New John Signor San Francisco Terminal District Article!

 Christmas came early this year!  Lots of great stuff inside.

CanCo Loading Docks

The loading docks which come with the ITLA loading dock didn't feel right to me— they seemed more like truck loading doors than railcar spots:

To fix this, I raided my "personal hobby shop" and found some old DPM modular wall sections:

After cutting, fitting, bracing and gluing I used some Army Painter Chaos Red to paint the bricks, followed with a wash of AK Interactive Medium Gray for the grout. (I specifically went heavy because I knew I was going to come back with more weathering and this wall would be hiding underneath the rest of the building.)

When I was happy with the brick, I came back and added some Evergreen styrene strips in order to echo the cement posts seen inside these brick curtain buildings— this did a good job of hiding all the wall section joints:

Been pretty happy with how this is coming out:

The task of adding all the windows, glazing, and freight doors comes next— along with planning the final assembly and any lighting details.  The dock is also screaming for some lights over the doors:

Used excess laser board pilaster material to beef up the areas where I have removed building posts. I was able to paint the back side of the laser board to represent a larger uninterrupted concrete span.

I also took the opportunity to "reinstall" a previously removed support, too.— again the overlay material which has laser etched joint lines is very convenient to hide that splice.

Decided to also make the commitment to glue up the most important corner so I could finish adding the trim:

Still waiting for one more shipment from Canada which will let me complete the walls.  Once that is done, I can move on to creating floors and the roof.

More Progress

 

CanCo Continued

Making final adjustments to the American Can Company build. I have a few more parts to order from ITLA, but have a footprint that fits on the shelf layout nicely.

NOTE: the "end wall" blocking the rails will be replaced with a different wall section which will allow trains to pass through that section.

Looking forward to making more progress as the holiday season continues.

Another American Can Company Kitbash

It has been nearly a year since I have had any time to work on my San Francisco street track shelf layout.

What got me out of the armchair this time was a very nice new product line from ITLA (https://itlascalemodels.com/collections/industrial-wall-modules). My prior attempts was clearly stalled by a massive painting (really masking) project.

The ITLA wall sections are modular, to scale, and incredibly well engineered— there is no need to mask the them as the reinforced concrete, windows, and brick inserts are separate laser cut parts.  To that end the  kit is designed to be press-fit to together, and all gluing can be done from the back side.

This project also gave me a chance to play with the new line of acrylic paint from AK Interactive. I was able to dilute the finely ground paint with water and was able to wash in grout lines in the N Scale brick inserts.  When I didn't dilute the paint, it was very saturated and covered nicely.

It is nice to get back into the saddle again after a long set of work projects had me sidelined.