The Roundhouse, Part 1.

Photo by fellow modeler Ethan.

Well, I hope everyone enjoyed that little tale. I'm planning on posting more of my W&A Disney/Alternate Universe here. However, don't think this sit is going to turn 100% into a Disney fan-site. There is still a lot of serous model railroading to do. 

2020 is here, and work continued on the W&A RR. One big project I started tackling was the construction of the roundhouse itself. The railroad roundhouse goes all the way back to the early years of the railroad industry with the first known of its kind having been said to have been built in Derby, England in 1839. As steam locomotives grew in size so did the building. Steam roundhouses were dark and drafty places. Usually full of smoke and the thick scents of hot locomotive oil, ash, and soot. Most structures could hold more than two dozen steam locomotives and acted more as a maintenance/storage building then a heavy shop. Since steam locomotives had to stop often to refuel and required much maintenance from their handlers, just about every large yard across the country contained a roundhouse of some size to provide such and turn them if needed.

The Marceline roundhouse has 10 stalls and is made up of two separate buildings. The first roundhouse on the site was a brick structure that contained 5 stalls and was erected in the 1870s. Later, in 1882 as Marceline became a division point and repair and service facility, the need for more stalls saw the construction of a second section. The 1882 house was built from granite quarried at the nearby Stone Mountain. 

From day one, the idea was to scratch-build the roundhouse. Due to the confinements of the layout, the roundhouse would have to be a bisected model. With half of the house being a false-front that faded into the backdrop. The end result would be a 10 stall roundhouse where only 7 stalls could be used. Of that 7, 5 could except any sized locomotive in my fleet. The other 2 would only be capable of taking the 0-6-0 saddle-tank, or one of the 1860s 4-4-0s. 

Early track plan. Note the roundhouse only has five stalls at this stage.

After Tyler developed the trackplan, we made a full size drawing of the roundhouse footprint and track-plan to build the model off. Tyler taking his time and actually drawing an architectural plan.

My first attempt was to cut the wall segments from crescent board and foamcore, then layer them with Plastruct stone and brick sheets. To this method, I built a test wall. Complete with windows. Then weathered and painted it. It looked okay, but it failed to have the desired effect I was looking for. 

Then, I remember a diorama I had built some years back, where I used the wall segments from a Revell Superior Bakery/Weekly Herald/Engine house to make the walls for the shop building. Superior Bakery, the Weekly Herald, and the enginehouse were all variations on the same kit, all using the same basic parts and went together in a similar fashion. One or two areas of the kit have interchangeable inserts, to allow for some variation in placement of doors and windows. I still had two kits left over. A bakery and an Engine house. I had to splice few sections together, but these made up the sidewalls of the structure. The back-walls were made from foam-core. 

A nice touch to the stone roundhouse was the peaked facade, complete with a date engraving. The facade was from an Kibri Town Hall kit. One of the nice things about the Revell parts was the architectural trends that date back to the appropriate era. Such as the 'eyebrows' over the recessed window ledges and the stone support pillars that can be seen inserted in the walls.

The roundhouse roof was made from crescent board. The stone boarders and door frames were made from wood. I wanted the roofs to have the look of a copper plated roof. The roof was laminated with a layer of aluminum foil end to end. The foil was creased and glued over some of the raised detail such as support beams, gutters, and tar patches and helped mold the whole structure together. Panel lines and patches were scribed into the foil. Then the whole thing was primed with rustoleum primer, and painted.

To achieve the copper effect, Polyscale "NYC Jade Green" was diluted with water and washed over the roof. It took a few washes to achieve the look, but the slight green tint really accents the copper roof. A few tar patches using Applebarrel "Pavement" acrylic paint completed the roof. 

Painting the walls of the stone roundhouse was a relatively simple process. They were first primed with Tamiya primer, and then a coat of "Granite Gray" from Applebarrel was applied to the whole structure. a light gray was then dry brushed in a number of coats to bring out detail on the raised surfaces. Finally, some weathered with applied also with drybrishing. I currently do not own an airbrush, so most of my weathering and painting is a variation of dry-brushing and washes. 

Flipped upside down, we can see the dark and smoky interior.

The interior is held up by several beams and joists made from basswood. The whole interior is painted with a mix of camouflage brown and black. Going from brown to black, front to back. I decided not to detail the stalls and instead go for this shadowy smoky black interior in order to hide the fact that the roundhouse is partially a false front. 


The front doors are leftovers from two set of Walther's Roundhouse kits that I built for our model railroad club's own steam facility. These where painted and dry brush weathered. The doors were set up to open inward so as to provide a clean look to the front of the house.



Things left to be done include the entire brick roundhouse, smoke-jacks (Which I intend to have 3D printed) and a number of smaller details around the structure. Construction has also started on the second half of the roundhouse, the older brick house.