PRR Panhandle 2.0

That looks awesome! The curtains are a crucial touch. Now I realize what's been missing from my buildings in the past.

@Mark Boyce posted:

George, you did a great job!  I know it’s hard.  I used to scratch build in N scale.  I can’t believe it now.  LOL

Thanks!  Scratch build in N?   Mark, that's just crazy talk.   

I can barely see N scale trains.  What do you use to see them, a microfiche reader?

George

@BillYo414 posted:

That looks awesome! The curtains are a crucial touch. Now I realize what's been missing from my buildings in the past.

Thanks Bill.  But I can't wait to get back to O scale modeling.  This HO stuff is small, finicky, and very challenging.

George

@G3750 posted:

Thanks!  Scratch build in N?   Mark, that's just crazy talk.   

I can barely see N scale trains.  What do you use to see them, a microfiche reader?

George

That was when I was in my 30s and has 20 20 vision and my hands were steady.  I’ll have to scare up a photograph or take another.

Here we go, George.  This is what I call the Boyce Homestead.  It is where I grew up, my dad grew up, and my grandpa grew up.  Great-grandfather built the first part of the house in 1888.  I started by building the house, then moved on and finally made the diorama.  That was over 30 years ago.  I keep it in a hefty cardboard box because the trees are pretty delicate.  I could never rebuild it in N or HO scales now.

@Mark Boyce posted:

Here we go, George.  This is what I call the Boyce Homestead.  It is where I grew up, my dad grew up, and my grandpa grew up.  Great-grandfather built the first part of the house in 1888.  I started by building the house, then moved on and finally made the diorama.  That was over 30 years ago.  I keep it in a hefty cardboard box because the trees are pretty delicate.  I could never rebuild it in N or HO scales now.

That is awesome!!!!

How cool to have built your own house / farm!

George

Thank you, George!  Unfortunately my sister and I had to sell the place a little over a year ago.  We hoped one of our kids could take it on, but it didn't work out.  It was only needing more upkeep sitting empty for 2 years.

Updated 4/5/2021:

Not too much got done today - teaching day.  Did get the porch attached, installed a light inside the door, and glued the front wall to the porch assembly.  I also cut the brick porch end.  I hope to cut and fit the brick to the porch tomorrow.

Here's a good look at the blacked out upper story.

And you can see the Just Plug LED light (peel & stick) on the bottom of the front door.  We will be lighting up the 1st floor.  Between the stories is a small piece of balsa wood that will serve as the floor/ceiling.

Here's a look at the front.  I've glued the weathered floor to the front porch.  Above it is the support for the porch roof.  A section of brick with 3 columns will go in front of the porch lattice work.

More when I know it. 

George

It looks great, George!

Updated 4/6/2021:

In this photo I have glued the brick siding to the front of the porch.

Here's a look at the corner of the porch before we glue it in place.

I am just about to cut the tops of the columns to mate up with the porch roof.

I glued and clamped the brick siding to the porch front and installed the roof (I aged it with a wash).  The brick columns were cut to the proper size and fastened to the front bottom of the porch roof.

I must confess that I am proud of the eaves that I installed on the front of the house.  Yeah, that was done under a magnifier with tweezers.  What a PITA!  That plastic is 3/64" wide! 

I have glued and clamped the eaves, gutters, and aged roof (the sections are upside down so it can't be seen) sections together.  When it's all done, I will cut them to the proper length and install.

More when I know it. 

George

This is going to turn out excellent.

Very nice

Updated 4/8/2021:

Dave - your grandmother's house is done!!!!

Hope you like it.

George

Excellent George!  I know Dave will like it

George,

The house looks wonderful! To think, looking right off that front porch when I barely could see over it, is where I regularly rail fanned. Thank you for memorializing that special place. Of course now you know I will have to visit your layout.

Dave

@luvindemtrains posted:

George,

The house looks wonderful! To think, looking right off that front porch when I barely could see over it, is where I regularly rail fanned. Thank you for memorializing that special place. Of course now you know I will have to visit your layout.

Dave

Glad you like it!  And of course, I expect and invite you to visit the layout when things are a bit more settled.

George

Updated 4/9/2021:

A little bit of this and a little bit of that was worked on today.  In the first photo, 4 ingot molds fresh from their coat of rusty red primer share the paint booth with some HO Tillman Farmhouse windows in the foreground.

The major wall and roof segments of the first (there will be 2 next door to each other on Highland Avenue) HO Tillman Farmhouse are laid out for test-fitting.  The base and far right wall have already been cut in half.  The far left wall has yet to be sliced vertically.

More when I know it. 

George

Updated 4/10/2021:

Work today focused on installing windows and doors in the 2nd HO house - the Tillman Farmhouse.  This home will be located at the corner of Superior Street and Highland Avenue (see photo below).  There are actually 2 of these side-by-side in this neighborhood.

Our first step was to gather the larger pieces and do some test-fitting.  Note that I have already cut the base in half along its mid-line.  The leftmost wall needs that treatment, as do both sides of the gabled roof.

Here's the left wall after being cut vertically.  This was done with a Zona saw but without the benefit of a mitre box.  The plastic is a bit too thick to slice and snap, as you might do with a thin styrene sheet.

I must say that the Walthers kit is very well designed.  These windows fit neatly and accurately into the wall from the rear.  Here I am allowing some Ambroid ProWeld glue to seep into the joint.  Afterwards, I will flip over the wall and install the window frames in the front.

Here we are gluing the soffit to the roof sections.  Later I will give the roof an India ink wash to age it.

I used my 90 degree angle clamp to hold a corner of the house together while flowing more Ambroid ProWeld down the corner seam.

Here's a look at the front of the corner.  To the left is some of the black construction paper I will use to make the floor between stories and black out the top floor.  I've got to remember to install draperies in the window before I go too far in assembling the house.

More when I know it.

George

You'll be a skilled architect when this is done! haha the progress looks great though. Dave's grandmother's house came out so good!

Very nice looking work.  I have a tendency to get ahead of myself on projects even when I thought them out.  I would forget the curtains. 

@Mark Boyce posted:

Very nice looking work.  I have a tendency to get ahead of myself on projects even when I thought them out.  I would forget the curtains. 

Thank you!  I would love to claim some truly advanced forethought and wisdom, but the curtains were in the box. 

For Dave's grandmothers house, I did buy the curtains separately.  And I did get enough for the next few houses (just in case).

George

George,

My grandmother's house looks so lonely on the corner by itself. There were 4 houses between hers and the one further to the left.  Come to think of it there are a lot of empty lots from homes that have been condemned in that area. Some demolition happened when I was growing up but most after I left.  I'm sure you know as well as I do that Steubenville is only a shell of what it once was.

I copied the following picture to share some information. Not to complicate things, but the house on the corner was originally red, the second house was originally white, the third was yellow, the fourth was white, and the 5th with gutter falling off, is in its original color. Of course this was during my time which was several years after the PRR. Directly in front of these homes, on the right side of Highland Avenue, is a fence and a grassy hillside. The building in this lot is the Polish Club. It sits at the bottom of Superior Street and 7th Street.

Dave

I appreciate the info.  The house on the corner is blue, but the others will get their original paint (or as close as I can get).

George

Sure thing George. From what I am seeing, whatever you do will turn out wonderful.

Dave

Updated 4/11/2021:

Started work today by clamping pairs of walls together.

That's the left wall and front (as you look at the house) in the clamp.  The gable and right side wall sit on the work bench.

Here's a close-up of the leftmost wall and the front.  Yes, I did remember to install the curtains. 

In these next two photos, you can see that I've joined all the walls to create the front of the house (even if it is upside down in the clamp).

Once I had the walls together, I used some right-angle braces from City Classics to keep everything square (mostly).

After that, I joined the walls to the base.  This is a good place to stop.

Tomorrow, we'll need to give the roof a good aging wash, install a light on the first level, and put a black-out floor in between the stories.  We'll see what we get to as it is a teaching day.

More when I know it. 

George

I like the tall clamps.  It’s looking good!!

Nicely done George. As in woodworking, you can never have too many clamps.

Andy

@Steamfan77 posted:

Nicely done George. As in woodworking, you can never have too many clamps.

Andy

That is sooooo true.  And it never seems you have the right type of clamp at hand when you need it, either!

Thanks guys!

George

Updated 4/17/2021:

Things are getting back to "normal" around here after a 3 day trip out of town.  Today I had a chance to glue on the roof sections and chimney of the Tillman Farm House.  I am now in the process of considering which front porch to install.  I also received a set of Faller (Kit #180519) HO steps of various kinds.  I expect that over time these will see some use somewhere on the layout.

In this first photo, I've assembled the roof.

We managed to get the chimney installed without collapsing the roof.

I am looking at several options for the front porch.

Here's a peek at the Faller assortment of HO steps.  It's astonishing (and frustrating) how many options and items are available to HO modelers, but not to us. 

More when I know it. 

George

The house looks great even without the porch at this point.  Having moved from HO to O, I knew there would be many prodcts I was used to that would be unavailable in O gauge.  Still, there is a lot compared even to HO years ago.

@Mark Boyce posted:

The house looks great even without the porch at this point.  Having moved from HO to O, I knew there would be many prodcts I was used to that would be unavailable in O gauge.  Still, there is a lot compared even to HO years ago.

Thanks Mark.

Yeah, it's even worse if you are a steel mill modeler.  Walthers HO and N scale steel mill buildings are an awesome option or even a kit-bashing starting point in those scales.  In O, you are pretty much on your own.  But I think you are right, there do seem to be more options in O at this point in time than before.

George

Looking great George. Sorry it has been a bit. Started a new job last week after working 18 years at one place to be let go before Christmas. Been job searching since the beginning of the year. It's great to be working again. I'll have to see what else I missed.

@Dave NYC Hudson PRR K4 posted:

Looking great George. Sorry it has been a bit. Started a new job last week after working 18 years at one place to be let go before Christmas. Been job searching since the beginning of the year. It's great to be working again. I'll have to see what else I missed.

Glad you found a new gig.  Very tough to be at a job you thought was going to last - been there, done that.

Anyway, congratulations on the new job.

George

Updated 4/22/2021:

I have to say that I'm glad I don't really model in HO or any of the smaller scales.  I really like the heft, size, and visibility of O scale.  Saw an on-line issue of NMRA Turntable in which someone wrote about modeling a locomotive in Nn3 (yeah, narrow gauge N scale ).  That's ship-in-a-bottle land.  I mean, what's the point?  Why don't we skip that and just go straight to the microbial level?    Yeah, that's it.  You get your scanning electron microscope and I'll get mine and we'll look at...never mind.     

Anyway, back in still-too-small-HO-house-modeling-land, I've started trying to pick front porches and their roofs.

I also installed the front gutter and downspout.  The gutter and the windows got a light wash to dirty it up some.  In front of the house you can see the porch I chose and it's roof.

I painted the "wooden" columns and test-fitted one into the ceiling of the porch roof.

Here's another look at it.

I glued the porch roof to its ceiling and clamped it.

I also painted some additional stairs I acquired.  I'm trying to decide which will look best.  I used a Rustoleum textured paint called Rusted Iron on them.

Here's a closer look at some of the painted stairs.

This Walthers Cornerstone Kit would definitely benefit from a comprehensive parts list (with pictures or drawings of the part) and the designation of various parts as optional or essential.  It's nice that they include several porches and that they are interchangeable so that you can make the house face either way.  But there are some parts on the sprues that don't appear in the instructions.

More when I know it. 

George

I know HO is small to work with, but the house looks great!

Great job, George......I can't wait to see it all together!

Peter

@Mark Boyce posted:

I know HO is small to work with, but the house looks great!

Thanks!  The kit does come together nicely and is well-engineered.  I've only had to file smooth the areas where the parts were attached to the sprue.  It's just so small!  Most of the work has been done under a lighted magnifier.

George

@Putnam Division posted:

Great job, George......I can't wait to see it all together!

Peter

Thanks!  Yeah, me too! 

George

Updated 4/23/2021:

I spent some time cursing the incomplete Walthers instructions under my breath.  Of the items you see in the photo below, only the faux wood porch columns are mentioned in them.  Everything else is supplied and you have to guess how they might go together.

I started out by gluing the wood porch uprights to railing.

Then placing the railing in the porch ceiling (upside down).  By the way, I really like this G-S Hypo Cement.  It has a pin-point applicator that allows me to get the glue exactly where it needs to go.  I don't think it's CA, either.  With CA, I always manage to glue my fingers together instead of the target.

Test fitting the porch against the rest of the structure.

Below, I have the columns glued to porch itself.  The two pieces are being held together.

Same thing from a different angle.

More when I know it.

George

George,

The "Hopkins" home looks good. I wonder if your venture into HO scale will make O Scale seem like a breeze now. Sometimes when I am working on an O Scale model and it seems tedious, I think again because I see the stunning results from HO and N modelers. After that, I say I have no excuse.

Dave