Whistle Stop Cafe in O-scale

Thanks!   I LOVE scratch models of actual old buildings.   Please keep the installments coming.

I totally agree.  It's going to look great.

Great!  A real, unique structure.  Where is that prototype physically located?  A friend

from an old job once discussed the book with me, but I never read it or saw the

movie.

The cafe is located in Juliette, Georgia  ( south east of Atalanta ).

Very nice.

How fun is this? It's going to be great. Can't wait to see the finished product.

Because I use printed paper on the outside walls of the buildings that I build, I make them so the roof is removable.
This allows me to paint the underside of the eaves easily and also allows the paper siding to be wrapped over the top of the walls and glued to the inside.
I also wrap the paper siding down under the bottom so there isn't any exposed paper edge at the top or bottom

This is typical of how the bracing looks on the inside of the roofs.




I also make the porch and porch roofs removable.
This makes it easier to paper the side walls and easier to paint the porch.
This porch has a "tab" that fits into a notch in the base of the building.
The porch is fastened to the building by a screw that goes up thru the tab.




Here is the base of the porch roof.   
It has a block of wood fastened to it where it fits to the front of the building.
The roof section will be fastened to the wall by two screws that go into that block of wood.




Here you can see the notch in the base to attach the porch and the two screw holes above the window openings for the screws to attach the porch roof.




Here is how the underside of the porch roof looks with it fit to the building.
The screws heads in the underside will be filled with wood putty and smoothed over before the roof it painted.

 


Starting to cut and fit the pieces for the porch roof.
I put a piece of wax paper between the porch roof and the building wall to keep any excess glue from sticking the roof to the wall.




The porch roof is built.  It has some strange angles in it to make it fit right.




Here is how the building looks so far with the porch and porch roof attached.

Nice craftsmanship!

don't forget the gas pump outside!

Andre.

Great work. Thanks for sharing construction details with us. And I look forward to seeing your progress!  Terry

Looking at these photos, I just realized that I screwed op on the porch roof.
If you look closely at the photos of the real building, you can see that the left side of the porch roof comes straight out from the building roof line for a little bit before is angles over.

The porch roof on the model starts to angle right from the building roof right now.
I just removed that section of the porch roof and I'll re-build it correctly tomorrow.

If I don't correct that area of the porch roof, the brick pillar on that corner will not line up with the roof correctly.

The left side of the porch roof is corrected.

Looking real good.

Ray,

Your buildings are amazing! Can't wait to see this one finished.

Malcolm

Thanks guys,  I do enjoy making them.

They give me something to keep busy with on these long winter days.

It will be nice when I can finally set up a layout and have a place to put them all.

That's a very interesting building. How did you make your plans? Perhaps you can tell us a little about that. The main roof is the easy one. That porch roof is another story. When I looked at the porch I wondered how you were going to figure out those angles. I would never have thought to use OSB for scale models since it's so rough, but edging it like you do hides all that graininess. It's cheaper than basswood and very stable. Good work!

Clever modeling techniques!  With that many odd angles, which make it so interesting,

easy to see that trial and error might apply.

Nice, it never even occurred to me to make one of these. I've been to this building, my wife and I were in Atlanta in September and we had to go there. Not much to the town, but it was so cool to see the place. I wish I'd taken more photos of the place, it's a real café today.

Gotta love BUILDING something!!

I don't know the actual size of the real building and all I had to go by were the photos that I show here.

I picked out the windows and doors that it would take and arranged them on the table in the correct order for each wall.

Using the windows as a guide for the height and width, I could then estimate the spacing between the windows and the ends of the wall.

This gave me the overall size that the building would be so I could then measure and cut out the base.

We are going to be moving out of state so these buildings are being packed up and put in storage as I get them built.

I use 1/4 and 1/2 inch OSB for the base and 1/8 paneling for the walls and roof so the buildings are really strong.

The corner of the building is cut at 45 degrees so It's easy to extend that same angle to the porch and roof.

Making the porch roof wasn't as hard as it looks.

The base for the underside of the roof matches the shape of the porch and the wood block at the back ( where the roof attaches to the wall ) sets the height.

The first piece of wood for the roof was set flush with the back edge and marked at each end for the length.

A mark was made at the front edge of the underside piece and at the point of each front corner.

I then drew a line beyond the front edge of the underside piece to allow for the roof overhang.

Then I drew a line on each end from the edge mark at the back and thru the point at each front corner.

This gave me the shape of that center roof piece.

The end pieces were marked out the same way by lining up a piece of wood to the edge of the center roof piece and marking where the outside corners and edges are.

For cutting the roof pieces out, I angled the table on my bandsaw to where it looked like it would be the right angle and cut out the roof sections. 

With the cuts being made on an angle, it allows the roof pieces to fit together without a gap on top and the outside edges are vertical to the ground.

It's probably too late, but do you want me to go back through my photos of the building I took in September? I didn't get any shots of the back but maybe I got some angles of the front you don't have...

I appreciate your offer but the building is just about completed and it would be too hard to make changes to the structure now.

Thanks ..

The strips of wood are glued to the outside edges of the porch roof and the header beams are glued to the underside of the roof.




The corner of the porch is notched out to fit the porch roof support column.




Here is the first porch support column.




And how it looks setting in place.




The other two corners are notched out on the porch.




The front of the building with all the porch columns in place.

Funny thing, the locals told me the real building was never a cafe until after the movie wrapped. It was an antique store when the movie crew came a'calling...

The residents of Juliet were smart to keep the town as it was, with the exception of moving the depot across the tracks to a place behind the cafe building. There was only one track there at the time of the filming, but there are than one, now.

This is the kind of building that a kit maker would possibly do well with the owners of the real building today, to make laser kits of the building in various scales. It'd sure be better than the same well-worn 'western false front' buildings you see so often by kit companies...

great project! What kind of tips do you have for working with hard to cut materials like this? How did you get the window & door openings so clean? I am building a post & beam structure currently out of poplar scraps from my shop. In the first 2 minutes I "realized" something I always knew, but never thought- Poplar & plywood aren't cut with a hobby knife! 
Watching this topic with interest!

The base, walls and roof section's are cut out on a band saw.

The window and door openings are cut out with a saber-saw that is mounted upside down under a piece of aluminum so the blade sticks up thru the aluminum plate.

The openings are drawn out on the front of the wall section.
Then I drill two 1/4 inch holes in each opening at opposite corners.
The wall section is set down so the saw blade comes up thru one of the holes and I make the saw cuts along the two lines extending out from that hole.
The process is repeated for the other hole and the center piece of wood wall is removed.
Then I use the saw blade to trim back to each corner around the two holes.

The saber saw is held onto the bottom of the aluminum plate with a couple of pieces of scrap steel.
The blade is put in backwards and it is tight enough in the plunger shaft that it does not move forward when cutting the wood.

Here is the finished building.

Ray,

That came out fantastic. Awesome work.

Impressive!  Well done

Al

WOW! Having seen the real building recently, I can say you did a great job.

What'd you use for siding and for the shingles on the roof?

That's a wonderful rendition! You work fast too!

Wow that looks great...you have mad crazy skills.

Great craftsmanship.

Very nice, and quick too. Not sure how you do it, but then I guess the secret is in the sauce...

My hat off!

AG.

Thank you everyone for the nice comments.

As with all my buildings, the roof and siding are printed out on paper and glued to the wood.