SLIM&M Shop

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M

mdcustom

Bridge and Building Dept
This is the SLIM&M's car shop. Piece will be fully detailed for my personal layout set in 1899. Building is 22'x44' and is built in On30. What you are seeing here is the 2x6 upper walls which will sit on a 4' high brick lower wall.
 
Some more progress on the car shop. Brick lower walls were built using an Evergreen core with a covering of brick sheet from N Scale Architect (who also make O scale brick surprisingly). Concrete foundation is simply Evergreen strip. Trackwork is handlaid code 83 rail. The wood block floor was started, it is laid up using 6x6 block cut 10" long, this gives a slightly irregular floor surface just like an actual wood block floor.
 
Dang, an actual wood block floor! I don't think I've ever seen that modeled in any scale. MD, you are an amazing detail hound. :)
 


Thanks Jim I like wood block floors for O scale pieces, just can't get most clients interested in them due to cost. But as you say they are pretty unique in a model. In the photos you can see more of the floor as it is being installed including a pile of the raw blocks before they are set in. The last photo shows the progress today, including the start of the board covers for the ties, made up of 2x12's cut to 12' length.
 
why would anybody want a wood block floor??
it would seem to be more labor intensive to cut and lay.
as far as the model goes top notch work:eek:
 
Bigford, wood block floors were very common for industrial buildings, they are very solid and allow heavy industrial machinery to be moved anywhere in the facility without worrying about a foundation. Because they are made from individual blocks set in a sand base they also are not damaged by machinery vibration. As for labor intensive, that was not a problem, many many processes in the time were labor intensive including building a railroad by hand.
 
Wood block floors also had several other advantages. In case a portion of the floor was damaged, it was fairly quick and easy to pull up some blocks and replace them. In places like engine houses, some parts of the floor would get oil soaked and present a fire hazard. Replacing the oil soaked blocks was both faster and cheaper that ripping up a board floor. Wood block floors were very cost effective back in the days when accountants figured capital improvements based on life of service cost rather than the cheapest thing they could throw together and then pay to fix them constanly over their service lifetimes.
 
Thanks Jim, I knew I was leaving out some reasons that would come to light later. The ARCAT site lists nearly 20 current manufactures of this type of flooring, mostly for restoration projects but also for very high end homes.

Got the floor finished today, then cut in the door jambs. Next I started on building the roof trusses, they are made up of 2x6's and 1x4 bracing. The tops of the trusses are notched for a ridge beam.
 
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MD, have yout thought about taking some fine sand and actually brushing it on the wood blocks to fill in the gaps? I'll bet it would work and you could secure it with the same kind of white glue/water mix used for ballast. The wood blocks themselves look great but the sand "mortar" was a pretty prominent part of a wood brick floor.
 
Jim, I will most likely use some sawdust from the razor saw instead of sand, smaller diameter which will fill the cracks better. Not sure that I will glue it down as adding a dilute glue mixture has had very mixed results in the past. The end grain basewood pieces has a tendency to expand too much when the glue is applied.

In between other projects I got some more of the roof trusses installed. Also started working on the details in the interior.
 


MD, sawbust would probably be a better choice. I never thought about the expansion issue when using water based glue but I can see that being a problem. On real wood brick floors, the sand was just packed down between the blocks so maybe the same process will work on your model.

What do you use to secure the truss work? I'm amazed at how good your window lintel and support detail is.
 
Jim the trusses are secured with a small drop of yellow carpenters glue applied with a syringe. The syringe allow precise placement of just a tiny bit of glue.

Finished up with the trusses. Then applied the 1x6 nailers to the roof. These were cut long to allow the placement of the 2x6 decorative end rafter.
 
Started working on the sheathing on the car shop. It is made from 1x12's to which I will add 1x2 battens. The door an window shown in the second shot are from Tichy and are the ones that I plan on installing after the walls are finished.
 
Those Tichy details look great. Now, how are you going to do the shingles? That would be about a two month job for me. :)
 
Jim the roof will be shingled individual shingles cut from 1x8's. Should be about 6 hours work for this size roof.

Got more of the exterior sheathing done today. Started working on the windows and doors, they are being painted a dark pullman green. The exterior wall will be painted oxide red.
 
Finished up on the 1x12 wall sheathing, then added the 1x2 batten strips to all four walls. Then the building exterior was painted using Floquil oxide red which was brushed on. Note that the undersides of the nailer strips in the eaves were also painted. This will allow a nice contrast with the weathered shingles when they are installed.

Jim when I shingle a large roof such as this I limit myself to a maximum of 1 hour per day as I have found much more then that and I do start wondering why I didn't use tar paper instead. The massive Shawkanah Mill that I built last summer took nearly a month to shingle.
 
Yep, that's the only way to shingle big roofs, or you'll curse the day you ever see another shingle. It usually takes me as long to shingle a model roof, as it would for me to shingle the real thing. But the results are so worth it. MD, I was just wondering how big those shingles are in real inches? Its hard to tell from the pics, but I am guessing about 5/16 x 1/8 as that is roughly twice the size of mine.
 


Once again Matt.
Outstanding work!

I love making the scratch built board by board structures. I made an engine house when I was a teen like that, and loved every minute of it. Luckily I didn't get to the shingling part of it before I discovered guitar, then that hobby sapped up all my time for many years. Now I'm back into Model Railroading full force and loving it again.

Keep the great pix coming. Thank you for sharing.
 
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