Montmorency Falls Station - Part 3

This project is running smoothly and yesterday was another busy day. Four hours of work were required to put together the small bow window in front of the station. While it is a very small feature, it required extra care when laying the masking tape. Truth to be told, the smaller the surface, the harder it is to make it perfectly straight because of the nature bulge occurring when the tape goes around the corners.

For this reason, I decided to install the tape cladding first, then cut the window openings later and add the window trims last. It did work OK even if it wasn’t perfect.

When the bow window was done, I set it in place on the station and using a brand new X-Acto blade, I cut the cladding along the bow window’s profile. It resulted in a perfect and seamless match between the two parts. Then I cemented the bow window once for all.

A final coat of Krylon tan camouflage paint blended everything together. I’m planning to use this color as a base for the concrete foundation. In the past, I got excellent results using this particular color for old weathered concrete. It had this particular shade of tan that mimick perfectly when sand aggregate in older concrete is exposed by weathering process.

The roof is made of 1.5 mm styrene. I made a 3D model in SketchUp of the structure as built and determined the exact size of each part to make sure the parts would fit without guess work. When cemented in place, I scribed 0.25 styrene sheet to make soffite material. It was then cut to size in place and cemented. Some adjustements will be required to make sure everything fits perfectly before installing trims and gutters. Even if you work with precise CAD drawing, you are bound shim here and there.

For the roof, I’ll use Rusty Stumps auto adhesive asphalt shingle products to save me from severe mental pain. It was supposed to be used for Limoilou station in a previous iteration of the layout, but that project was abandoned long ago.

Montmorency Falls Station - Part 2

Mark my words. It only took 12 hours to install and scribe the cladding on the station... I almost lost my sanity toward the end when my eyes were unable to focus anymore. It was time to go outside, take the bike out of the shed and ride for the first time of the year under the glaring sun.

This is when I lost my sanity... and eyesight.

Each row of shingles was made out of 6 mm Tamiya masking tape (in fact, it took an entire roll). Each single was individually scribe with a metal point. In the end, I felt building the real station would have be less mentally tiring!

The bow window area will be cut later when the exact profile will be known

Fortunately, the result is exactly what I wanted and after a coat of paint, it looks great. I don't care the amount of work I put in a model as long as the pay off is worth the effort. No pain no gain isn't it?

Next step will be to build the roof structure. I suspect the front gable will be quite a challenge thought... Oh, and more asphal shingles on the roof!

Montmorency Falls Station - Part 1

This project started out of nowhere this morning after I weathered the woodchip gondola. During the last club meeting, Jérôme expressed interest that I work a little bit on the station behind Dominion Textile.

Montmorency Falls station and Dominion Textile in the background.

Up until now, the Beaupré station has been in use as a stand in. Most major QRL&PCo stations, while different in architectural details, shared common interior layout, general dimension and openings. For this reason, it fitted the bill nicely.

Beaupré station (not boarded up) circa 1980 (CN Betamax videotape). Note the old style croosbuck in the background.

However, the Beaupré station sports the old orange and olive green QRL&PCo paint scheme that was in used until 1959. Back in late 1958, CNR started to renovate the stations on the line (it means the simplified the trims, get rid of any architectural details reminiscent of gingerbread, installed new asphalt roofing instead of "à la canadienne" tin roof and cheap fake shingle cladding). According to official CN Betamax footage from the early 1980s, all remaining stations were in that simplified paint scheme. Except Beaupré station, all other buildings were boarded up and in a relative state of disrepair. Most would be demolished in the upcoming years. The last one to fell was Baie-Saint-Paul back in 2014 (if my memory serves me right) which is just another proof how the new tourist train is BS gimmick.

Abandonned St. Joachim station (boarded up) circa 1980 (CN Betamax videotape)

So here we are, back in the mid 80s, with a late 1950s station building. Two choices: alter, repaint and board up the existing model, which I would consider sacrilege. Or build a correct Montmorency Falls station. I decided on the second choice for obvious reasons.

First, I decided to build a 1.5 mm thick styrene core with lots of internal bracing. I was quite easy to assemble. A good thing about boaded up building is you don't have to waste time cutting window openings. I let them blank and glued trims around the opening. After everything was glued, I came to the realisation I made a small mistakes with the trim. I used the dimensions required to insert a Tichy window... but didn't take in account the trims overlap the opening a little bit. Thus, my windows are about 1mm larger than they should be. I'm not sure I was to start making trims from scratch at this point thought! Maybe I'll keep them as they are and save me some pain.

 
The styrene core will then be covered with layer of painted masking tape to imitate the cheap cladding CN put on the buildings back in 1958-1959. When that will be done, I'll add the roof and bow window.

 
The new paint scheme will be quite spartan. Most trims will be dark green or white, depending on their location, the cladding will be medium gray and the roof will be black. I think it will suit better the layout. I'm also thinking it will be a good opportunity to install the speeder shed in the vicinity since it was common on Murray Bay subdivision.

CN Woodchip Gondola - The End?

If you are interested in this particular prototype, let me know (more details at the end of the post).

Hard to believe this project finally reached fruitition... It was a prototype and everything went wrong: bad material for the job, high cost, wrong decals, wrong scale proportions... just name it!

At some point, I truly grew dissatisfied with the model blatant mistakes. Since then, I made a correct 3D model, but didn't venture as far as print it. Making this car in Frosted Ultra Detail is gonna cost a lot of money. Making it out of styrene is quite feasible, but making a 10-car fleet would be a real chore.

Anyway, I spent more and time over this project. Instead of throwing it in the garbage bin, I decided to just complete it. It's just another foobie, but I think it is still much more plausible than Walthers woodchip cars.

The decals are a mix of several Microscale sheets mashed together and altered to look the part. Most knowledgeable people will quickly find out this particular car should be lettered "CN RAIL". Well, there's no commercial suitable decals for that so I settled on the regular wet noodle.

The weathering was a little bit experimental since I didn't have any oil paint at home at the moment. I decided to try Mike Confalone recipe by fading the paint with pastel. I used regular pastel, so the result is quite subtle. But that's OK because these gondolas were relatively in good shape back in the late 80s. Only by the mid-90s did they start to turn into rust buckets.

Several other shade of pastel were also used to give depth to both car ends: gray, tan and black. To be noted, to make sure the ribs would stand out, I took the pastel stick and directly rub it against them. It was quite garish, but once covered with the final dull finish, it would blend correctly I guess... And I was right.

I didn't want to use Dullcote on the model. I put several coat on it yesterday and it never really killed the shine on the model. So I decided to use Swanny's trick with Future. To get a very flat finish, you mix 3 part of Future and 1 part of Tamiya Flat Base. To be honest, the result is excellent. Not only the model got a very flat finish but it also slightly made the color to fade a little bit, which was the result I was looking for.

Unfortunately, I learned quickly that alcohol react nastily with the flat finish by whitening the finish. And unlike Dullcote, you can't make it disappear with a second coat of finish. So I had a lot of fun trying to hide my mistake. Lesson learned!

And I'll be honest, once weathered, the car looks gorgeous albeith for the obviously wrong proportions and lettering. But generally speaking, I think it will fool most people.

That said, I'm still intererested in building a prototypical fleet in the future, but for the roofless boxcars still have a long revenue service life in front of them on the layout. It will all depend if I can print new models at a decent cost and in a better finish. That means a second prototype in Frosted Ultra Detail or similar material will be required.

By the way, if anybody is interested in developping a more practical model of this iconic Canadian car, just contact me and let me know. With a custom made set of decals, it could be an easy model to build for any modelers.

Modern Progress

Yesterday I started working on Donohue's scenery, mainly the access road and employees parking lot. Everywhere on the layout I used gray paint to mockup asphalt, but Donohue was ready to get a layer of the real thing.

In the past, I used several different methods of making road: painted cardboard or styrene à la Lance Mindheim, Gordon Gravett's talc powder trick and drywall joint compound tinted when dry. Most of these method can yield great results depending on you color choice. Getting the right color is in fact much more important than which material you use. As a kid, I used tar paper on my first layout, but let discard that one for obvious reasons.

This time, I decided to use lightweight spackling following Mike Confalone's recipe. Once again, it looks easy on video, but it's quite something else! First of all, it is far thicker than regular drywall mud. I precolored it with black and raw umber to get a decent tone of grey, but let me tell you stirring the mix was a real challenge.

Spackling is also a little bit harder to spread evenly and smoothly. My first batch was full of air bubbles and it was hard to get rid of it. At this point, I put a very thick layer so I would plenty enough material to sand down when drying. Such is the way I made the road.

The job was much more easier when I did the parking lot. For some reason, the mix had less air bubble and was easier to spread.

You probably saw my mix is pink! I couldn't find regular white spackling so I purchased the pink one. The pink color is an indicator and when the stuff is dry, it turns white. As some spackling started to dry, it took a nice warm gray color. Unfortunately, the pink color makes it hard to guess the final color when you mix in the pigment.

As a matter of fact, I believe this method is good for small rural roads without curbs and have some complex geometry. It is also quite good for large expanse of asphalt. But for more urban roads with curbs and other details like that, I think I'll go back to the cardboard method. At least, in Villeneuve and D'Estimauville. Since these roads have very complex painted line works, I'd rather paint them at the benchwork than in place.