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"Building the Diljak/A-1 Container Co." was published in the March 2004 issue of Railroad Model Craftsman magazine. |
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"Building the Diljak/A-1 Container Co." was published in the March 2004 issue of Railroad Model Craftsman magazine. |
These are some of the construction photos I took while building the model. Incidentally, I entered this model into a NMRA Merit Award Judging contest and received 104 points on it. I'm very proud of that!
| To plan the buildings that would make up the Diljak/A-1 complex (4 buildings), I drew rough scale outlines on the computer, printed them out, and mounted them on cardboard. In this shot, the loading dock (lower left) and storage building (center) would become the model in the article. The pill bottle represents a tank that will be added sometime in the future. Between the two red buildings you can see a black film canister -- that represents the adhesives tank that would be modeled in the article. The white building on the far left is now a brick building, the A-1 Box Company, which you can find on the Glen Oaks page, and which will become the subject of a future Railroad Model Craftsman article. |  |
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The first structure that was completed is the stand-alone loading dock. As I mention in the article, it was built board-by-board. Here's one of the "in-progress" shots. |
Here's a closeup of one of the building sides, showing me using a drafting compass to add nail holes to each of the boards.. |
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This is the building in the Micro-Mark magnetic jig mentioned in the article. All of the wood has been stained with the India ink/alcohol solution, but none has been painted yet. |
| As I mentioned in the article, I cast my own windows out of two-part epoxy resin. These are the masters, made of dimensional styrene strips, for the main floor windows. I'm about to make the RTV mold of them. |  |
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This is the assembled building. Again, everything's been stained but nothing's been painted. |
| As mentioned in the article, I scratchbuilt and cast my own pipe flanges for the outside tank piping. Here's a closeup of a test flange on a plastic sprue. |  |
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Before I came up with what would be the final sign, I designed this one for the roof. I later decided the "DC" logo was too modern for the era the building was supposed to represent. |
| One of the shots that didn't make it into the article is this one, showing the roof eaves on the dock side of the building. |  |
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One of the smaller details on the model is this open dock door, revealing a few pallets of barrels and a man taking inventory. There's a grain-of-wheat lamp mounted in the ceiling to illuminate this scene. |
| Here's an alternate view of the building's entrance, proving that the guy on the left is actually moving a barrel, not peeing (as it appears in the magazine shot). |  |
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Finally, here's a test of the building in the spot it will occupy on the layout. Obviously the model's not done yet -- no roof on the entrance, and no clutter on the loading dock. |