Fallburgh on the Back Porch

 My morning beverage, an Americano with cream

This is the time of year when the evenings and the mornings are beautiful, even if the midday heat is just a bit too much.  Our Spring was wet enough and warm enough for mosquitoes, but that doesn't deter me.  California skeeters seem to be slower and less aggressive than the quick little biters I grew up with in Florida.  Or maybe I'm just not as sweet as I used to be.  ha.

 My morning companion, Maggie

Anyway, I used the lovely weather as an opportunity to advance the progress on the Fallburgh Station kit.  I decided to build an interior.  This meant diverging from the instructions and using 1/32" plywood as full-wall bracing instead of square strip stock in the corners.  I will also be including a floor and ceiling that will serve as stiffeners to keep the walls from bowing, hopefully.  The coup de grace will be a strip of specialty stock I found in my pile of dollhouse wood that I will use as bracing disguised as crown molding.

 Walls coming together!

There will be an office, a waiting room and a baggage room on the first floor, along with an un-modeled stairwell to an un-modeled second floor.  That space will serve as a wiring conduit to run to LED lights in the ceiling.  No indoor plumbing, but electric lights!  I haven't decided how far I want to take the detailing inside, but there will be rudimentary furniture and some figures.

This kit has now passed what I am calling, the "structure kit Rubicon".  That is, the point of no return beyond which the kit will not go back in the box.  Most rolling stock will go back in the box it came in after you build it.  Most craftsman kit structures will not.  Alia Iacta Est. 

Craft Nite at Grace - Fallburgh

This is the first post in a sometimes series; probably monthly.  That's because once a month there's a craft night at my church, Grace Lutheran, Ukiah.  At my previous congregation in Washington there was a similar craft night where each person brings whatever they're working on, be it quilting or knitting or model building or toll painting, etc. and spends a few hours working and chatting and snacking.  It is a fellowship event with a craft theme.

I brought Fallburgh Station by Sequoia Models, along with my portable workbench and a handful of tools.  I spent about an hour cleaning castings with an Xacto blade and file.  Before I could get to the next step of trimming battens the boys got antsy and I took them home.  An hour entertaining themselves with paper crafts and snacks was about their limit.  Later in the week I pulled out the kit onto the back porch when the weather was lovely and did the batten trimming.  This is a photo in-process:

This is a great kit and I look forward to continuing to work on it whether on craft night or in between, so posts about the station will be sporadic.  Work continues on the Mogul, and I'll update that thread soon.

Put a Smile on Your Face

I had originally thought I might replace the boiler front, or smokebox door.  However, my desire to use as many original parts as possible won the day and I began to work on the factory installed part.  I carefully trimmed away the cast wiring conduit for the former headlight.  A paper punch provided the right diameter styrene circle to fill the opening left by the headlight.  I had a brass number plate casting in my parts box. 

Finally, I used a brass wire and three brass stanchions to make the handrail.  That solved a problem I wasn't sure how to deal with, at first.  The face had three "dimples".  They looked like injector pin marks from the casting process, but it made no sense that they'd be on that side of the casting.  Usually such things are designed to be hidden on the back or inside surface.  I realized they were most likely spots where, on a different model using the same face, a trio of stanchions would be used for a handrail.  So, that's what I did.  Problem solved.