HOW I DID IT…Building River Leaf Models GC Murphy

Andre Garcia, through his River Leaf Models Company, makes some very nice building kits.  For those who don’t know, Andre makes the walls from 1/4” MDF Sheets.   He uses a laser cutter to engrave precise shapes and features into sheets, as well as to cut out exact, perfectly sized rectangular window openings, and cut out the wall sections themselves. The building components are solid, dead square, easy to glue together, and impervious to all common modeling paints.

His newly released GC Murphy store directly fits into one of the existing city blocks on my layout. So it was a natural for me to build it.    I will say at the outset that it is very easy to build one of these kits.  Construction is straightforward, and Andre’s instructions are clear and simple to follow. In fact, if you were just going to build the kit as it was designed, it could be done in a very relaxing week of evenings. But I decided to go a bit further and give it an interior, full lighting, and some added details.  So here’s how I did it:

I assembled the four walls per Andre’s instructions.  I used Elmer’s carpenters glue, and made sure all four walls were at an exact 90 degrees as the glue set.   This is easy, as the edges are all laser cut square, and the ¼” thickness provides an adequate glue surface. Nevertheless, I used lots of clamps, and allowed the glue to fully cure overnight:

Note I used the roof of the building as a means to ensure the walls were square.

 After the glue set, I followed Andre’s suggestion and painted the walls with Acrylic Craft paints with a sponge roller:

I used Folk Art Barnyard Red for the basic color, but painted a few bricks some other colors to give variety.  I then sealed everything with Dullcote.  (Again per Andre’s instructions).  I deviated from his instructions for the mortar.  In fact, there are probably as many ways to do mortar as there are recipes for chicken.  My favorite is a 50/50 mix of craft paint and water, with a drop of detergent. Apply it with a 3/8” wide soft brush, let it dry, then wipe off the brick faces with a paper towel moistened with Simple Green. Probably any household cleaner will do.  Wipe in a vertical direction, wipe in one pass, then change the towel surface. And above all, don’t scrub. Repeat until you get the desired effect

By the way, one of the advantages of using MDF is you don’t have to paint both sides.  Its not going to warp, and the material is dense enough that it is light tight.

 For the sides, Andre has engraved the surface to look like a concrete layer that has come off the underlying brick in a few places.  I did not have enough confidence that I could convincingly replicate the texture of concrete with just paint, so I coated that part of the wall with DryDex Spackling compound. It wasn't that hard to follow the border of the concrete.  And if you mess up, you just end up covering mre brick.  After the DryDex dried (this is the stuff that goes on pink, and turns white when dry) I stained it with a 25/25/50 mix of Linen Craft Paint/Light Gray Craft Paint/ water.  I then followed it with an India Ink Alcohol Wash.

The trim (windows and doors) are painted with craft paint.   Here they are test fitted into place

Andre designed his kit for a wooden entrance way, and the front windows and doors are built as a separate plug in assembly.   I wanted a concrete entrance pad and a full floor, so I had to do things differently. I made a floor from 1/32” basswood sheet, and shimmed it to the same height as the lower brick work.  I test fitted the entrance doors and windows, held them in place with blocks, and then marked their front lower edge with a pencil.  I removed the doors and windows, laid down masking tape, and then applied DryDex to simulate the concrete, following the pencil lines.  I sanded it as thin as I dared,  scored the expansion joints with a scribe, and then weathered the DryDex as I did the building sides.  I then glued the doors and windows in place on the floor.                     

Rather than having a GC Murphy, I wanted my building to be the home of Ayres Variety and Hardware.  This landmark store has been in business for over 60 years, and is located in the Westover Neighborhood of Arlington County, VA.  I grew up around there.  The hallmark of Ayres is the sign:

So I chucked Andre’s beautifully engraved GC Murphy sign and made my own using Microsoft Power Point.  It is lettered in American Gothic Font, which I downloaded from fontshop.com  I printed the correct size sign on glossy photo paper, then coated with DullCote.  I applied 3M double stick removable tape to the back of the photo paper, and stuck it into a .030” thick piece of styrene.  I then cut out the styrene to match the sign perimeter.  I removed the sign, and glued a .060” x .060” styrene strip to the perimeter, using Tee pins to hold everything in place until the Tenax 7R set.  I then painted the styrene with Rustoleum Weathered Wood, and glue the sign in place. The following shows the sequence:

This got the 3D look I wanted, and avoided the "computer-graphic-stuck-to-the-building" look

Here is another view.   Note the sign is centered on the storefront, not the building. Taking away the symmetry adds a bit of interest:

The door handles you see are made by bending Precision Scale #5623 drop rung grab irons:

 The upper floor interior was made from bass wood and was furnished with  ¼” doll house furniture (check Aztec Minatures) and power point drawings.  Both paintings inspired scenes somewhere else on my layout:

 The main floor interior is a bit more complicated. After convincing the present manager of Ayres Variety and Hardware I was harmless (albeit a little bit wierd),  he let me  take a lot of photos of the interior of the store.  The untouched photo of the main section looks like this:

I then spent a considerable amount of time photoshopping this using the other photos I took.  As a general rule, the installed photo should be curved to both maintain a true sense of distance and to cover the side walls.  A photo just pasted to the back wall won’t look right as the sense of perspective is all screwed up.   Thus the photo should be configured so the overhead lighting fixtures and all the other components work together to maintain that sense of perspective.   The lights and shelves should appear to end in a well defined wall, rather than the usual single "vanishing point."  You also need to pay attention where the horizon is, to make sure you are maintaining a street level vantage point.

In addition to the shelves, I widened the aisles, got rid of the computer, added a period correct cash register, added end caps to all the shelves, and in general distorted the image until I got what I wanted.  I also had to loose that UVA flag.  No offense to the Wahoos in the audience, but that’s not my school.  In the end, I had something like this:

Which, when placed in the building, looked like this:

Placing a cashier and a few figures in the foreground helps to convince the viewer of the 3D aspect of the whole thing.  Another thing that helps is to obscure the view to the back as much as possible.  So I added window displays.  They were made from styrene sheet and pieces of basswood:

And then populated with various signs and hardware/variety store paraphernalia:

This is a top view of the interior, with the upper floor and roof removed:

You can see the extensive wiring for the lights as well as the HO track busbar which makes it easy to wire the lights.  I used a total seven light bulbs.  The upper floor, stair well and entrance lights were incandescent bulbs.  Sometimes I used lamp shades:

As you can see, I added a styrene clapboard surround to the single door roof and painted it silver, to give it a slight Art Deco motif.

The sign is illuminated with the newly released Woodland Scenics  HO Gooseneck Wall Mount Lights Number JP5654.  These give off a warm white glow, and at HO Scale are really sized right. I really like them.

Here you see the lights being installed. I used JB Kwik Weld to securely hold the lamps in place, and to give the impression of weatherproof flashing around the lamp base:

The lights in the store are surface mount LEDs taken from my Lionel N5 project (see the 2 rail forum if you are interested).

All of the LEDs, as well as a couple of the incandescents, have resistors wired in series to adjust their intensities.   Here is another view of the HO Track busbar. You can see a couple of the aforementioned resistors:

There is nothing wrong with Andre’s awning, but I wanted the look of a canvas awning stretched over a metal frame.  The awning was made from cotton cloth taped to a styrene base, and then spray painted Hunter Green.  The following photos show the sequence:

The awning is .030” styrene sheet. The ribs are .010 x .060 strips.

The above shows 3M #410M double side paper tape applied between the ribs.  (The upper adhesive surface has not been exposed yet)  Be sure to add tape to the underside of the awning, so you fold the cloth over and secure it.  Avoid the use of any glue.  Glue will fill the pores ruins the effect of a canvass awning.  If you mess up and the cloth keeps coming up, a dab of Elmer’s White glue can be used discretely and sparingly.  Here is the cloth I used.

I got it from Jo Ann Fabrics.  Among about 30 customers I was the only male in the store over the age of three. So when I was done I felt obligated to drive my car from 0-60 under 4 seconds a few times to regain my sense of manhood

In the next photo the cloth has been applied:

The roof is made by cutting paper Black Out Tape (used by photographers to make light tight objects) into 1 ½” wide strips.  That is six scale feet.  Put the roof section on a piece of wax paper, then lay the strips on top. Overlap the pieces by about 1/8” as tar paper on a real roof would.  And run them over the edges by about 3/8”  

Flip it over, remove the wax paper that is on the underside of the roof (just cut around the roof deep enough to cut out the wax paper), then push the wax paper “frame” onto the tape. Cut 3/16” outside the perimeter of the roof, to leave a blackout tape/wax paper frame.  Cut out the corners, as shown.  This makes it easy to install and remove the roof, while giving the effect of tar paper rolled up against the walls.

Paint the roof with Rustoleum Dark Gray Primer, then dust on Rustoleium Light Gray Primer, and then glue on all the roof details shown in the first photo

I also added some details to the end wall.  The electrical boxes are from Model Tech Studios, the conduit is aluminum rod.  The fire alarm is from Model Tech Studios.  The drain pipe is built from styrene stock.  The signs are computer drawn:

Here are a few close up shots:

The real Ayres is much friendlier to scofflaw parkers than this sign would suggest:

Here is the ecstatic couple buying their very first bird house:

And a mysterious woman coming down the stairs

Maybe she just broke up with this guy?

 Overall street views:

Just like the real thing, the 1/48 scale Ayres is open in the evenings:

A fun project, that took far less time than my usual affairs. Feel free to ask questions!