The Roger Malinowski Tribute Part 2 - The Boot Shop

This is another building from Crossroads Collection, Roger Malinowski's effort to have a line of basic kits that he would always have in stock as part of the Stoney Creek lineup. Like the Gun shop this one features a couple of different types of construction and weathering techniques. 

Like the Gun Shop my intention is to have interior details and lighting to be added later, but that means that there are changes the need to made to the building itself to accomodate those things. The major change on my part will be the roof which needs to be removable.

The most unusual feature of this kit is the use of thin walnut for the side and rear walls. These walls are built up board by board on an inner carcass of 1/16" plywood. This includes adding on battens to cover the gap between the boards. Tedious but worth the effort in the end. The issue I had was with the "painting". In this case with oil pastels. It looks good but the difference between the walnut wall and the basswood batten is pretty dramatic, mostly because instead of going with the as built white I went with red.

Progress has been steady, so here are a few photos of the progress:

The side and rear walls, battens applied on two of them and the third I'm getting ready to start.

Cartoon Wednesday

 

Cartoon Wednesday

 

The Colorado & Northwestern in On30

I really enjoyed working on the D&RGW switching plan (Warehouse Row) in 3D. Since I "completed" that model I have been contemplating doing it again. When I decided to do the Malinowski tribute kit builds I thought it would be an opportunity to do it again this time for the On30 layout. 

While I would love to have a layout the does the Colorado & Northwestern justice I don't have the space and I don't want a second switching layout. I envisioned a figure 8 layout with a few places to switch cars but the emphasis on scenery, good sight lines for photography and letting the trains just roll.

There are a couple of parameters. It has to be less than 4' wide and breakdown in to at least two sections so it can be moved and stored easily. Being able to make it come apart definitely adds complications to the build but I'm not going to worry about that for the model. Scenery needs to be lightweight and relatively tough so the bulk of it is going to be carved out of pink/blue. The C&N, like many Colorado railroads, ran along stream banks so a stream, and the opportunity to build a few bridges, are required features.

Looking at a few maps and a lot of pictures I decided that the little mining town of Salina would fit the bill (other than the figure 8) for the location. The station is a bit separated from the town itself and the town kind of straggles up the gulch with at least one of the mines, the Black Cloud, dominating the gulch and the town. Plus the switching is more extensive than a lot of other spots on the C&N and practically everything is on a curve.

 With that in mind I started doodling around with the compass and curve radii. I settled on 20" radius which, in theory, should accomodate the 2-8-0s that I finally managed to acquire. However, the problem with the radius is it really shortens up the passing siding to the point of making it almost useless if I limit myself to an 8' length. To combat that I stretched from 8' to 10'. The compromise is to break the layout down into three pieces, instead of the 2 pieces I was hoping for; 1 6' long and 2 2' long. For the width I needed 40" to accomodate th radius plus a couple of inches on either side which brings us to 44" wide. I'm not sure that only saving 4" from the less than 4' requirement is actually worth it and maybe in the end I'll just go all the way out to 4'.

I went through 5 or 6 iterations before I arrived at one that, mostly, fit the bill. Here are a few pictures to illustrate.

The "final" iteration of the track plan

I photocopied it so I wouldn't mess up the original when I glued it down to a sheet of PVC.

I used some contact cement to glue the paper down to the PVC and cut the whole thing out. This actually didn't work out very well. The paper started to peal away from the PVC pretty quickly as I started to cut it out. The happy accident was that the contact cement actually transferred the track plan right to the PVC so when the paper pealed away the drawing was still on the PVC.

I then cut a piece of Gatorboard to serve as the "tabletop". Its 1/4" thick so I'll have to add some more foam, of some kind, so I can really carve down below the track level.

I glued down the areas that would be elevation 0" that establishes my baseline level.

I then added some risers for the grades. The issue is I need to go from 0" to 5" in about 8' so the grades are steep. However, the C&N averaged about a 4% grade and in the area of Salina there was a section that was close to 7% (not for a long stretch but its still quite the obstacle).

A look from the side.

A closer look at the bridge crossing and the spot where I "cut in" another switch. Originally the train was to enter from the right side, but that created an awkward spot with the grades. By cutting in the switch on the 0" elevation I got around the grade issue on the right.

Now I just need to find some foam to cut up to make create a bit of scenery.

Cartoon Wednesday

 

The Roger Malinowski Tribute Part 1 - The Gunshop

I have been missing in action for the better part of the month, not intentionally but sometimes the days just fly by. I have been slowly working through a couple of projects so things have been happening but life just got in the way of actually blogging about anything. I couldn't even keep up with Cartoon Wednesday! On the plus side the garden is in and we didn't have a hail storm right after we finished like last year. It did take a lot of time though.

So recently I discovered that Roger Malinowski had passed away from cancer all the way back in November of 2022. I only found out when I visited the website for Stoney Creek Designs to see if there was anything new. I have been slowly accumulating his kits for years and have about a dozen in the cupboard waiting to be built and my intent has always been to build them not collect and resell them. There are still 3 or 4 that I would like to acquire but the prices have gone through the roof if they come up for sale at all.

That leads into my decade + fascination with On30 and the search for the Bachmann 2-8-0. Recently I have managed to acquire not 1 but 2 of these engines and have been scribbling designs for a small (ish) On30 layout to run them on. This would not replace the D&RGW HO layout (which is set in the late '50s) but would share the same basic space so it has to be something I can take down and store away when I need to scratch the HO scale itch. At this point this layout will, primarily, showcase the Stoney Creek Design kits so I anticipate operations being somewhat limited with a focus more on scenes and photography those scenes.

I figured I could, at least, go ahead and start putting together the kits on hand so I opted to start with one of the "easier" kits; The Gunstore from the Crossroads Collection. This series of four kits were not limited editions like his regular line of limited edition kits and his intent was to keep them in stock. I didn't really take a lot of pictures of this build so I'm just presenting everything that I have in somewhat the correct order.

I used Clever Creek Model texture files for the floor and walls on the inside.

The basic building finished and the roofs being test fitted.

Shingles!

Tar paper on the back addition

The finished building sections. The white door is the interior door from Grande Line (now owned by San Juan)

A look inside. Since all the models will be up very much in the foreground I want to be able to detail the interior. That required modifying both roofs to be removable. I also plan on adding lighting.

From the front. The miniature is a prospector figure from Reaper Miniatures. Despite being a 28mm Heroic sized miniature he is still on the short side maybe 5’4” or 5”

The base is a piece of gatorboard. It’s about 1/2” wide all around the building and only has some basic scenery completed. The front porch is scratch built from coffee stir sticks.

Cartoon Wednesday

 

Cartoon Wednesday

 

Cartoon Wednesday

 

Another Acquisition! On30 Strikes again

It amazing what can fall into your lap at times. I just recently acquired a used Bachmann On30 2-8-0. Very much destined to be kitbashed into a C&N 2-8-0. Since this was the first one I have managed to get my hands on at a really good price I am a bit reluctant to go forward with the boiler swap. Stripping and detailing don't worry me to much, but I'm just not sure how well the swap will go. 

In light of that I continued to keep an eye on eBay for another one. On Sunday I won another auction for one of these beauties. New, in the box, for a bit less than I paid for the other one! I think I have hit my wife's tolerance limit for locomotives though!

Cartoon Wednesday

 

Acquisition - Finally!

I have been trying to lay my hands on a Bachmann On30 2-8-0, at a reasonable price, for years. Well, it finally happened and I managed to lay my hands on one. Granted it was not in the original box so all the little extra pieces were missing and it had a load of lumber in the tender instead of coal. I can live with all of that. What I might have trouble with is that it appears to be a DCC locomotive which I was not prepared for. Now I'm going to have to do the work and convert my smaller locomotives (a 2 truck Shay and a couple of Porters) over to DCC. Nothing like a challenge!

Cartoon Wednesday (Very Late)

 

Victory Over Gold - Gold Box LImited Edition

Not only do I enjoy the process of cutting out wood jigsaw puzzles I also enjoy putting them together! One of the puzzle cutters that I follow is Mark Cappitella. He owns Pinnacle Puzzles (also MGC puzzles) and I really admire his work. He definitely has had an impact on how I cut my own puzzles. I have always wanted to get a puzzle from him but he is a bit out of my price range (similar to Stave Puzzles). However, he has cut a couple of puzzles for Victory Puzzles out of the UK. They take his master cut and translate it into a file to create a laser cut version of his design. He showed some of his work cutting out Victory Over Gold (celebrating the 80th anniversary of the Normandy landings) on his youtube channel. Victory announced this as a Limited Edition puzzle for $135 dollars, still painful but doable and I put in my order for that puzzle.

I received this back in November but hadn't had the time to pull it out till last week. It was everything I hoped for. A fantastic image cut by a master puzzle maker and it had me scratching my head for about a week. I loved every minute of it. Definitely one of the hardest puzzles I have put together (probably just edges out the D&RGW Colorado Map image form Liberty Puzzles). The multiple bands of colors combined with the free form pieces made for quite the challenge. I didn't even bother trying to pull edge pieces out, as is the case with most wood puzzles the designers go to a lot of effort to hide the edges and the corners. If you are looking for a challenge for your next puzzle this is a great one!

The colors are a bit off but they are pretty close.

Cartoon Wednesday

 

Cartoon Wednesday

 

Warehouse Row - Building #1 - Mounting windows and Doors

This is step that has been a long time in coming and I'm reasonably pleased with the result. Before I started mounting the windows and doors I took a hard look at the sills and lintels. I think the original pieces were to thick and some where decidedly less than "square". I opted to try and reduce the width of each to 3 "bricks". Of course cutting caused some issues with the paper and there were a number of tears, mostly shallow but in one instance I ripped out almost the whole section between the 2nd & 3rd floor windows. I was able to take some of the leftover paper and cover these offending sections up and you really can't see the patches. It was certainly tedious and I'm facing the same situation on the street side wall.

I used super glue to mount everything in place and putty (vallejo in this case, because I had it) to fill the gaps from the backside. I need to find something to impress some detail into the sills and lintels, still scouting through my parts box for something at this point. That is the nice thing about this particular PVC sheets it takes impressions really well.

At this point I had finished trimming all of the lintels and sills to be a bit narrower (3 bricks or about 9"). While most of the ripped paper is pretty small, you can see the large tear on the right side between the 2nd and 3rd story.

At this point I have finished the "patches". I simply took some of the left over brick paper and either replaced the entire area or just cut single strips of bricks and glued everything in place. I'm pretty sure that it will pass muster at this point as its hard to pick out the patches even when you are looking for them.

At this point, I have shortened up all the lintels and sills a bit, they just looked to wide before.

Just another view of the mostly completed wall. The only other thing I could add at this point is the decorative band between the first and second floors. Everything else will have to wait for final assembly.

Cartoon Wednesday

 

Warehouse Row - Building #1 - Painting Doors and Windows

Another week of trying to fit in modeling makes progress very slow. With the walls basically finished I felt like I could spend time getting the windows ready. While I tried to be as precise as possible I figure there will be some shimming necessary to get good fits. There are 30 tall 12-Pane double hung windows, 12 short 12-Pane double hung windows, 2 display windows, 1 double door entrance and 3 sets of warehouse doors.

Most of the components are from Tichy, but the smaller 12 pane windows are Grandt Line. I cleaned everything up and headed to the spray booth. I mounted everything with double sided tape to popsicle sticks and then glued those popsicle sticks to the top of the cheap lazy susan I use as a spinner in the booth. I primed everything with Badger Grey Stynylrez grey primer, followed by a brown (Vallejo Panzer Aces but the label is to worn to read the actual color) and then an off white (Vallejo Panzer Aces German White Tanker Crew).

Now everything is ready to install into the walls, just need to find the time to do it.

Popsicle sticks glued to the spinner. There is so much paint built up over the years that they can be pried off without to much effort

Everything in place with double sided tape.

The final color an off white, I would almost call this an antique white.