Peter's Model Railroading | Articles | Structures | PRR Passenger Shelter
Construction
This is not a step-by-step guide to the assembly of this kit, as the instruction sheet that comes with the kit is quite good. I will show the major steps and make a note of any issues that I found. The first major decision you have to make is whether to paint the parts on the sprues now, or wait with painting until the model it built. I typically choose the latter. This photo shows the core structure built. This goes smoothly, but note that the walls are inset a bit from the outer edges of the floor, so it is not easy to get a machinist square or something similar to butt up against the vertical wall pieces to make sure they sit purely vertical, especially the first two pieces. The second note I have is regarding the roof rafters. They are all to be doubled-up, which means that you have to very carefully glue two of them together and get them to line up perfectly, as the notches are later used to insert the trusses. Again, the first one is difficult to get started. These must be very accurate, otherwise you will have problems getting the other roof parts to fit properly. So, the ends of the rafters have to be flush with the outsides of the walls.
The decorative framing goes on next, which is pretty trivial to do, except that you have to work quickly. I used regular Titebond yellow wood glue for this, but since you want to apply a very thin layer of glue to the backs of these decorative pieces, and since there is a lot of area to cover, you have to work quickly, because otherwise some of the early glue application may already be dry before you get to the last bit. These pieces sit on top of the small lips of the floor piece.
The roof trusses are next. These, too, are each two pieces that need to be carefully glued together. I dry-fitted each one and had to make adjustments to the building for each of them. Nearly all of the slots of the left-to-right rafters weren't 100% perfectly aligned, so a quick pass with a small file widened their slots just enough. The back wall's notches sat just a touch too high, so I filed those down a bit, at an angle similar to the trusses. You have to sight down the truss once installed, to make sure it matches the outside walls and the others already installed. The front of the trusses don't touch anything. I was careful to not use too much glue, but under normal viewing conditions any glue blobs here are not going to be visible.
Installing the sub-roof sheets was the first place where I encountered a problem. This was because I didn't quite get the rafter (the left-to-right) pieces in the correct spot near the front (open) side of the building. The slots of the front roof piece didn't quite line up. Be careful with installing these roof pieces as there isn't much material left between where the slots are and the edge of the roof. And, if those break off, they will be visible. So, what I did was I slightly filed down the thickness of the tab at the top of the wall where the roof sheet didn't fit, and that solved the problem. Make sure that the lines laser-marked into the sheet are shown out, because they are used to line up the shingles later on.
There are four small filler pieces to install in the gaps under the roof in the back to complete the decorative trim. These are easy to do, but I did have to file their ends down a tiny amount to get them to fit properly.
To complete the construction of the structure itself, two trim pieces have to be installed to cover the rafters; one in the front (shown) and one in the back.
The construction of the bench is by far the most difficult part of this project. I will detail the steps I used here, but there may be other ways to tackle this. After freeing the parts from the sprue, I measured the length of the bench's top board. I then divided that by 4 and marked a line at the three locations with a pencil. I then placed that top board on a glass plate and put a metal weight on it to hold it down (top in the photo). I put another metal weight against the length of the board (left in photo) to keep the part from moving. Next, I put a machinist square (bottom, right) against the second metal weight to make sure that it is perpendicular to the top board, lining its edge up with the mark I made on the top board. The machinist square wanted to fall down, so I put a metal weight on it too (center, right). I could then apply a tiny amount of glue to the top of the first bench support and put it up against the machinist square. Note, however, that the back of the bench support is at an angle to the top of the bench, so you should not lean the back of it against the second metal weight, but rather let it float "forward" a little. (I did not do this, but theoretically, you could have a vertical weight sitting where the front of the support piece winds up at, and have it lean against that, as the front is supposed to be perpendicular to the build surface.) When you use a tiny amount of yellow glue, it grips and holds a lightweight part like this fairly quickly. I then just stepped away from it to let the glue cure. I repeated this process two more times to get to the point where I am at in this photo.
When the three supports were cured, I turned the bench right-side up and set up a square corner with two metal weights and a machinist square, so that the other parts would line up with the top board. I applied a tiny bit of glue to the edges of the bench supports and then carefully installed the seat and back boards.
Once those had cured, I now had a solid piece to which I could glue the two outer support pieces. One thing to note here is that I highly recommend insetting these outer pieces a bit from the edges of the boards. This is because the bench has to fit within the interior width of the main building, and the odds are good that it is ever so slightly too wide. I did not do that, and my bench is indeed too wide, and so I wound up having to do a lot of sanding to get it to fit.
