EJ's Garage - A Foam-Core Exclusive

Our Christmas 2010 trip to Nevada gave us a chance to get better acquainted with our three grandchildren, Olivia (the Doll Bed), EJ and Gabby.  Being a normal little boy EJ tends to run around and shout a lot, unlike little girls who only run around and shout, a lot.

EJ NOT running around and shouting.

EJ needed somewhere to park his Hot Wheels cars instead of all over the floor.  Two and three year old's don't really understand "picking up" and "putting away" so I had to find a way to make it fun.

Before you begin cutting Foam-Core Board, gather some of the cars that will be housed in your kid's garage.  Some may be a little wider, longer or taller than others so size your stalls accordingly.

My garage used 4 roof supports and 3 stall dividers.

I had a spare piece of Foam-Core Board 9"wide x 12" long for the Base so I made 6  Stalls, 1-1/2" wide.  I decided to make the Stalls 4" long by 1-1/2" high at the front and 1-1/4" at the rear and cut 7 identical Stall Divider/Roof Supports to those dimensions.  Take a moment to mark the square corner at the rear and bottom edges.

I drew guide lines from the back edge of the Base to locate 5 of the 7 Stall Divider/Roof Supports, spaced 1-1/2" apart, the first and seventh will set flush to the 9" sides of the Base  The Back Wall will be 9" wide to fit the Base and 1-1/8" high.  The last part to cut is the Roof.  I cut mine 9" long and 4-1/2" wide

Start assembly by applying glue to one long edge of the Back and locate flush to the back edge of the Base, holding it vertical for a few seconds for the glue to set.  Now apply glue to the bottom and rear edges of one Stall Divider/Roof Support and locate against the Back and flush to the side of the Base.  Repeat with a second Divider/Support locating flush with the other side of the Base.  Now glue the remaining Divider/Supports, placing them on the locating lines drawn earlier.  The last part to assemble is the Roof.  Apply glue to the top edges of all the Divider/Supports and locate the roof to fit the sides and back edge.

I cut a carry handle opening 1" from the "front" edge, 4" long and centered on the 9" dimension.  This allows EJ to carry the loaded garage around the house without dropping any cars along the way. I also cut the sharp front corners at a 45 degree angle. All that is left to do is paint your garage.

I received word a month ago that EJ's Garage has stood up to him standing on it so I believe yours should be just as strong.

Happy Modeling, Armchair

Folk Arts and Crafts

Folk Arts and Crafts Modeling:

In the great unwashed middle of the USA, often referred to as 'fly over country' by those on the East and Left coasts, live a lot of humble people who went without electric power, paved roads, indoor plumbing and other 'big city' things until after WWII and the late 1940's.  I lived there.  Nebraska, in particular, is often thought of as the home of hicks and hayseeds.  Into the 1950's there were only 10 cities with a population of over 10,000 in the state.  Even today, the third largest city is Memorial Stadium in Lincoln when the Huskers play a home football game, population, 87,000.  I only remember one hobby shop while growing up.  But, people did make things, little trinkets, whirly-jigs, bird houses, doll dresses and doll houses.  With no TV, and little to guide us we built what we saw or experienced.

Carnival Rides:

During my 8th and 9th grades I met a local shoe repair man, a simple, unread, old man.  Each year, in this town of about 750 souls, a carnival would set up on the main street for a few days and from his observance he began to build miniature rides.  He had a marry-go-round, Farris wheel, octopus, maybe more.  He built these from what he had around the shop and what he could find at the local hardware store; wire, wood, nails, cardboard, tin, etc.  While not to any particular scale they all fit together and anyone who saw it knew instantly that it was a carnival.  If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, it is a duck.

He inspired me to do my first scratch building, a marry-go-round, hanging swing, ride with 4 airplanes.  Our store basement had a dirt floor, work bench and a light bulb, all you needed for Folk Arts and Crafts building.  Tools were my fathers hammer and saw, supplies were some wood scraps, coat hangers, nails, wire, aluminum paint and toilet paper rolls.  No plans, no instructions, just imagination.  At Christmas it claimed the center of one of the front windows of the store and people stopped to look and enjoy.

Railroad Trains:
Like most boys of that time I did have an electric train, an American Flyer S scale 2 rail system, not a layout, just track and train.  During those years grown men wouldn't play with trains, but some did build them.  At Pioneer Village in Minden, Nebraska, there is a large scale train running around the walls, just below the ceiling.  The cars are about a foot high, maybe 3 feet long and built with the material someone found around his home or farm.  From the number of cars it must have been done over many years of cold winter nights.  While crude by today's standards, people are amazed by the detail and handiwork required to accomplish such a feat.

Automobiles: 
During high school, 1954-1957, a friend's brother built a riding, one person, model T.  It had 4 bicycle wheels, a lawnmower engine, metal body, sliding convertible top and ran.  While some made fun of him (one of the geek types), he was proud of accomplishing something no one else in town had done.  And done with the little money he earned.

Flour Sack Dresses:
During the 1930's the flour companies shipped their flour in cloth sacks printed like the cotton fabric you would buy at the store.  Thrifty housewives used these sacks to make dresses for their little girls and other needed items around the home.


Doll Houses:
My late Father-in-law, Bob Herrick, was a produce manager by trade, but enjoyed working in the garage.  After retirement they moved to Oregon where scrap wood was plentiful.   He found a travel trailer company scrap pile, collected and filed the clear wood by size and length, filling a whole wall of his garage with boxes.  From this supply he built doll houses for the grand-daughters, daughters  (see Intro to Building a Diorama) and even some for sale.  His greatest one was a three part, eleven room, Victorian, done on commission.

Conclusion:
The collective thing for all these is that they used material found, not bought.  A make-do attitude of self reliance born out of hard times.  A lot of the joy of building these Folk Crafts was more in the doing than in the finished product.  They weren't built to be sold, but to be built, maybe given away, maybe just kept.

Building a Diorama - Part #10 - Surgery

SURGERY:
I hope you are over your fear of change.  As I said in my fit of rage (Part #2) I took the scissors and hacked the middle section of the 'finished' diorama from top to bottom, leaving the track section and a small section at the top to hold the two halves together.  Here are the before and after pictures.

A nice, simple, finished diorama.

A chopped up diorama.

I am going to follow this up with a series of pictures showing step by step how I CHANGED / EVOLVED this simple diorama into a more dynamic and photogenic railroad setting.

My first action was to strengthen the top connecting section by wrapping with plaster cloth.  I then covered the rough edges with plaster cloth to connect them to the profile boards.  To allow shaping the ravine i added 1" extruded foam to the sides and bottom using acrylic caulk adhesive.  Note the pill bottle wedges and the carved out front edge for the little, almost dry, creek bed.  A sharp eye will notice I was still experimenting with  ground coloring.

 

This picture shows more detail of the use of plaster cloth, extruded foam and pill bottles.  Not seen is the ledge I cut into the blue foam under the track roadbed to provide a base for the 1" high end bents for the pile trestle bridge I will be adding later.  Also note the high level of expertise used in cutting the foam and expensive tooling involved.  As they say on TV, "Don't try this at home, I am a professional."  The exam to attain this 'professional' level is to JUST DO IT!

Here is another view of the high level of expertise required to achieve this finely crafted diorama.  I simply used what was available at the time, newspaper, pill bottle and scrap blue foam, stuffed into place to hold the conture required.  As stated before, a clean and neat work area is a necessity to achieve professional results.

Now you see the ravine shaped by adding a back wall of blue foam and plaster cloth, supported in the rear with newspaper and scrap foam pieces.  The sides and bottom were shaped with a rasp and painted with several thin coats of lightweight spackling thinned with water.  The plaster cloth areas were painted in a similar manner to blend into the existing scenery.

 

This low angel view gives a better perspective of the finished ravine and the area to be bridged.  The two ledges are also visible on either side below the roadbed.  The white color will accept color in the next series.

This shot is to show you the type of jig I used to build the bents for the trestle.  It consists of a piece of foam core board with a center line drawing of the pile and cross brace locations taped in place.  I covered the whole thing with a cutoff sandwich bag and used straight pins for locators.  I will have a better diagram in the later part about Driven Pile Bents for Trestles.

The evolving ground coloring proved too close to the rock outcrops and will be changed.  The pile bents are laid out to show their detail, most of which will be hidden once they are installed.  The wet trickle of water maintains a little growth of questionable quality and was created by dribbling several layers of grey, blue, green and yellow down the back wall and let run to the front.  Several coats of gloss poly helped give it the wet look.

The bents are now installed and support the roadbed.  All that remains is to install a few braces and touch up the ground coloring to be more in contrast to the rock carvings.

 

Finally we see the mostly completed diorama, backed by the mountain and sky boards, used as a setting for a little engine and caboose.  Still need to add some scrubby plant life and better contrast between the rocks and ground.  Yes, it is still evolving.

Building a Diorama - Part #9 - CHANGE

CHANGE:  "The more things change, the more they stay the same."  anonymous

Building a model railroad is almost like being a god.  We get to create it anyway we wish; big or small, old time or modern, steam or diesel, city or rural.  But, unlike God, it is not perfect, we see defects and ways to make it better.  We see the need to CHANGE!  BUT, look at all the Effort I put into this!  All the Money!  All the Time!  To CHANGE a CREATION is sacrilege!  So, maybe we aren't ready to be gods!  Maybe WE should consider EVOLUTION!  We start out small and simple, add a little here and there, get more room, find more money, learn new skills.  All this prepares us for the dreaded CHANGE!  But wait, from the beginning this layout has been evolving, and evolution is change.  See, now change is not so big and threatening, it's just a little thing.  Now change is something we can cope with and someday even embrace.

Here is a little about the changes I made, or better, how my diorama evolved over time.

Just starting out with Foam-Core Board and string.

The shape take form with Plaster Cloth.

Some paint makes it start to come alive.

Rocks take shape with Lightweight Spackling.
 

Building a Diorama - Part #8 - An Interlude

An Interlude:
For those of you who have been following this Blog it may be time to press the pause button and look back a bit to Part #2 - Finding Your Setting.  For newbes, that little tirade about change will expose you to an insight into how I approach things, consistently procrastinate until you explode with 'whatever.'  Another insight might come with my blog of June 16, 2011, Who Am I?

I guess a better title would have been "The Lull Before The Storm."  I might be described as an enigma, not exactly what I seem to be.  The cool, confidant, intelligent individual is not exactly who I am.  I grew up with change, 12 addresses by high school graduation.  I have lived my adult life with change, 50 more addresses and 35 jobs of several descriptions.  I have never been settled long enough to have a permanent layout, never learned to get "really" organized, never really learned to make close friends.  At best you could say I live in the present and the past, my future is unknown, sort of a "Doctor Who" type of person.

So back to modeling.  I like to experiment by doing things a different way, yet one of my favorite sayings is "Don't reinvent the wheel!"  That is why this Blog was started, using foam-core board, because the model railroad community consensus was that the material was unsuitable for model railroad construction.  What a challenge!  If you have sauntered off to other model railroad sites you may notice that I am not a "really, really" good modeler.  I believe in caricature, point out the obvious - if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it is a duck.  Therefore, if it has engines and cars like a railroad, and moves around scenes like a railroad, it is a railroad!  The funny thing is, most people agree with me, maybe not most 'real' model railroaders, most people.  What I am trying to achieve is a step up from a bare plywood board and helping a modeler who may feel all alone in the wilderness.  I want the modeler to gain the confidence to build a little layout, add some track and scenery, run some trains and impress your friends (and yourself) who thought you could never do all that.  So with this in mind let us go into the holy of holy's, the layout, and rent the scenery in two and change the scene.  On to Part #9 - CHANGE!

When Kids Had Jobs

Sacked Potatoes at four years old: 
When I was quite young my parents had a general store in rural Nebraska.  Needing a few cents for a soda I ask if there was any work I could do.  They showed me how to weigh out 10 pounds of potatoes in a paper sack and would pay me 1 cent per sack.  They were surprised when they found I had filled over ten sacks.


Tended Our Motel:

When I was between eight and ten years old we had a motel in Southern Oregon where I helped my parents by showing the rooms, checking in guests, carrying their bags, cleaning the rooms and making the beds with 'hospital' corners.

Picked Blackberries and Hops:

During the summers a friend and I picked and sold blackberries door to door.  Another time we went with his mother to pick hops in the field along with transient adults.  I was allergic to the vines but we stayed with it and made between one and two dollars a day.  It was there that I first experienced seeing two men in a fist fight.

Set Pins, Collected Scrap and More:

During my fifth and sixth grades I set pins in a bowling alley for 5 cents a line.  The evening leagues had five  players bowling three games so I could make 75 cents.  Soon I learned to set two alleys at a time and doubled my earnings.  If I set both early and late leagues I could earn $3.00 plus tips.  All this was not without risks as sometimes pins would fly out of the pit and through a window.  Once I was tired, let my feet drop a little and had a pin hit me in the head.  The manager took me to the hospital and I checked out OK.  Some friends would help unload cream cans from the truck at the creamery and earned some cash.  The Korean war was on so we would collect scrap metal to sell to the junk yard.  I also had a small route selling Grit magazine on Friday afternoon, making a penny a copy.

Full Time Summer Farm Work and Other Jobs:

My seventh, eighth and ninth grades found me with paper routes, working at the swimming pool, mowing lawns, scooping snow and even working a couple of weeks on local farms as well as my parents store.  The rest of my high school years were more of the same with the summers working full time on a farm.  We worked 12 hours a day with lunch provided, six days a week for $25.00 a week.  During my last summer our high school building burned and I got to play fireman and take a hose inside.  Before we were called out I could see the hallway wall bowed in about 6 inches.  These jobs got me a 1949 Cushman motor scooter ($65.00) and the next year a 1937 Buick Special ($55.00).  I graduated high school in 1957 and went straight to Basic Training at Lackland Air Force Base, ending my youthful jobs.

Conclusion:

I am sure that many of you have similar memories, done without worrying about government regulations and onerous child safety laws.  Doing these jobs taught us about work ethics, respect for our elders, the value of money and prepared us for our adult life.  Today adults deliver the papers, automatic pinsetters set pins and most kids are forbidden to work similar jobs.  I believe WE were the lucky ones, gaining knowledge you can't learn in a classroom.

My "Little Boy's Toys"

Long before X-Boxes, Smart Phones, skateboards and Wii, there were scooters, roller skates, chemistry sets, crystal sets and books filled with do-it-yourself toys.  This was a time before lawyers took the fun and pain out of playing.  As an 'old timer', born in 1939, I invite some of you to go back with me and remember this simpler, and I believe 'funner', time.

Our scooters had two wheels about 8 inches in diameter, no lights, a friction brake and back-up parking stand.  They would take us to school or store and only wore out the sole of your pushing foot.

Roller skates had steel wheels, toe clamps, a leather strap to keep your heel in place and a skate key that hung around your neck on a loop of string.  That key would do all the adjusting needed to keep you skating.  When your shoe did slip out of the toe clamps the skate would ride up your heel and take some skin, leaving you hopping along with one skate on and the other flopping around your ankle.  We often combined an old skate with some boards and a wooden crate to produce a scooter more similar to what we see today.

Wooden swords were made by nailing a short piece of lathe (remember real lathe and plaster walls) across a longer one sharpened with an ax or old butcher knife.  These battles usually ended with little more than a knot on the head and some slivers.  If they did draw blood Mom was usually there with a "Band-Aid" and kiss.  If it was more serious she would get out the iodine that caused more pain than the injury itself.  (blow, blow, blow)

Cooping saws, wood burning sets, hammers and nails were other fun tools for unsupervised craft  projects that we would later proudly present to our adoring parents.

BB Guns and slingshots were about the only things that were forbidden or sternly warned about (You will shoot your eye out!).  Old inner tubes kept us with an endless supply of elastic material.

Before transistor radios there were crystal sets you could order for maybe 50 cents.  They consisted of a little bar with a "cat whisker" on the end that we moved about on a small "crystal" mounted in a piece of lead, all attached to a copper wire antenna and ear phones. When we were lucky we could listen to a nearby radio station.  This must have seemed like a miracle as it used no outside power.  These could be upgraded with a tuning coil of copper wire wrapped around a toilet paper roll with a slider made out of a tin can.

Tin cans were the metal of the day for us as they were plentiful and every basement or garage had tin snips.  Combine the end of a tin can with a wooden thread spool, a nail, a brad and a sawed off end of a broom handle and we could have helicopter blades that would sail 50 feet into the air.  Of course this could not be completed without cutting your fingers on the sharp tin, but we all had a lot of that.

Chemistry sets were the pride of geeks to come.  They contained many elements that are banned in mail shipments today.  We could turn water red, heat test tubes until something burnt and create nasty smells along the way.

As I said, most of this was done with little, or no, supervision.  I guess they felt we had enough 'common' sense to not get too badly hurt, and if we did we would learn a good lesson.  And I was a town kid that envied the farm kid who could do so many more fun (dangerous) things.

Stay tuned for "Kids Used to Have JOBS."