Welcome to my world of Sn3 Scale Model Railroading
Cimarron & Tall Timbers RR
"Building the Telluride Depot and Outhouse"
By
Tom Troughton, MMR
 | |
| This is a brief look at the Banta Modelworks, "Telluride Depot Outhouse and Tool Shed," kit. Just prior to this kit being released several years ago, I was asked by Bill Banta if I would do a, test built," of the structure and write the assembly instructions. The following photos and text are an abbreviated version of that process. Anyone who's been in the model railroading hobby for a while already has the basic modeling tools and skills necessary to complete this kit. A modeler's knife, razor blades, white and/or yellow Carpenter's glue, CA adhesives, quick setting Epoxy, small paint brushes and your favorite brand of paint can all be used in it's construction. Because I was concerned that water base paints might cause the bass wood wall to swell and warp, these parts were sealed with a wood sealer first. All the wall components, peel and stic board and batten pieces and vents were painted next while they are still attached to their carrier sheets. I used acrylic craft type paints, beginning with a gray base color first, but any type of modeler's paint would work as well. When the gray base color had dried, a depot buff color was added over it, allowing some of the gray to show through at the lower edge as a weathered effect. | |
 Photo 1. The peel and stic board and batten pieces were attached next, lining them up with the door openings. |  Photo 2. The end wall with the two vents was attached to the floor first. This piece must be mounted on the end of the floor that has slots inset 1/4" from the edge. |
 Photo 3. The two vent cut-outs and their sills were installed in the end wall after it was secured to the floor, but it would have been easier to add them while the wall was still a separate item. Their peel and stic joints were reinforced with a few drops of Dr. Mike's CA adhesive. |
 Photo 4. The side walls went on next, then finally the end wall with the tool shed door. |
 Photo 5. I wanted to have the tool shed door in an opened position so I installed it while I could still reach inside to apply glue. |  Photo 6. The thin, laser cut exterior privacy partitions were glued on next, keeping their ends vertically positioned against the building's side walls. |
 Photo 7. To reinforce this fragile piece of wood work, a laser cut center brace is provided and is installed midway between the side wall and the privacy partition frame. |  Photo 8. To provide a support for the roof pieces, a 4" x 4" piece of strip wood was cut and glued to the side wall of the main building. Even though there's a laser scribed line on the wall to help position the strip wood, I also laid a short metal straight edge across the ends of the partition to help align it. |
 Photo 9. The small peel and stic pieces of board & batten material were attached to the side wall at the ends of the privacy partitions. A small amount of sanding and test fitting was needed to create a tight fit. |  Photo 10. The 1" x 10" strip wood was colored with my black shoe dye and alcohol mixture. When dry the pieces were cut to length and glued to the laser cut framework of the side partitions, beginning at the edge of the angled end pieces and working my way around to the other end. |
 Photo 11. The side partition roofing is made with two layers of the 1" x 10" strip wood. I decided to have a scale 4" overhang on the test build model. |  Photo 12. I made a tiny notch in the roofing pieces that butt up against the board and batten material. |
 Photo 13. The second layer was glued directly to the first one by covering the seams of the lower one with the top one. A slight adjustment to the width of some of the pieces was made with a sanding stick to maintain the overlap. |  Photo 14. There are laser scribed guide lines on the cardboard roof piece, but they're there to be used as guides and not exact alignment lines. I used the laser cut paper shingles included in the kit to represent cedar shakes, but you may wish to use something else. To have a sharp fold at the peak of the roof, I used the point of a modeling knife and carefully deepened the laser scribed fold line on the roof being careful to not cut completely through the paper. To prevent any warping that might be caused by the glues and adhesive used later on in the process of applying the paper shakes I coated both sides of the roof with acrylic polyurethane. I've found it easier to apply paper shakes while the roof piece was still un-attached from the building. 3-M Super 77 Spray Adhesive was sprayed on the roof, then the paper shakes were added, one row at a time, using the point of the knife blade to position them in place. |
 Photo 15. I didn't attach the final rows of shakes near the peak. They would be added after the roof was firmly attached to the building. |  Photo 16. The shingles were then painted with Polly Scale, "Grimy Black," paint before it was attached to the building. |
 Photo 17. I also painted a small portion of the underside while it was easy to do. |  Photo 18. The two interior roof forming braces were fastened in place with yellow carpenter's glue. |
 Photo 19. The roof was attached to the building with white glue and held it in place with weights until it was firmly attached. The final rows of roofing were glued in place with more white glue and covered with the thin strip from the edge of the shake shingle sheet to form a final course of roofing material across the peak. I used the point of the knife to cut out the opening for the vent pipe though the shake material, then test fitted the piece of styrene pipe material in the hole to make sure it fit. |  Photo 20. The plastic vent pipe was painted and cut to length next. I used the point of the knife blade to remove any burrs left on the inner opening of the plastic tube. I left about 2 scale feet of it extending above the peak of the roof. 5-Minute was used to secure it to the hole, but any of the CA adhesives would probably work too. Once I had it vertical, I let the epoxy harden. I then used the point of a needle to carefully apply a small amount of the Epoxy around the joint between the pipe and the shakes. When it had hardened, it was painted black to represent roofing tar. |
 Photo 21. I originally had made some MEN and WOMEN signs on my computer and glued them to short pieces of the 1" x 10" strip wood. However, after talking to Bill Banta, he told me he had found a photograph of the structure with the words, "HISN" and "HERN" on the end walls. | Photo 22. I removed the MEN & WOMEN signs and printed out and attached HISN and HERN signs in their place. |
 Photo 23. I used a small amount of powered pastel chalk to add additional weathering. Because this particular model was also going to be used on the Banta Modelworks sales tables at train meets and conventions, it was firmly attached to a small piece of 1/2" thick Gator Board along with a short section of track. The prototype structure had a wooden plank platform between the ties and the doorway openings in the privacy partitions for the passenger's comfort. The kit doesn't include any extra strip wood for any of the exterior planking, but most of us have scrap pieces sitting in our strip wood supply bins if we want to add this feature once it's placed on the layout. | |