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Dusting Off the Shelves The Freight House

I'm opening my stash of kits and building some oldies but goodies. I started with E.J. Whiley a short time ago and now the Freight House. This is a smaller diorama but still has all the character and detail of SW kits. I's pretty much following the instructions but with updated techniques and materials as some materials outlined in the instructions are no longer available such as Floquil paints. My collection of Floquil paints has dried up long ago! The new acrylics available now are more readily available and offer good quality, especially the SW paint collection.

I did not find any builds for this kit on the forum so here's my build of The Freight House.

The kit is composed of 2 connected structures, The Freight House and The Tuck Repair Building. The freight house is a newer addition to the truck repair building so it is not as "weathered" as the truck repair portion. I chose to weather my freight house more as needing some "maintenance". The truck repair building is showing more "age" but still is not neglected.

The instructions start with constructing the walls of the Freight House.

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This is the front of the freight house located under the covered loading dock so doesn't show as much weathering.
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Comments

  • Great start. Anxious to watch your progress.

    Rick
  • Wow, that's one for the record books. Never seen a build of this. Great choice. Looking forward to this one.
  • Brett, that's kind of why I chose this kit. I haven't seen anything on it either.
  • On to the Truck Repair portion of the structure. I enjoyed building this portion. I like to detail structures and add signs and other interesting details.

    As noted earlier this part of the building represents an older more weathered structure. Not run down, just in need of some TLC.

    One item of note. There are a lot of windows on these 2 structures and windows are something I don't always look forward to. Cutting the mylar to fit within the castings I more often than not make them too big and need more cutting to fit or too small needing to cut a new piece. Well Brett has made the task enjoyable with laser cut mylar window inserts as well as the self stick parts. everything fits together perfectly and it makes the task much more enjoyable. It is even easier to detail the windows with bullet holes, cracks, missing panes, replacement panels etc.

    Here are the walls.

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  • You made me dig mine out and look at it longingly. Too many great kits to choose from. Not sure what my next build will be yet.

    Rick
  • Love the early kits and this is one you don't see all that often. What struck me Tom right away was your detail work on the siding and the nice toned down color treatments on both structures. Well done my friend!
  • I just had taken the one I have off the shelf wast week. Primed the castings.
    Brett I had this one built in Pittsfield Expo for sale.
    Anyhow I wait until you are done Tom and follow along.
  • I like all the signs on the wall.

    I keep going back to the front wall with the false front. Some faded stenciled lettering might look good across the top. I was also thinking that the double doors with the rusted hinges had a lot of contrast in the color. What would you think about slightly darkening the door or lightening the hinges?
  • You're off to a great start.
  • I have this kit as well. I'm glad you are doing the build. So far, so good. Phil
  • Thanks for all the nice comments guys. As for the doors on the false front they are metal castings. I primed them with good old Cammo Khaki then gave them a couple of washes of brown leather dye and alcohol. I might try giving them another wash of brown dye.

    If you notice the doors on the building sides and windows are darker than the door with transom on the front. This is a factor of how the light reflects off them. they are the same color. They are laser cut from a plywood and stained with the leather dye and alcohol mix. The trim on the top of the false front looks darker as well, but in person it's basically all the same.

    A faded stencil across the top would have been a nice touch to the false front, but I'm afraid it would be too difficult to add it now with all the details added.
  • I have assembled the structures and...

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  • Now for the and...

    After assembling the structures I had a major problem! as you can see in the above photo there is quiet a difference between the top of the side wall and the top of the rear wall on the Freight House. It's over 1/8". You can see the problem here.

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    So the only thing I can think of is when Gluing the 2 pieces of the rear Freight House wall together I used a wrong piece, but there was only 1 option and the alignment marks lined up properly.

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    The other option was I made the dock too tall, but there are 3 precut spacers included with the kit that help stiffen the dock and align the height of the dock. I made the legs of the dock according to the template and both align.

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    So I'm in a quandary as to what went wrong. In any case I had to come up with a solution. Fortunately the laser cut siding included extra material above the gable.

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    I cut the needed patch from this extra material.

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    Here it is just set in place to check alignment.

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    Once satisfied with the fit I glued it in place and it lined up so now the rear and side walls align.

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    Just a word of caution to those of you that said they were looking to build this kit. Do a dry fit of the structures before actually gluing the walls together to make sure everything is the right alignment. It is easier and wouldn't show if the extra material is added to the bottom of the rear Freight House wall.

    By the way the 3 Truck repair walls are glued together first according to the instructions and the rear Freight House wall is glued to the rear of that. This is before the Freight House is glued together. So I didn't know the walls wouldn't align until assembling the Freight House. So now disaster avoided, it's onward!
  • By the way I tried darkening the Truck Repair doors but thought I'd better stop as I wasn't achieving the look I wanted. So I did lighten the hinges a little which lestens the contrast.

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  • The challenges of modeling. Not everything goes according to Hoyle. You did a great job of recovering and the roof and rafters will hide it. Well done.

    Looks great too.

    Rick
  • A creative solution to the problem. Freight doors look great.
  • Hey Tom, I may not be visualizing things quite right but does the wall that came up short go all
    The way to the ground?
  • I find my best work sometimes is fixing my mistakes. Also hoping others don't catch them. Great job on the fix and the build so far.
  • Ken, yes the wall that was short does extend to the ground. The instructions say to glue the 3 truck repair walls together then glue these to the rear wall of the freight house. The truck repair sits on the ground and the freight house sets on the loading dock. The loading dock is constructed with a template for the legs. There are also 3 spacer blocks glued to the underside of the loading dock which are the same height as the dock legs. You can see this in the 3rs photo in my updated post.

    The freight house is then built on top of the loading dock.
  • Tom, if the short wall was even with the other walls at the bottom would that be where the discrepancy is. If that wall was moved up even at the bottom of the other walls would it line up at the top?
  • It would line up at the top but then it would then have a space at the bottom. This shows in the 7th photo of the assembled structures and the photo above after I glued the fix in place. The bottom has to line up with the Truck Repair bldg.
  • Looks like the truck repair should have a wall of its own and the freight house its own walls and the entire structure up on the elevated foundation?
  • Agreed Ken, but that's not what the instructions show.

    By the way, I have used a lazy susan for years and like it very much. It's just a piece of ship lap cut off from a decorating project from my wife. It's 5" by 7".

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    In any case I have finished assembling the structure. I used a slightly wider fascia and rafter tails than the instructions call for and I think it looks OK. You can see in the following photos that it does cover the patch pretty well.

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    You can just barely see the patch. This shot is taken pretty low and it just barely shows.

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    No on to the fun part, creating the diorama!
  • It looks fantastic. Not as run down as many portray, but some businesses should be better maintained. Sorry Ken. A little dinge, but no grunge.

    Rick
  • It's looking really good. It may not be super weathered, but the coloring and texture are very realistic. Nothing is sticking out that I can find. Great job. Phil
  • I like it.
  • It looks great!
    To my eye the patch is basically invisible.
  • loving this!
  • Well I think I've finished this oldie but goodie! Nice kit to build, straight forward with lots of character and interest.

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    Fun build! Now what next?
  • Oops! Posted the same side twice. Meant to post this pic also.

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