Building the roundhouse at Mount Forest...

[doctorwayne]

Well the work stoppage at Mount Forest finally appears to be over.

My original plan was to put transom-style windows atop the back walls of the roundhouse, but because I've shortened the sidewalls, there's not much height available, at least for a window of any use.  Instead, I'll add a "stone" cornice, similar to that which is atop the kit's sidewalls.

To make the cornice, I cemented a length of .125" square styrene strip atop another of the same size, then cut it into lengths equal to that of each of the four rear wall panels (the roundhouse has five stalls, but one was shortened quite a bit more than the others, so it has ample room for a transom window).
I distressed the face of the strips somewhat, then used my X-Acto to scribe vertical mortar lines in the "stone".  The segments were then taped to the top of the wall and cemented together.
The next day, after those joints had fully hardened, I cemented sheet styrene panels to the rear face of each segment.  Since the top of the walls are somewhat irregular, there's insufficient contact between them and the cornice to get a strong bond, so my plan is to have the styrene slide about a half-inch down the inner face of the rear walls, where I can bond the panels to the wall using contact cement.

Here's the assembled cornice, as seen from its bottom face.  The bottom edges of the styrene panels are also facing the camera...



Here, you can see the great fit between the top of the walls and the cornice...





Here's the cornice with the panels installed and ready for a coat of contact cement,  As you can also see, the interior of the rear wall has been scribed to denote how far down the contact cement is to be applied...



Once the contact cement had dried for the specified time, I draped waxed paper over the four wall segments, then carefully installed the cornice atop the wall, sliding the panels over the waxed paper until the cornice was in place.  The waxed paper was then withdrawn from between the two surfaces, and the panels pressed to the walls, completing the bond.....



I used pre-mixed drywall mud to fill the gaps, then painted things to make it look at least a bit better....



The next task was to build the roof trusses.  I used various sizes of strip styrene for the components, adding gusset plates cut from sheet styrene where appropriate.  The bracing follows, I think, a fairly standard arrangement of the bracing needed to support the roof.  I did remove the upper portion of the gussets that were on the lower support columns, seen in the earlier photos.   It was my original intention to use them as alignment devices, but some of them warped inward, leaving insufficient room for the roof trusses to be inserted. 

While I didn't take many in-progress photos, here's a view during construction.  It also shows the panels which hold the rear cornice in place....




This evening, I decided to start painting the interior, a nightmare of masking, as all of the window openings had to be covered from the inside so that the brick forming the window openings didn't get painted.  I cut the masking tape just slightly smaller than the over-all size of the windows, which will, like most such kits, be installed from the interior.  I wanted to be sure that none of the original red of the walls would be visible around the window frames, which should cover the thin red strips now visible around each window opening...if you look closely.



The support columns are still installed only temporarily, as they'll need to come out so that I can re-mask the interior in order to apply paint (a darker grey) to the lower portion of the walls and columns.  Once that's dry, the columns will be cemented in place, both where they're inserted into pockets in the floor, and at their ends, where they touch the front and rear walls.

The roof framing is mostly done, although it's not yet been painted.  I've started work on the hoods for the smoke collectors, which will have to be installed before the trusses get painted....



I've already cut-out the roof panels, one piece each for the lower and upper roofs, with windows attached to the lower one.   They'll be cemented to the roof trusses once the smoke collectors are installed.   The roof will then be removeable as one assembly...



Hopefully, I'll have more to show without a long pause like the one before this update.


Wayne