition to your layout.

Thanks. I just bought more of that color. Vallajo has many shades of red in their rack at the LHS. I may have purchased this red to match some decals on an airplane kit that grandson #2 was working on four years ago.

Today, after buying a Alumilite resin starter kit and more paint, I painted 9 fireman's outer garb that will go into the cubbies. I want the resin to cast fireman's hats and boots. I'm sure I can sculpt at least one good one of each, but certainly couldn't do it multiple times. That's where the resin comes in.

The coats were molded in white resin.

Underneath them are the printouts of the fireman's helmets that I'm going to attempt to model.

And behind them is the Alumilite resin casting starter set. While the starter set is rather small, I'm really only planning on resin casting small details. Once I get into larger stuff, I'll have to get some different materials.

Tomorrow, I'll be sculpting and attempting to make some molds. The originals will be made out of Super Sculpey. It hardens at 275° so it will hold its shape when being covered in mold silicone. But... it's very friable and thin sections don't hold up very well. That's the main reason to cast the parts instead of making them all out of Sculpey. I had a lot of spoilage when using it to make the substation light fixtures.

I used some of that to make 1:350 gun turrets and all on scratch-build warships about five years ago.  It's good stuff and really the way to go when you want to make a bunch of things exactly alike.

Yesterday I started to attempt to craft a decent fire helmet and boots. I foolishly tried to model the ribs in the helmet. Why...? I have absolutely no idea since the chances of visualizing them while the helmets sit on a shelf in the cubbies buried in the firehouse are effectively nil or zero. I'm using the more stiff Sculpey, but still when working with tiny fragile items, just the act of holding the object smashes the details you just created. My first try ending up looking like this.

There are names for things that look like this and none are suitable for posting on this forum. I then created one that was passable, heated it in the toaster over, and then dropped it on the kitchen floor before I got it down to the basement and the back of the brim broke off. 

So today I tried for a third time and this time left off the ribs. It came out as a decent, identifiable, helmet.

 That wooden log in the foreground is a toothpick. I baked it, and while it was cooking I made some boots.

I looked at some YouTube vids of resin casting and decided to make the mold box out of Legos, of which I have an adequate supply. The starter kit is really small, but luckily my parts are really small too. 

Here's the parts nestled in the mold box.

After I took this pic I further sealed the Legos and added another row of bricks to make the mold box higher. I didn't create any air vents, and I'll do so in the cope of the silicone bottom mold after it cures. Before I poured the silicone I put a series of dents into the clay that will serve as reference keys to keep the two halves of the finished mold.

I mixed the silicone at the recommended ratio of 10:1 by weight using my digital scale, and poured the mold. This will be cured tomorrow and I'll pour the other half of the mold tomorrow. We're going on a trip starting Friday so you'll all have to wait (as will I) to see if this experiment in resin terror actually works. Once the mold is ready, I can make multiple copies quickly since the resin cures in minutes, not hours.

Clearly, using liquid silicone is more efficient than using liquid latex. It's also much more expensive and is not suitable for pouring over rocks to make rock molds. 

Your masters and mold look good.  My daughter uses Lego blocks to make her molds too.  She casts doll parts, then paints them and strings them together.  Yours should turn out good?

Great ideas.  Nice how to on it, too.  Thank you!

When I checked at 1:00 this afternoon the silicone had not completely cured. It resembled my pancakes I make that sometimes, when the batter thickens, cook on the outsides and exude uncooked batter from the inside. I put the legos back against the mold and let it cure some more. I moved it upstairs where the temperature was higher. Right now it seems like it's getting more solid, but I won't open it up until after the trip we're about to take tomorrow.

So to fill the time, I painted the roof, the trim, and started finishing the base board.

The roof is made to look more like natural slate. I do this by randomly painting shingles with a purple/gray, a green/gray and lighter gray. It's quite subtle, but kills the uniformity of the sprayed gray roof. I also used some gloss black at the chimney base to simulate more tar sealant.

I then painted the roof trim and the trim surrounding the upper edges of the main building. I used two coats and did it entirely by brush.

Here's the front trim in detail.

I masked where the building would go so I wouldn't groove under the walls. I laid out the base on 8 scale foot expansion grooves using a sharpie. 

I then used one of my many dental tools to engrave expansion grooves into the Masonite.

Before airbrushing Model Tech concrete, I ground down the front edge to be the curb cut to ease the fire trucks entrance and egress onto the concrete pad.

Lastly, I dropped the building onto the base for a status shot.

The base needs some weathering (as does the building). This will be done when we return on May 4th. I'll be checking in on the iPhone, but probably not posting (as much).

Enjoy your trip.  Everything will certainly be cured by May 4.  The whole thing looks good.  

The roof looks very nice, but it must get tedious coloring shingles one at a time!

The slate roof looks great, and so does the concrete base!

have a good trip!

My thoughts too, but it does look much more realistic in comparison to what I see around here. 

 We've got some truly neat "patterned" roofs nearby, and even a few with initials on them too.

I'm really learning quite a bit from your posts. Thank you and keep it coming.

Ron H.

Hi guys! I'm back. The silicone for the first side of the mold took way too long to cure. I pulled it apart just before we got on the road for the trip and it was cured. As soon as I got back into the shop, I turned it over and poured the second half of the silicone mold. Quickly I realized the first part of the problem. I thought I was measuring the ingredients using grams and wasn't. The digital scale was set to ounces so the 10:1 ratio was completely goofy. When I poured the second side, I made sure to get the ratio right and it cured in 6 hours. I also took it out of the chilly basement and moved it to the warm sun porch.

All of this, however, is moot. The entire exercise was a bust since I didn't have any "official" mold release to keep the two layers of silicone from sticking together. Instead I used vegetable oil. It didn't work! The top and bottoms were completely fused together. I basically destroyed the entire mold in trying to get it all apart, and scrapped the whole idea. I did a lot of research into resin casting during this part of the project, but don't want to invest any more money in casting these silly little details that no one will ever see. So I'm going to hang the coats in the cubbies, but leave out the boots and helmets.

I'm not finished with silicone mold making. I'm planning on making my own masters for the arches and retaining walls for the elevated portion and will probably use silicone to make the molds. Instead of resin, I'll be using Hydrocal since I still have a lot left and it's much, much cheaper than resin. This is not fully decided at this point, I may still go commercial (Scenic Express), but it's like 17 feet of wall that needs to be covered and that's lots of $$$ to buy. Silicone mold material isn't cheap either, but you need a lot less of it.

I did get some constructive work done on the fire house. I got the roof vents installed along with drilling the holes to accept the flag pole. I'm installing that after I stop manhandling it. 

I then started installing window glazing. For the tower I just used long strips of .010" clear styrene. For the second story which will be dark, I glued the glazing directly onto the walls, but for the first floor which will be more visible, I mounted window frames on the glazing and then fitted them to the walls.

In all cases I used the MicroMark Pressure Sensitive Adhesive which is a reasonable way to attach glazing. I applied the adhesive to both pieces, let them set up and then put them together. Getting glazing up into the top of the tower would have been much easier if I hadn't had to glue on the roof piece, but I couldn't have glazing in place when doing all the painting. Luckily, it's just big enough inside to get my hand (and arm) all the way up. And also lucky that I don't have large hangs (a definite disadvantage when I play guitar).

I painted the window frames by sticking all the pieces to reversed masking tape. I used a diluted plastic tube cement applied with a tooth pick to glue the frames to the glazing. It's one of the reasons why I like to use clear styrene instead of clear acetate. Acetate is not glueable with solvent cement.

I had to paint the insides of the window mullions the frame color (a light green Model Tech paint) since they had red paint from the outside color which looked terrible.

My cubbies created a problem for the two rear windows leaving no room for the frame so I to do some selective hacking to get them to fit. If I had thought a little more ahead, I could have made the cubbies a little narrower so the windows wouldn't be in play. Oh well...

It's Mother's Day weekend so work will commence on Monday. I just have to glaze the doors and the transom windows above them and it's onto the main doors. I'm still noodling how I want to hinge them. It's good practice since I'm going to have to make similar hinging for the three sets of doors on the engine house (future project).

Andre says there's some errors on the Distillery drawings that have to be corrected before cutting can begin. I work on them soon too.

Super!  The detail you have is extraordinary.

About the hats and boots.  I understand the frustration with the molding.  

We work in very different ways, Trainman, and you may not like this approach, but for what it is worth.   If I were making, say, a half dozen fireman's hats and boots to hang on a wall, etc., I might do it this way:

HATS - get some of the things shown in the photo below.  Th3y come in several sizes but they e are a bit more than a 1/4 inch or 3/8 inch wide.  I think they are called eyelets and made for sewing.  Forget the donut - work on the thing that looks a bit like a priest's wide brimmed hat.

Put the future "hat" on waxed paper or some other surface that glue doesn't like (teflon, etc.).  

Using a sharped pencil point and depending on surface tension to help you out, put a drop or two of yellow wood glue on the bowl of the "hat" and spread it over the entire top and sides of the bowl.  You way need to use a second pencil point to hold the "hat" firmly in place while you do this.  Then let it dry.  The dried glue will expand the size of the "bowl"  Depending on things, you may need a second application.  

Using more glue, apply a thin layer as shown to form and extend the back brim of the firefighter's hat.  Let it dry.  It will be fragile, but . . . with luck you can make six or so hats, cheap. paint them (carefully, they are fragile).  Just takes a day or two because you have to let the glue dry overnight.  Other glues, or epoxy instead, would work, too, I imagine, but I've grown used to using yellow glue . . . 

BOOTS - there are two ways I would do it:

Expensive: buy a set of firemen, as below, cut their boots off, and savee the rest of the figures for passengers in trucks or cars or where you won't see their feet. 

Less expensive: takes some figures you have but can't use, or that are cheaper, and apply yellow glue to their feet and lower legs to widen them until they look like boots, as was done to widen the hat. 

Welcome back!

Glad to be back. And that dear friends is exactly why I take the time to interact with all of you each work session: Getting sage advice from other modelers who see things differently. Lee's idea, while I may or may not do it, is terrific. I'm also thinking that if I perfect it enough, I can simply make ten copies of each out of the Sculpey itself. I know how to make the hats pretty quickly and it would be faster than building up layers of glue and having to wait for the multiple drying times. The boots are cut out of a slab of rolled clay and then rounded out. I used another donut-shaped piece for the wider top. I can make these quickly too.

Andre and I are working back and forth correcting some of the errors that crept into the massive distillery drawing I sent. To make the little added pieces of material that hold the cut parts to the sheets (nubs?), I used the "anchor point add" tool in illustrator and then split the line at that point, separate the points to make a gap. This gap then has the un-wanted effect of turning one object into two (or more depending on the number of nubs). His software was then drawing phantom lines between the end points of these sub-parts which the laser would interpret as cut lines. I've gone back and reconnected all the points and overlaid little white squares with no outlines to block parts of the outline and make the nub gaps. This should correct the problem. If not, I've just wasted a lot of time. We'll see...

The drawings are all modified and back in Andre's hands. I'm excited to see what they're going to look like cut and see if it goes together as I designed it. As I said before, I have a new found respect for the likes of Bar Mills and B.T.S. in the design and creation of complex laser-cut kits.

Finished installing all the fire house windows and started on the main doors. After interacting with Les Lewis I decided to make the simplest hinge possible; a brass rod into a drilled hole on the building and a socket in the base plate.

I eyeballed the hole position in the door top and bottom and drilled the holes with a 0.032" drill about an 1/8" deep. After CA'ing the brass pin into the hole, I used the door to make a corresponding mark on the building frame and drilled another hole. This hole was very close to the corner and the pin vise didn't have clearance to drill straight in. I fudged it by putting gentle side pressure while drilling which bent the drill so it was almost vertical while rotating. I kept finger pressure on the drill shaft to maintain this curve and got a reasonably straight hole. You have to be gentle since miniature drills are fragile.

After fitting the doors two of them were a bit long. I ran some heavy masking tape across the bottom in line with the building's bottom, then stuck the door to the tape when its pin was fully seated in the hinge hole. This established a very nice cutting line for the fine-toothed razor saw. I had to deepen the bottom hole a bit since I cut part of it off.

I was then ready to paint the doors and glaze the windows. I used the same red color for the outside of the doors. The insides will be painted the light green window frame color. The regular bottles of Vallejo paint say not for air brushing. I assumed this was because it wasn't thin enough. I used Testor's acrylic air brush thinner to thin this paint.

That apparently was a mistake. I've used isopropyl alcohol for thinning Tamiya acrylic for years with zero trouble. The Testor's thinner seemed to cause the Vallego paint to clump...terribly. I would spray for a minute and the gun would shut off. I had to disassemble it completely, clean it out with Model Tech cleaner, alcohol and finally acetone. It was fully clogged. I tried again and it happened again. I spent much more time cleaning than painting. Vallejo has an airbrush paint line, but didn't have this shade of red.

The trickiest part to this whole affair will be locating the hinge holes in the baseplate. I'm going to tape the doors into position and align the back of the fire house on the base and tape it, then swing it down into position so the bottom hinge pins will mark their location of the base. I'm going to bush the bottom holes with a piece of K-S 1/16" brass tube that just so happens has an i.d. of 0.032". I'll use Gorilla Glue to hold the tubes into the base and drop the hinge pins into the bushings as I lower the building into final position.

For the engine house, the doors will be very similar (although a little bigger), but in that case I want to make them remotely operable. For this installation, I'm thinking that I'll mount the lower hinge assembly into its subassembly that can be installed after the building is in place on its base. It will have a series of levers and bell cranks underneath that will open all three doors simultaneously either by servo or push cable. Building the fire house has been good practice in designing a more sophisticated structure.

Nice going.  It does appear to be coming together nicely.  I like those doors a lot.

 Cutting the first page!!!

Andre.

That's great! Perhaps you can try fitting some of the parts together to see if they actually fit as i drew them...?

I airbrushed the interior side of the main doors the light green. Again, I used the Model Tech paint. This paint did not have the problems that the Vallejo had with the clogging. The model tech bottle threads directly onto the Badger adaptor and can be sprayed without thinning so it's very easy to use. I then measured and cut the door glazing. There was some variation in the opening sizes so I had to adjust each piece to fit correctly. I used RC-56 canopy cement to hold these windows in. It's a PVA glue that had good tack and dries almost invisible. This picture was taken before the cement dried some it's still quite visible behind the clear styrene.

After everything dried I inserted the doors up into their respective hinge pin holes and then taped them to stabilize them. I lowered the fire house into position on the base and marked where I thought the bottom hinge pins would best fall.

I drilled on these spots the .032" drill and then test fit them again. When I got them seated correctly I opened the holes out to 1/16" and prepared some of the 1/16th brass tube that would serve as a more substantial pivot instead of directly into the Masonite. The doors needed a little trimming to get them to open and close properly. Here's one of the test fit sessions.

With all this done, I'm going to do some pre-weathering of the base plate and start preparing the fire pole base that will be at the rear of the station. I'll permanently mount the station, put the fire coats into the lockers and then mount the 2nd floor. Only then can I finally install the fire pole. Get'n near the end on this one, and just in time. From what I hear from Andre, I'm going to have a distillery to build before long. 

I've just designed another kit for cutting using all the techniques I've learned from the distillery project. For example, I can now paste the Brick arrays into the wall perimeters using a keystroke instead of carefully hand fitting the array. It took minutes instead of days...literally! This is the Night Hawks Cafe project. It will make a great little Victorian tavern building with turret with the interior a replica of Edward Hopper's famous Night Hawks painting which resides at the Art Institute of Chicago. I've written about this in an earlier post.

There are more buildings for the distillery that will be designed later depending on how good the main buildings come out.

I just love those doors, trainman.  They look REALLY good!

Just amazing

I want one so bad... I have been looking for a firehouse and there is nothing close to what you have. Even to scratch build or kit bash would not come close.

I think you're going to have to contact Les Lewis at Westport Model Works. I seriously doubt that he kept the silicone molds that he used to create this one. The next best choice would be to draw it up and get it laser cut. I'd hold on that choice until I see how the distillery comes together. Unlike this model where the corners were all tapered at 45 degrees so the joints wouldn't show, I've designed the distillery to have interlocking corners which will show some joinery. I've designed cover pieces to hide some of the most obvious joints, but they won't be invisible. I suppose that I could design the corners of a laser cut piece to be beveled so the corners would butt up flush, but it's MDF and I don't have the fixtures to form a really straight bevel.

Les did attempt to offer it, but it proved too difficult for him to create. He was using open molds which made it very difficult to control wall thickness. As I noted when I started the project that I had severe warpage of the main parts. There's also a significant twist in the hose tower, but it's only really noticeable when you're looking down on it and that's not how it will be viewed on the layout. I'm optimistic about the laser cut designs.

For today's session I finished preparing the doors for mounting; painted and patina'd the down spouts, gutters and flag pole; mildly weathered the base and main building and prepared and mounted the ubiquitous fire pole. With the pole, it's now a "real" fire station. I started out by weathering the building. From the new Big 4 Bridge promenade (a massive railroad bridge over the Ohio River that has been turned into a lovely human walkway) you look down on some lovely Victorian houses in Jeffersonville, IN. This one caught my eye for the mansard roof details and it's brick work. Notice the staining that's coming down from the windows sills. I thought this was an appropriate amount of weathering for the fire house. Get a load of those chimneys! The Nighthawks Cafe will have a roof very similar to this one.

Here's how it looks when I used the dry-brush technique to simulate the same effect.

I also dusted the bottom 1/2 with some light sand colored paint from the air brush. This is supposed to represent the dirtying of the bricks due to rain water splashing up. It's very subtle.

Next I added some character to the base plate. I lightly air brushed flat black where the tires would be rolling, and then added gloss black for oil stains and some clear gloss for water. In retrospect, I should have added some color to the water since real concrete gets wet and is darker than dry. The painted surface didn't absorb anything and therefore didn't change color very much.

I painted all the metal details a metallic bronze craft color. It took two coats. I force dry my acrylics with a Top Flite heat gun. I start it on heat and quickly switch to no-heat. It can get really hot and soften styrene if you're not careful.

After it was dry, I used Rub-n-Buff green patina on the bronze to make it look like weathered copper. It works great. I don't apply it with a brush. I just wipe it one with a paper towel. It's a wax-based produce almost like shoe polish. It cleans up easily with Goo Gone. The flagpole shows the patina very well. It really looks like copper that's been exposed to the weather. Les made the ball on the end out of a ball bearing so I polished up the steel a bit. All the rest is soldered brass. It's not glued in for this pic.

As I was applying the Rub-n-Buff to one of the long gutters, the downspout separated from the gutter. It was one of the few solder joints that was original. I had to scrap paint off all the parts and zapped it with the RSU. In two seconds it was re-soldered and I touched it up with more patina and it was A-ok. Whew! Close one! 

Before going further I had to add the fireman's coats into the cubbies, drilled a large hole to pass the lighting wiring through the base, and then prepared and mounted the fire pole. To hold the coats I used those amazing contact glue dots. I'm really happy I found them at Michael's. There's a lot of use from them in our hobby.

The fire pole is 3/32" brass rod (A little fat for 1:48, but I wanted it to be noticeable) which I polished with some polishing compound holding it in the lathe. I made a styrene disc, 4 scale-feet in diameter and painted weathered black for the base pad. To locate the hole in the base, I found a fat Sharpie that just dropped through the manhole in the ceiling and with the firehouse positioned correctly, marked where the center would be on the floor below. I drilled the base pad to pole size and then CA'd it to the flow over the Sharpie mark. I then drilled through the base. Before gluing the pole in, I put it all back together to check fit. Before doing that I had to make a disc to hold the upper end in the manhole. If I was detailing the upper floor, I would have to create an elaborate brass frame to support the upper part of the pole over the manhole. Since I am NOT doing the upper floor, I could simply make a disk with a hole that would fit into the manhole. This preserved the lower floor look of the holes flange sticking out of the ceiling.

Here's looking into the station using the flash from my iPhone. Even without the fire helmets and boots, it looks like the interior of a real building. See how the manhole edge shows up. That's an LED light strip on the ceiling. It's very bright.

In looking at this picture I just realized that I didn't put in the stairway to the second floor. I was just going to up an angular wall going up the back for a fully-enclosed stair. No one will care... They'll be too busy grooving on that cool fire pole.

Tomorrow I'll finish the patina work on one more gutter and get ready to permanently mount the building to the base. We're almost done here.

The weathering is great!  The firehouse has really turned out nice!!  Yes, that mansard roof and chimneys are great on the house along the river.  

No stairs??  Don't the firemen go up the pole, just like they go down?  

Only if they're very fit.

I just was looking for large smokestacks and found an 8 inch one on Scenic Express. I'm going to need these for the next phase of the distillery; the boiler house. I thought Korber made a large industrial smoke stack, but didn't find one listed on their site. Anyone have any ideas?

The fire house is complete and at home on the layout. 

To mount the doors and make it easier to get everything in place I inserted the upper hinge pins into the building and taped the doors in that position so they'd stay put when lowering the building onto the lower bushings. I used DAP Quik Contact contact cement sheets to hold the building to the base. I cut the cement into strips the same width as the wall thickness and put it onto the building first. Before gluing, I threaded the lighting leads down through the chase made by the boxing in of the support girders. I threaded the lead through the hole in the base. I left the 2nd floor loose so it wouldn't foul the fire pole. I fastened the contact cement from the rear forward, but didn't press it home until I maneuvered the bottom door pins into their respective bushings. Once they fell in place, I pressed the building down to ensure the contact adhesive was doing its job... it was. I then was able to slide my hand through the doors to position the fire pole so it would thread into the 2nd floor. Luckily, I don't have big hands. For playing guitar, that's a detriment; for model work, it's a benefit.

I put patina on the one downspout that I missed only to have the pipe separate at another solder joint. Again I had to scrape off the paint and use the RSU to re-solder the joint. I decided to not glue the roof in place. I was able to wiggle it under the hose tower's down spout a couple of times without damage. I'm also not fastening the main roof down spouts to the building so the roof can be removed if necessary without breaking anything. 

I weathered the roof with Dr. Brown's chalk powders. The down spouts are held on the fascia boards using those handy contact cement Glue Dots. Five dots per gutter held everything well. They are a remarkable product for us modelers.

I decided against having the fire house in the layout front. It's just too tall and blocks views too much. It looks much more realistic behind Saulena's Tavern. Even though you can't see the interior from this view, it can be see from the inside of the layout.

And here it is on the layout in the town of Woodbourne. I realize that I don't have any identification on the building. Perhaps I'll put together a graphic and mount it to the depression on the building's front.

For the little bare square spot between the FH and Saulena's I'm making a filler piece that with have a sidewalk area and some black top. It has a curb cut, pavement expansion joints and a curb between it and the fire house. I might put some weeds growing up in the gaps between the components. Unlike the buildings, this filler will be cemented to the sub-base. Only the buildings will ever have to be removed (for repair/sale). The green area in the foreground of the last pic is going to be distillery property.

This project took about 6 weeks, which isn't bad considering the amount of craft work it entailed. While I'm waiting for Andre to get me the distillery parts, I probably will do some more work on the city and maybe build some more telephone poles. And then, of course, there's that mountain that needs to be built as well as a 17 foot colonnade at the high line ...

It looks great!  Your town is really shaping up!