Craftsman kits Stone Engine House, Schomberg Scale Models (Oscale)
follow the build - Craftsman kits
by Bob Boudreau
The more I delve into O scale, the more I am amazed at the relative size of the scale, after modeling in HO scale for so many years. This is a review of an O scale Stone enginehouse kit made by Schomberg Scale models. And it is big, for me anyway. It is also my first kit made from Hyrdocal, a plaster like material. The dense Hydrocal also makes the kit fairly heavy, and this can make it difficult to ship without breakage. Mine was well packed in the box, with wall pieces surrounded in bubble wrap and fastened to heavy cardboard with rubber bands. And the Post Office still managed to handle the package in such a way that there was breakage on the front wall of the kit. Not really a problem though, as it was quickly repaired with some yellow carpenters’ glue.
This two stall enginehouse is patterned after a prototype structure that was once on the Mann’s Creek Railway in West Virginia. It represents construction of cut stone and decorative brickwork. The model was shortened and narrowed a bit but maintains its proportions. The manufacturer states it will hold any Bachmann On30 steam engine, indicating the structure is intended for On30, which is good for me because that is the scale I am modeling in. The kit has been around for a little while, as Bachmann’s recent 2-6-6-2 engine might prove to be a tight fit.
The instructions consist of five pages of text and one with sketched suggestions for making the enginehouse doors operable. No plans or photos are included, and the one picture on the box is the same as the one on the firm’s website. It isn’t a difficult kit, but photos can always help in removing doubts in construction steps. Supplying photos with the instructions would be helpful, or at least there should be more on the website.
There aren’t a whole lot of parts in this big kit: the four Hyrdocal walls, two piece roof, smoke vent, doors, windows, some smaller parts cast in resin and some stripwood. The two roof parts are nicely detailed and are cast in resin, resembling a shake roof.
The nine windows and one passage door are cast in resin. The windows had a lot of paper thin flash between panes that wasn’t difficult to remove with a sharp #11 blade in a hobby knife, but the task was time consuming. One of the windows in my kit was broken, but was easily repaired with some CA glue.
One of the bags contained parts to make the smoke vent, again cast in resin with cardboard pieces for the actual roof and corrugated light cardboard to represent metal roofing. The ends of the smoke vent were quite thick but this wasn’t really a problem.
The stonework on the Hydrocal walls is quite nice and random. Especially nice are the decorative brick circles on both ends and above the main doors. Kit instructions suggest any bubbles or defects in the castings can be repaired with drywall compound, but there weren’t any problem areas in my kit.
I previously assembled a stone station kit cast in resin by Schomberg Scale Models, and in that kit they included a few extras – an oil tank and some luggage for the platform. Such extras are a nice addition and are appreciated. This enginehouse kit includes a few extra resin castings too – two pallets, two wood barrels, and seven steel drums, three of which are bent and banged up.
To start putting the structure together, I made sure all of the window and door openings were clear of excess Hydrocal and the edges of the side walls were clean and free as well. The actual assembly of the four walls is fairly simple, using yellow carpenters’ glue. It is important that the walls must be square with each other, and sit on a flat surface while the glue dries. I use a large piece of glass on my workbench and upon this I glued my walls together. The walls must be held together during assembly, while the glue has time to dry. Kit instructions suggest small bottles filled with water can provide weight and pressure to hold the walls together. I had some heavy metal weights, which I used for the same purpose. The side walls fit inside the end walls with some glue along the end, and then a generous bead of glue is run down the inside of the corner seam. It will probably puddle near the bottom but is easily removed when dry. Overnight drying of the glue is recommended.
When the glue on my four walls was dried, I made the mistake of picking up the structure by the ends. The repair I made on the broken front wall did not hold, and it came apart, breaking off above the other door opening. I glued this piece back together with carpenters’ glue and I used 5-minute epoxy to fasten two pieces of hobby plywood over the joints on the inside of the wall. I made sure these reinforcing pieces of plywood did not interfere with the door openings or the slots at the top of the wall. The wood was actually door cutouts from a laser cut structure I had built previously and is fairly strong.
Supplied with the kit are four pieces of ¼” square stripwood to be used as roof supports. They fit into slots cast into the end walls. After I cleared the slots to be able to accept the wood, I discovered a problem – they were about ¼” too short. Since the ends of the wood are supposed to be visible on the finished end walls, this would not do.
Of course I did not have any stripwood of this size on hand nor could I find any locally as replacements. I did have a short piece this size, so I cut off four quarter inch long pieces, sanded them square, and fastened them to the kit pieces to achieve the proper length. In correspondence with the kit manufacturer, he was not aware of the pieces being too short, as they had been cut for him by his supplier. He was going to check his remaining stock of kits to ensure they contain pieces of proper length.
With the walls together, now was the time to paint them. I chose the same colors as shown on the kit box, reddish brick trim and light gray stone. I first painted the brick trim above the main doors and in the decorative circles on each end. I used water based craft paint that comes in small plastic containers (I got mine at a local dollar store). I diluted the paint so it would soak into the brickwork, and I was surprised how much the Hydrocal soaked up the paint. It took several applications to get the look I wanted, as the color seems to lighten as it dries into the Hydrocal. Some of my dilute paint flowed into the adjacent stonework but there did not appear to be anything I could have done to prevent it. I covered the excess paint with some dilute gray craft paint in a later step.
As suggested in the instructions, I chose to stain the Hydrocal with India ink diluted in isopropyl (rubbing) alcohol. This was the first time using the mixture on such a porous surface for me, so I mixed up a 3 ounce bottle of the stain. I started with a little bit of India ink, and tested it on the inside of the front wall to see if it was dark enough. Once I was satisfied, I used a half-inch wide brush to liberally apply the stain to the walls. The stain went on fairly dark but lightened as it soaked into the Hydrocal. I actually applied the stain several times to each wall until I was satisfied with the effect.
Kit instructions suggested coloring random stones with dilute shades of earth color to give the walls a less uniform look. Again I used diluted craft paint colors to achieve this effect. Most I painted several times, as the paint was quite diluted. After the coloring was completed, I applied another wash of India ink and alcohol, as suggested in the instructions. The color variance between stones isn’t that great, but it does make the stonework look more natural.
The India ink wash was also applied to the decorative brickwork, toning down the reddish color somewhat. Since the inside of the enginehouse is smooth Hydrocal and not detailed, the kit instructions suggest painting it flat black. I thought this might be too dark, making the interior look like the inside of a coal mine. So I brush painted the interior of mine with medium brown craft paint. Perhaps this will give the appearance of wood; at least it won’t be totally dark.
The windows and single pedestrian door were primed with gray paint from a spray can, and then later painted with an airbrush in Floquil SOO Line Red. The supplied clear glazing was cut from the sheet using a NWSL Chopper. This helped keep the pieces uniform. I used Pacer “Canopy Glue” to fasten the glazing to the back of the windows. This is a white glue that dries transparent. After the glue was dried, the windows were fitted into the openings. Most required some sanding on one side or two so they would fit snugly. I used the same glue to fasten them in the walls.
Now to the roof. As mentioned, the roof is nicely cast in white resin. The shingle detail is wonderful, with a nice uneven look to most of them. As suggested in the instructions, I spray painted the roof pieces with an inexpensive gray primer, after having washed the pieces to improve paint adhesion. The instructions mention that the prototype structure had its smoke vent placed near the rear, as they always had the locos in headfirst. Well I prefer to have my steamers pointing out, so I chose to place the smoke vent near the front of the roof.
Kit instructions suggest the smoke vent can be placed on top of the shake roof, with the gap filled in with “caulking or some other gap filling compound”. I suppose this might be an option, but with a quick look at the vent sitting on top of the roof, it can be seen the angle at the bottom of the vent is greater than the angle of the actual roof. There would be a really large gap to be filled if the vent were to be placed on top of the shake roof.
I chose to go with the other option – cutting an opening in the roof so the vent would sit down inside as it would on the prototype. This would be easier before the roof pieces were glued together, so I taped them in place on top of the building and traced the outline of the vent with a pencil. I used a razor saw to make cuts into the roof, and the inside edge was scribed with a hobby knife numerous times and broken off.
The two pieces of the roof were glued together with 5 minute epoxy, using the 3 supplied resin supports. The supports maintain the proper roof angle between the two pieces. After the epoxy had dried, I test fitted the smoke vent in the hole and made some adjustments with a hobby knife to make it fit properly. The instructions suggest gluing two narrow pieces of styrene or wood to the underside of the roof to hold the smoke vent. This will support the vent and allow it to fit into the roof rather than resting on top of it. Well as I noted previously, the angle at the bottom of the vent isn’t the same as the angle of the roof, so I needed to build up the styrene supports at different levels to actually support the vent.
I brush painted the outside of the smoke vent with the Floquil SOO Line Red. Once it had dried, I applied some black weathering powder to the vent areas to simulate dirt caused by loco smoke. It was easier to do this before it was glued to the roof, and I could control where the powder would go. I applied the corrugated cardboard to the vent roof, and painted it a rusty color.
Now to the roof itself. As I mentioned, I wanted the roof to be removable which meant the shake panels would not be glued to the wood roof supports. The thin roof panels were not sitting flat, and had a slight bow in both directions. The kit included some scale 1” by 10” basswood to be used as fascia trim along all outer edges of the roof. Fastening this thin stripwood to flat edges of the roof would have been quite a chore, but trying to put it onto the warped edges could not be practical. I solved two problems at once by using scale 8” by 10” stripwood as fascia trim, fastened on with CA glue. This stiffened the roof edges along the sides and ends, and looks the same as the thinner material when in place. I applied a wash of India ink and alcohol to the roof, a stronger mixture than was used for the walls. I applied the wash several times and the resulting dirtied up gray looks right.
The roof still had a slight bow on each side, leaving a gap above the structure side walls. After much thought, I came upon the idea of using small rare earth magnets that I had on hand to snug the roof sides down. As a bonus they would help hold the roof in place. I gouged out a gap in the center of the top of each wall and glued a magnet in the gap at an angle with 5-minute epoxy. I set the magnet in deep enough so another magnet glued to the underside of the roof would sit right next to it. Works pretty neat!
The locomotive doors are cast in resin, and there are twice as many as required so they can be glued back to back to show detail on both sides. The doors would probably be kept open most of the time and a smooth resin back would not look all that great. But there is a problem. They are cast way too thick. Placed together they measure about 14 scale inches thick. Since we’re making an enginehouse and not a bank vault, I chose not to use the kit doors.
My first choice to make the doors was scribed styrene, pieces glued back to back. But alas, I did not have any suitable material on hand nor did our local hobby shop. So I scribed some .010” thick sheet styrene on both sides and cut out the shape of the doors using the kit doors as guides. That was the easy part. The kit doors had trim around the edges, including the curved tops. I selected some strip styrene that was the same size as the trim on the resin doors, but needed to cut the curved pieces from .010” sheet styrene. I traced the curvature of the kit doors onto the styrene and cut out the line with a sharp new #11 blade in a hobby knife. With a pair of drafting dividers, I scratched a line on the inside of the curved styrene piece, the same width as the styrene trim strips. Then I cut out the inside of the curve with a bobby knife. Then the curved and strip styrene trim pieces were glued onto each side of the four doors.
The instructions suggest cutting off a strip at the bottom of the supplied doors so they will fit over the rails. I just made my doors a bit shorter. In the photo you can see the completed doors sitting in place, the set on the right is sitting on the rails, while the other set is sitting on the bottom of the opening. I painted the doors and the fascia trim with Floquil SOO Line Red.
The thickness of the scratchbuilt doors compared to the kit doors are shown in this photo.
There are no provisions for making the doors operational in the kit, but the last page of the instructions have a suggestion for making working hinges for the locomotive doors. I followed the suggestions and made my doors work. It was almost a kit within a kit. I used some very small brass tubing soldered to a piece of thin brass; these were fastened to the doors on two places. A piece of brass wire that fit snugly into the brass tubing was bent so it came out of the tubing and turned right into the front of the doorway. The wire passed through a piece of thin brass before being glued into the Hydrocal using CD glue. It took numerous tries at bending the hinge wire so the door would sit properly in the opening and still open and close.
That more or less completes the construction of the kit. I smudged the area of the roof below the smoke vents using black weathering powder applied with a stiff brush. To blend it in better, I used my finger. The same method was used to add smoke darkening above the doors. Makes for messy fingers but it does add to the used look of the enginehouse.
I roughly painted the supplied extras with the kit, the barrels, drums and pallets and placed them next to the completed structure with the engine doors closed.
The weathering of the roof around the smoke vent shows up in the photo of the rear of the building
In setting up the enginehouse for photos with On30 steam engines inside, I discovered a problem with the doors – the hinge arrangement as made narrows the openings just enough to cause a problem. My Bachmann 2-8-0 and Climax would not fit through the openings. I was able to get a Forney and a Shay inside for the photos, but the clearances were tight. I imagine if I had used the supplied resin doors singly the clearance would have been worse, and doubling them up would have reduce it even more. So it looks like I’ll have to re-engineer some door hinge mechanisms. The kit instructions suggest Campbell HO scale engine door hinges are a good size to use, something I will have to look into.
So that’s my take on the Schomberg Scale Models Stone Enginehouse kit in O scale. A special thanks to firm owner Christopher Creighton for the kit and assistance. He mentioned this kit is one of his early ones, and may not keep it in production due to shipping problems with the heavy Hydrocal. In any case, it was a learning experience for me and I look forward to working on kits made from Hydrocal in the future.
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