Santa Rosalia — the water’s edge, Part 2

My first post on this topic gave some general information about the goals of this part of the layout, and something about the approach I am taking to modeling a small area of waterfront at Santa Rosalia (you can read it at: http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2014/07/constructing-santa-rosalia-waters-edge.html ). In the present post, I describe work on creating the water area alongside my sea wall.
     First, the sea wall needed to be blended with the surrounding layout surface. I used Sculptamold for most of this, refined with taxidermists’ paper mache (Brandt’s). Second, I formed a fillet at the interface between the vertical wall of the room, and the horizontal surface where the water will be. This follows the approach I explained in an earlier post (you can read it at: http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2015/02/that-layout-backdrop-interface.html ). Once the fillets were sanded smooth, I coated the flat bottom of the water area with shellac. I like this finish for sealing wood surfaces. In its initial state, then, here is that area with fillets built:

Around the seawall area, you can see the approaching slope on the left, built up with paper mache of my two kinds.
     My next step was to prepare the seawall edges. As I showed in the previous post (link provided at the top of this post), Frenchman River Model Works sells a set of very nice resin castings of rows of pilings, their part no. 1573. One package of these contains three pieces, each 4-7/8 inches long, enough for my entire water’s edge. I did have to shorten the height of the pilings by 1/8 inch from the bottom of each piece to fit the height of the seawall I had built. I simply sawed this amount off with a razor saw. The piling sections were primed with a light gray.
     I also decided to represent the wharf along the seawall as wood planking, and used Evergreen no. 4100 V-groove sheet (this material has 0.100-inch spacing, which represents about 9-inch planks). I distressed the Evergreen pieces using a scriber, then used very coarse garnet paper to roughen the surface.

Here you can see the styrene “planking” merely laid in place — it still needs to be detailed and painted. By the way, at the rear you can see how the vertical room corner is coved.
     I now added heavy timbers along the edge of the dock pieces you see above, on which to mount mooring cleats, bitts, etc. These timbers were made using Evergreen styrene strip, 6 x 10 scale inches. These too were gently roughened with coarse garnet paper. Then I added styrene NBW castings to the edge planks, taken from an old Kemtron set, X-198. Next I primed these strips with the same light gray color as the pilings.
     The color I wanted to try on these pilings and wharf is a Star Brand color, “Seasoned Brown Wood” (STR-11), which has a very realistic look, though fairly dark. The color can go directly onto another piece of the scene, a short Central Valley stairway (taken from CV set 1602, “Steps and Ladders”), leading up from vehicle parking onto the dockside. Once painted, these were weathered with acrylic washes to lighten the color somewhat and add some gray.
     Here is how one of the piling sections looked, with the tops toward the camera. Note the slight irregularity in height and spacing of the individual piles. I think this is a really nice product.

     But before installing all this dock detailing, I needed to paint the “water” surface a suitable color, and deal with the sky-water interface, along with the lower edge of the sky on the bounding walls. My idea for the sky was to depict the familiar marine layer of cloud, so common on this coast, as though it might be lying some ways offshore. Adding a fog bank this way also would help avoid the problem of depicting the distant sea surface.
     For water, I used a light green, with lots of Neutral Gray, as seawater typically looks inshore. Once colored to my satisfaction, I can use Gloss Medium to give it a shiny water surface. One advantage to this method of representing water is that it can be cleaned with a damp cloth and, if necessary, recoated easily. My experience with modeled water made with cast clear resin has been that maintaining it is not so convenient.
     For my fog bank, I used primarily Titanium White acrylic tube paint, with a little Neutral Gray, to create the look of the marine cloud layers that we often see in the Bay Area this time of year and traditionally call “fog” even when it is in the form of overhead clouds. Here is how it looked at this point:

      Once I have the Gloss Medium on the water, I can install all my dock pieces and continue with scenery treatment on the shore side. I will describe those steps in a future post.
Tony Thompson

How I set up an operating session

I received an interesting query by e-mail after my recent post about the first “public” operating sessions on my layout in its present form; you can read that post at this link: http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2015/05/a-public-operating-session.html . The question involved some of the details in setting up the sessions, and I replied with a link to a post I wrote some time back, covering more broadly many of the issues for layouts in general (see it at: http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2013/09/setting-up-operating-session.html ). But the questioner had more specific concerns about waybills and movement of freight cars on my layout, thus this post.
     I have long believed in, and have tried to implement, car movements derived from an idea called “demand-based car flow,” and wrote three blog posts about it (the core post is probably the second in the series, which can be found at: http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2011/11/operations-demand-based-car-flow-2.html ). Over a series of sessions when I operate the layout by myself, this works fine. But it can result in irregular traffic flows, sometimes considerably so, and for operating sessions with guests, I modify the layout status to get a more “average” traffic flow. Here’s how I do that — and you could do it this way even if you have no car-flow system at all.
     My first step to set up a guest session is to walk around the layout and see what freight cars are in what locations, and consider the next moves of each, that is, whether they are loaded or empty, and how their movement will affect the totality of switching moves in that town. I sometimes carry a pad of paper to make notes, and gradually I build up a picture of what all would or could transpire in a session.
     Then I look at my staging table and my open shelves for car storage (the latter were described and shown in a photograph contained in a prior post: http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2011/12/operations-car-flow-and-car-storage.html ) to see what options I have readily available for new cars arriving on the layout. These may or may not be cars that would be chosen from my car-flow schedule. Many of them can become inbound cars to the industrial spurs which I have just surveyed to identify outbound cars which would leave those industries. Again, especially if I am using a pad of paper, I can add these to my picture of the possible car movements.
     At this point, I am imagining car movements such as spotting an empty wine tank car for loading, at my winery in Ballard, as in this view:

The same kind of imaginary plan of car movement is evaluated at every industry in each town. As I said, most of what I have been describing has come about from my car-flow schedule, but is being considered for modification to suit visiting operators.
     Next I look at waybills for all the candidate new cars, especially the ones which would become the new inbound cars. They may already have waybills made out that would be suitable for what I need, or sometimes they don’t. If not, of course, the right waybills are quick and easy to create and print out for use in the session. [In this blog I have written numerous posts about waybill usage, and you can search for them using the search box in the upper right corner of the blog page, with a search term like “waybills” or something more specific.]
     These inbound cars, by the way, can be staged onto the layout in advance, where needed, or can be placed in the Guadalupe Local so that they arrive at Shumala in the middle of the operating session.
     Usually I would then make sure I have everything covered, by making a quick list of the car movements in the session, to make sure there are no omissions, duplications, or other sources of confusion. But if things seem straightforward, with movements that I am familiar with in most cases, I would not bother with a list.
     Finally, I would sketch up a list of the agent messages needed for each town, based on what I have put together for car movements. Though not absolutely necessary for most movements, they do help crews with some information, as I described in my previous blog post (see that post at: http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2015/06/operating-with-agent-messages.html ).

     Then my hope is that each operating crew person can figure out the switching to be done, and proceed to do it, as Ray DeBlieck is doing at Shumala in this photo.

     As you can see, the entire set-up process does not take a lot of time, though making lists, agent messages, and (if needed) making more waybills may take some additional time to complete. So far my set-ups have been successful in laying out duties for crews, so I guess my process works.

Tony Thompson

Operating with agent messages

I have mentioned in previous posts that in many cases, railroad agents provided local switch crews with written messages to help direct their work. More commonly, I am sure, the communication was simply verbal. With both agent and crew doing the same jobs day after day, even the most abbreviated conversation would readily convey all that needed to be said. But if the agent were not on duty, a written message would substitute.
     My first post on this topic was fairly general, about the agent’s role (you can see it at: http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2011/10/operations-role-of-agent.html ), but was followed by something specific about the use of bill boxes for communicating the written messages. The latter post can be viewed at: http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2012/03/bill-box.html , and some prototype agent’s messages were included there. For the case of the SP in particular, I have described the use of blank forms of various kinds by agents for all kinds of messages, especially telegram forms (which by the 1950s were abundant and not often used as intended). That post is at this link: http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2012/08/internal-sp-communications.html .
     Waybill preparation has been described in several prior posts, including this one ( http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2014/07/waybills-part-33-more-on-role-of-agent.html ), and the waybill of course was part of the communication to switch crews. A conductor stepping into a depot to see the agent would receive fresh waybills for outbound loads which were to be picked up, along with Empty Car Bills for empties to pick up, and the conductor would deliver to the agent waybills for inbound loads the crew was going to spot or had already spotted. What the agent might have to convey verbally or in writing, was where to direct arriving empty cars (which were normally moved with paperwork only identifying a town destination), along with any special instructions, such as refrigerator cars to pre-ice.
     My own approach to using these messages was shown in a preliminary way in a post about a practice operating session, which I described in this post: http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2015/04/a-practice-operating-session.html . That practice session was informative for me, and I modified and extended the messages used then, for the full sessions conducted in my “public” sessions that followed. I described those sessions in a post soon afterward. You can find it at: http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2015/05/a-public-operating-session.html .
     This post is about the evolved messages I used. Drawing on the prototype messages shown in the earlier posts, I concentrated on identifying empty cars for crews to pick up, empty as well as loaded refrigerator cars needing icing, and any off-spot cars. Waybills for loaded reefers contain icing instructions, but a waybill is not made up until a car is loaded or about to be loaded, so the crew needs direction on icing if needed prior to loading (called “pre-icing”).
     Here is the opening message to the crew working Shumala at the beginning of the session.

As mentioned, this is on an SP telegram blank. For ease in reading the content, which may be a little small on the full message (above), here it is by itself.

The font used here, incidentally, is one called “Old Typewriter.”
     The empty car directions are not absolutely necessary, as the agent could hand the crew the filled-out Empty Car Bills for these cars, but I noted in reading the prototype messages that in several cases, agents did inform crews this way about empties to pick up. “Initial icing” is the first icing of a car after loading.
     The same kind of message was provided at the start of the session for the crew starting work at Santa Rosalia. For simplicity, I made one message, from the Ballard agent, directing work at both Ballard and Santa Rosalia, but in future I will probably issue separate messages upon crew arrival at the respective depots. Here is the content of that message.

     The pattern is much like the Shumala agent’s message, with the addition of a single off-spot car which needed to be spotted. The crew could be handed the waybill for this car when they get the agent’s message.
     For both messages, if you wish to figure out what the crew was expected to do, it might be helpful to look at my schematic town maps. The crew had these in the timetables they were issued. Construction of my timetable was described in my Model Railroad Hobbyist column, October 2014, and in a blog post, at: http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2014/10/my-column-on-timetable-construction.html .
     All four crews who operated here told me that the messages were clear and helpful about the “missing information.” The messages supplemented the waybills for loaded cars to deliver, which the crews also had, so those cars are not included in the agent’s messages. There were also cars at various locations which did not need to be moved, and for which crews had no waybill, Empty Car Bill, or mention in the agent’s message, and in that case, the cars were where they were supposed to be, no action required.
     I will continue to use, and likely to refine, my agent’s messages for switch crews. It reflects the prototype reality of the role of the agent, and seems to work all right in an operating session.
Tony Thompson

Another approach to tank car platforms

Platforms around tank car domes (or valve bonnets, on high-pressure or ICC-105 cars) have been a challenge to modelers for some years. The most familiar models, such as the Athearn blue-box “chemical” tank car, have a poorly rendered attempt to look like steel grid, not only far too thick but also not “see-through.” Until 1948, when “other than wood” walks became mandatory for tank cars, such platforms were commonly wood, not steel grid, so older tank cars may well not have the steel grid in any event.
     Before continuing, I should also repeat what I have often said, both in this blog and in many clinics, that the Athearn “chemical” tank car has a grossly oversize valve bonnet and platform — they are about S scale, not HO scale. The valve bonnet can be replaced, with the correctly sized Precision Scale brass part, number 31005 (I have shown that replacement earlier, at this link: http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2010/12/upgrading-old-models-2.html ), or with other replacements, such as Frank Hodina’s resin bonnet (see this post: http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2015/05/kitbashing-anchor-lpg-tank-car.html ).
     The platform, however, is the subject of the present post. About a year ago, I posted a description of my (not very successful) effort to kitbash the Athearn platform into a smaller wood-planked version, with shorter posts, which is at: http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2014/05/upgrading-tank-car-dome-platforms.html . By “not very successful,” I mean that the platform still had pretty big posts, and was a real pain to cut up and reassemble. You can see it on the foreground Dow car in this photo (the photo is repeated from that previous post). Behind it is a stock Athearn car with its huge bonnet.

The modified platform posts on the Dow car are about two-thirds the height they originally were, but are still a little too tall, and are still way too thick. And although the platform is about the right length (parallel to the rail), it is too wide. There has to be a better way.
     I decided to try something entirely different with the Hooker car that is in the background of the photo above. First, I discarded the Athearn platform entirely. I learned my lesson by trying to rebuild the one on the Dow car. I then used a razor saw to slice off the Athearn valve bonnet, and filed the cut surface to match the tank. This leaves some odd ribs and round depressions on the tank top, which need to be cleaned up. I shaved off the offending parts (note the thin black stripes right at the edge of the orange areas below — you can click to enlarge the image), and filled the two depressions with Squadron Green putty.

     I intended to keep the wide black stripe on the body, but needed to match the body color for the areas I had repaired. Eyeballing the color, I tried a mix of 2/3 Daylight Red and 1/3 Caboose Red (old Floquil). This matched fairly well, though the mix is perhaps a trifle too red; straight Daylight Red might have been better. But since the car will receive some weathering along its top surface, this isn’t serious.

     I now assembled the two parts of a Hodina valve bonnet and attached it to the tank with canopy glue. This bonnet is barely half the diameter of the Athearn molding. I show it unpainted for clarity, but it will be black along with the body stripe, as was Hooker practice (the original Athearn bonnet, with its orange sides, does not match any Hooker photo I have seen).

     Now for a platform. I decided to try the platform parts for the Atlas kaolin tank car, which are sold separately. This is their part  number 9170013, and is called an “upper platform with handrail.” At first glance, it is the wrong shape for the tank car I am looking at, though delicately molded and with see-through grid areas:

But since these are inexpensive platforms, one can use more than one to achieve the desired platform. I cut two of them, so as to use the “short end” of each, the left end in the photo above, thus creating the typical platform for a 1948 tank car. (That’s the built date on my model.) These platforms have mounting pegs molded to them, so I drilled no. 64 holes to accommodate them on the car, and used canopy glue to attach the two halves.

Compare the photo at the top of this post, for the difference in platforms. This platform is smaller than the black stripe, while the Athearn platform extended beyond it.
     Still, there may be some modelers who would say, “Well. c’mon, it still has about the same platform.” For a comparison, here are the Atlas part on the left (of which I used less than half) and the original Athearn platform on the right. Draw your own conclusions.

     This tank car now looks much better. What about the tank size? The Athearn “chemical” car is around 11,000 gallons size, which is all right for chlorine service, to which many Hooker cars were assigned, so the car size and lettering are all right in this case. This project was simple and yielded an improved Hooker tank car, and I’m happy with the result.
Tony Thompson

Pismo Dunes Road, Part 4

In the previous post, Part 3, I showed my trials of various ways to orient the street which intersects Pismo Dunes Road in East Shumala, to try and minimize visibility of the street heading straight into the backdrop (that post is at this link: http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2015/02/pismo-dunes-road-part-3-alder-street.html ).
      As I reported in that last post, I decided to very slightly curve and taper Alder Street, and went ahead with that plan. Here is the street after the shoulders were faired in with paper mache.

     Next I painted the shoulders and other unpainted or poorly painted areas with my standard dirt-undercoat acrylic color, Rust-Oleum “Nutmeg,” as I have shown in other posts. Just visible in the photo below is a small-radius fillet between the surface of Alder Street and the backdrop. (You can click to enlarge the image.) This helps hide the intersection of horizontal and vertical surfaces. Buildings have been removed in this view.

      The dark road surface you see in the photos above only depicts the primer color I applied to the bare styrene. I went back and painted the road a lighter color, typical of asphalt which has been in service awhile (whenever I need a refresher on how this kind of roadway looks, I just walk out in front of my house and look at the street). I used acrylic tube colors, predominantly Neutral Gray, with a little Titanium White to lighten it a little.
     The other thing needed in this scene is some suggestion that there are trees, bushes, or some kind of vegetation in the middle distance, so that the lowest angle view does not show the distant hills. I like to do this with acrylic tube paint, as I have shown in previous posts. Here is the revised scene, with the road a more nearly correct color, and various vegetation painted on the backdrop to show between the buildings and alongside Alder Street. Note also that I have cut off the bottom of the Caslon Printing Company flat and replaced the cut-off piece with a plain piece of foam core. As you can see in the top photo in this post, the original Caslon flat sat too far from the track. So what you see here is a revision of that flat in progress.

     My Caslon revision involved cutting off the bottom of the original flat, the part with the loading doors, moving it two inches forward to sit alongside the tracks, cutting a pair of 2-inch side walls from foam core, and covering the side nearer to the viewer with parts of the 3rd story of this building I removed originally in cutting it down. (You can read about that process here: http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2013/02/background-flats-2-kitbashing.html .) That’s another example of the old adage, “don’t throw stuff away if there is any conceivable future use for it.”
     Below is the new addition to the bottom of the Caslon building, with the two side walls done, and angled supports for a piece of foam core as the sloping roof. In this view, I have yet to apply a coping along the wall tops, which I made from  quarter-inch wide strips of 0.040-inch styrene, painted “Concrete.”

     The new addition also allows the background flat to stand up vertically without having to glue or tape it to the wall, which for me seems better. With the coping and roof in place, here is the entirety of the revision on the layout, completing the building. (You can click to enlarge.)

In the left foreground you can see one of my Walthers billboard structures, with an interchangeable ad for Lucky Lager beer in it. This idea was discussed earlier, at: http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2015/04/interchangeable-billboards.html . In addition, at lower right you can see my model of a California tankhouse, described in previous posts (such as: http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2015/05/building-california-tankhouse-part-2.html ).
     I'm happy to have a more believable loading dock at Caslon Printing, as before it was about 15 feet from the track, kind of a long reach for a plank to unload cars. And as mentioned it works better to support the building flat, too. My scenic locations along Pismo Dunes Road are coming along nicely. More later.
Tony Thompson

Completing a Richard Hendrickson freight car

Last year, I made a number of trips to Ashland, Oregon, to help Richard’s widow, Sandra, with all the model railroad materials he had accumulated. The entire photo collection, estimated at 30,000 prints (more than 30 cubic feet), has now gone to the California State Railroad Museum, as have most of his railroad books; the balance of the books went to the new Railroad Museum at San Luis Obispo. His accumulation of styrene and resin freight car kits has been sold on-line, as have all his Santa Fe brass locomotives and rolling stock.
     On his workbench were a few in-progress projects. As I knew from previous visits, his usual procedure when working on a particular model was to scan and print the appropriate prototype photo from his collection, and then place that print in a clip above the workbench for easy reference. There was just one print which matched a project on the bench, a Wheeling and Lake Erie gondola. Here is the prototype photo. I am not certain of its origin (nothing was marked on the back of this work photo), but it looks like one of Howard Ameling’s prints.

I decided I wanted to complete this model out of respect for what Richard was doing.
     I don’t know an awful lot about the W&LE, but I was able to consult Richard’s card file. Obviously dating from before the convenience of home computers, he had long maintained this file of 3 x 5-inch cards, containing descriptions of cars in photos (many of them in his own collection, others in books), as far as he could research them. Here is the well-worn card file box.

The box label reads “prototype info.” And here is his card for the group of cars for the photo shown above (there are more data on the back of the card).

     In brief, the W&LE bought three batches of cars like this. The first batch, WLE 45000–45499, was built by Bethlehem Steel in February and March of 1945; the second group, 750 cars, WLE 45500–46249, by Ralston Steel Car in December 1946; and the third batch, WLE 46250–46749, by Bethlehem Steel in October and November, 1948. All were 41 feet, 6 inches long and 4 feet, 8 inches high inside (making them a high-side gondola) with 10-rib sides, and the same cubic capacity level full, 1842 cubic feet. So Richard had chosen a representative of 1750 cars, a big part of the W&LE fleet. It was not a new design for the W&LE, as they had built 1000 very similar gondolas in 1921. Ray Breyer helped me nail down some of these details that Richard had not noted.
     Richard had already modified the car body, I think from an old Mantua 10-rib model. He had added better Dreadnaught ends, along with underbody brake gear and the correct Ajax brake wheel. The grab irons had not been installed, though he had painted the car body and done the lettering, and had even made a start on denting and weathering the car sides. There was a note on the parts box, “TMW [Tahoe Model Works] B-1 trucks,” and since I have a pair of those on hand, I could add them. Both he and I had standardized on Kadee no. 58 couplers, and I added those. I used Westerfield 18-inch grab irons, a product I like and often use.
     Richard also had not added the car weight nor the floor, possibly because the floor did not fit quite right with the new ends. I did some cutting and filing to make the steel weight fit, and attached it with canopy glue, a superb adhesive for dissimilar materials like this weight and the plastic body. (If you’d like to know more about this glue, you can read my post which discusses its use, which is at this link: http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2013/05/a-few-words-in-praise-of-canopy-glue.html .)
     The plastic floor with the kit represents a steel floor, which the prototype cars did have. It was a little distorted, maybe from trying to make it fit (suggesting it might not be from the same manufacturer as the car body), but again, a little trimming and it was made to fit. Richard had already built a pipe load for the car, and since the load was in the box with all the parts, I simply added it too.

     You will note in this photo that Richard used his “denting” method on this model, using puddles of thick CA on the car sides to look like dents pushed out from the interior, a method he gradually improved over the years.
     Though I did not have to do much to complete this car, I enjoyed the feeling that I had finished something Richard had started, and that the car can now be part of my own layout operations.
Tony Thompson

Building Guadalupe Fruit, Part 3

In my previous post, Part 2, I described my conclusions about structure size and shape, based on experimenting with a mock-up structure (you can read it at: http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2013/10/building-guadalupe-fruit-part-2.html ); that was back in October 2013. Obviously the project has been on hold awhile! At any rate, having decided to build pretty much the original two-story building, with a truck dock at Bromela Road and a shortened loading dock for reefers, I only (he said boldly) have to actually build the model!
     My plan was to use Evergreen styrene clapboard and Grandt Line windows and doors, making the project fairly straightforward. It’s also often useful to think about color schemes and trim at this point, and I decided to make the building light gray, with medium gray trim. That would mean pre-painting all the trim boards before assembly, including window surrounds, if they are to be a contrasting color. It would also be possible to paint window frames and mullions a different color, such as white, as was more common in past years, though I decided not to take that step on this structure.
     I decided to use 0.040-inch styrene clapboard for this frame structure, specifically Evergreen no. 4051. (The back wall, visible from nowhere on the layout, could be a piece of plain sheet.) For windows, I chose Grandt Line products as follows. I wanted the packing house working areas to have somewhat sizeable windows, with a different window in the office area of the building. I also decided to use a horizontal-sliding window to indicate a stairwell location. The front door, opening on Bromela Road, would contain windows.
     Most windows: Grandt no. 5117 (36 x 64-inch, 4-pane style)
     Office windows: Grandt no. 5060 (30 x 69-inch, 4 panes)
     Stairwell window: Grandt no. 5081     
     Front door: Grandt no. 5163 (33-inch door)
     Freight door onto platform: Grandt no. 5073
You can see in the view below that the window openings have been laid out in pencil on the back of the sheet styrene walls. It is worth taking some time to make sure all locations and sizes are correct. And be sure to remember that when you lay out of the back of the wall, things are reversed left to right. You can probably guess how I learned this. (Click to enlarge.)

     The styrene walls you see above were easy to cut out, because I had previously cut out the mock-up walls from sturdy Bristol board, and the walls of the mockup served nicely as patterns to cut out the sheet styrene. I measured them to make sure I knew all relevant dimensions. The main structure is 25 scale feet tall, and the footprint (also the roof plan) is shown below. The angle of the building reflects the angle between two tracks in my layout town of Ballard.

     A simple way to cut window openings is with a “corner chisel,” which makes a nice, square corner cut. A hobby knife can then be used to connect the corner cuts. The chisel I used is from Micro-Mark, their item no. 82394, and it looks like this:

In use, the chisel is easy to handle. Just a light tap with a small hammer will cut the corner in styrene.
     With the window and door openings laid out, as shown in the first photo above, and use of the corner chisel, I made quick work of cutting all the openings. These openings mostly required very little clean-up with a small file. I then decided to assemble the four walls (using 1/8-inch square styrene in the corners) and make a trial roof out of Bristol board. That’s shown below. The walls are painted with Testor’s “Flat Aircraft Light Gray” (no. 1233). The doors and windows, not yet inserted, were painted with Testor’s “Flat Aircraft Dark Gray” (no. 1226), as was the trim strip material.

The loading dock for railcars that you see above was built of Evergreen styrene, no. 4100 V-groove for the deck, and no. 4083 Novelty siding for the sides.
     On the Bromela Road side (the far side in the view above), I decided to inset the truck unloading dock into the building wall, because that provides a simple roof over the dock, and it is a feature visible on some prototype loading docks. This remains to be added to the building you see above. I also need to cut a styrene roof sheet for the building, to replace the cardstock one shown above.
     To this point, the project seems to coming together nicely. I will report on its next steps in the following post in this series.
Tony Thompson