Sierra West Railway Camp for Modules

It has been a while since I had a chance to get back to doing some craftsman structure building.  At my very first Scotty Mason structures show, I had the chance to meet Brett from Sierra West and he introduced me to the railroad camp.  To me this would be a real challenge as there were three buildings.  Lots of board on board construction and some work with resin.  I had a plan as you saw earlier in my blog to put together two freemo modules designed around a 1920s theme.  Here is the main building part way through construction.

 So it took me two weeks to stain the wood and paint the resin walls.  In the first building which consisted of a warehouse, office and storage shed, there were 16 walls.  The office had a stone first floor with a laser cut clapboard second floor.  The other two building sections were board on board framing or lamination of boards over card stock laser cut shapes.

 As you can see here I used lots of bracing so there are no problems with warping..The loading dock has 40 legs and there are lots of individual bits of strip wood to be glue in place.

 This closeup of the backside shows some of the advantages of board on board.  Each bit of wood has it's own character and takes stain differently.  I used a water based stain which was part black and part brown..  The stonework was done with acrylics (different shades of grey) AI and bragdons.

 The upper office level clapboard was roughed up, then stained with the same mixture I used for the boards.  Then dry brushed with floquil concrete, followed by dry brush using "rotten Flesh" from citadel miniatures warhammer paint.  Then again AI was applied over that.  Nail holes were put in with Jimmy Simmons Monster Nailer.  This is a cool little tool with HO size double hole maker to make the perfect nail holes you always wanted.

 The storage shack was very interesting as you build the internal frames, apply 2x10s horizontally on front side and vertically on other three sides.  Then tar paper which I then weathered with Bragdons, And finally batons were applied over the paper.

 Each window was from a laser cut sheet.  Individual character was added with cracks, some opened part way, or signs or boarded up.  The frames are made around the openings with individual boards (five each).  Brett does a good job with his instructions to help you with weathering techniques and construction.

The doors are white metal castings which were primed, painted wood brown.  Then dark brown bragdon powder was then brushed on and set into grooves with mineral spirits.  Then dry brushing with flesh was done which highlighted the upper surfaces.  Some of the Bragdon powder mixed with this paint  and created an old grey-brown upper surface on each board.  Then AI was put over top to blend.