What if Bachmann Freight Station was a Craftsman kit?

 

This Bachmann kit has been in their catalog since forever

The weekend was another occasion to hone my modelling skills on some structure deemed irrelevant by most serious hobbyists: the venerable Bachmann Plasticville Freight Station. Yes, one of these childish snap-together toys from the 1950s.

Deconstruction is always a delicate process

I wasn’t sure it would be a good starting point for anything, but after seeing a B&O freight shed picture found on the internet and forgotten as soon as the project was completed. Such small structures located on the mainline or nearby were quite common and handled often LCL freight. Convinced the Bachmann kit proportions were alright; I soldiered on to transform in it something more “serious”.

 

Broken into its basic components

As always, taking apart the poorly glued kit was half the challenge of this build. I had to decide what would be kept and what would be changed. The clumsy window and side door had to go and I once again had to try a few Tichy parts until I found ones that fitted both the bill and the holes in the walls. The large sliding doors weren’t bad and quite close to real ones, so they would be kept. Even the clumsy “wooden” deck in front of the station was to be kept. Recent experiments with Arlee Station proved me it was just a matter of cladding them with individual wooden plank to change their look.

 

Adding wood grain is the single most important step with plastic kits

As with all my other recent builds, the plastic wall were distressed with a razor saw to simulate wood grain. This is truly the small and easy technique that really change the game. I felt the planks covering the lower portion of the walls were out of scale. They were about 18 scale inches wide! So using a flat screwdriver, I visually split them in two by scribing an additional line in the middle of each plank.

 

The kit qualities are starting to reveal themselves

The side wall openings were also extensively reworked. The window needed some additional styrene to fit gaps on each side, but the door required extensive surgery. It had to be made higher but narrower. Some battens were added and I carved out the weird flat board on top of the door that used to have an “office” sticker sign. The oversized Bachmann gooseneck light was replaced with a Tichy one mounted on a piece of phosphore bronze. I also replaced the caricatural handles on the large sliding doors with U-shaped pieces of wire.

Never forget to add soffite... little details matter in architecture

The roof underside was decorated with thin styrene fake soffit that was glued in place. The roof fascia were alright and only needed some texturing. The roof sign holes were plugged with bits of styrene and sanded down flush with the roof.

 

Painting almost done on the main structure

As with all my American structures, it was painted buff with brown trims. Some weathering was applied. At first the wall lower parts were painted buff, but I felt it didn’t make sense. Railroads would have painted parts that gets a lot of abuse and near the ground with the darker paint to hide defects. Looking at the B&O prototype picture, it was clear they used brown for everything under the platform. So, I came back and changed it.

The roof was covered with tar paper on the original tooling and I thought it would be nice to use the same material. It was my first time modelling tar paper, so I followed a few YouTube tutorials, specifically one by Jason Jensen. I used construction paper, primed it with grey paint and distressed the strips with a 220 grit sandpaper. The technique is quite easy, but I admit the result was a little bit overboard for a well-maintained structure. Also, I should have used a much darker grey as this looks far too light. Anyway, I learned a new technique and it is what matters. The paper strips were glued directly on the roof using canopy glue. I wonder if in the future, double-faced tape could be applied to the back of the paper strips. I see a lot of possibilities for the future feed mill I need to build on Mink Subdivision.

 

My first attempt at tarpaper roofing

Finally, I decided to clad the entire original platform with planks made of styrene strips. I had to fill some gaps in the Bachmann parts and to remove about 0.5mm at the bottom to take into account the thickness of the new planking. I didn’t want my platform to sit higher than the doors.

 

Crucial steps are often simple but repetitive

I knew it would be a long process, but texturing, cutting and gluing the planking took forever. A few hours were spent on that task. In fact, it probably took half the time required to convert the building. It was not hard work, just incredibly time consuming. However, the result is excellent and worth the time invested.

 

The rebuilt kit

At the end of the day, I’m glad to have completed this project. I always wondered if the Bachmann kit could be turned into something more realistic and layout friendly. The answer is yes. The design of the kit makes it perfect to set a pickup truck or any vehicle by it. Someone could open the sliding doors opened and model an interior by adding a floor and lots of crates, sacks or barrels inside. Another advantage of this kit is his size. The footprint can fit many different locations without overpowering the scene.

 

Ready for a future layout...

I still have a few kits that needs improvement. The last two I will document here are the Walthers speeder shed and another old classic 1958 Revell kit. Stay tuned!