SECTION FOREMAN'S HOUSE

Completing a station village set of company housing requires at least a section gang foreman's house.  The same house design also serves a signal maintainer if one is stationed at a village.  The current stations I have been working on had only the section gang foreman at Cruzatte.  Cascade Summit had both the foreman and a signal maintainer.  

I built three houses using the ALW Lines (http://alwlines.com/) kit SP 12.  Construction followed my usual practice involving painting most of the parts prior to assembly, with paint touch up later. The section house kits are designed to have interior walls installed, with wall lines laser-etched into the floor.  I fabricated my walls from balsa.

Section Foreman houses under construction with interior walls installed.

My wife took note of my project and suggested that if women-folk were around these houses, they certainly would install curtains.  I agreed that most Section Foremen would be married, so I acted on the curtain suggestion.  First, I installed roll shades in the windows.  The roll shades are simply strips of paper painted an off-white.  Then I made curtains from bits of tissue paper.  Both of these features (as well as the window glazing) were installed using canopy glue.

Window shades and curtains installed.

With the interior walls and windows with treatments installed, I sealed up the house interiors by installing the sub-roofs.  These houses have hipped roofs (all four roof faces sloped), so the interior bracing becomes an important part of the assembly.  I then installed the roof panels.  Care is needed with both of these steps to assure a good fit between roof sections.  I learned that through unfortunate experience, although I recovered.

House sub-roofs installed.

Roofs assembled.  In addition to hipped roofs, these houses have small cupolas fore and aft, plus the porch roofs.  I painted the roof panels with green spray paint as a primer prior to assembly.

As I have noted previously, ALW Lines shifted their kit roofing from strips of laser-cut paper shingles to laser-cut sheets of shingle material.  My original intent for this set of houses was to obtain replacement shingle sheet sets for my early-production kits.  Upon reflection, and wanting to move this project along, I chose to go with the original shingle strips.  This also helped with my less-than perfect joints between roof panels (my construction recovery).  Though long and tedious (it took about four hours per house), the shingle strips worked out.  I found I needed to actively trim the strips as each was laid down.  This gave me just enough shingle material to complete all three roofs.

Roof shingle strips being applied.  I augment the peel-and-stick shingle adhesive with a coat of contact cement on the roof panels.  The sewing scissors proved vital to trimming closely the shingle strips as each strip was applied.

When the roofs were shingled and trimmed, I masked and spray painted the roofs.  I have a stash of PolyScale Depot Olive paint which I use to represent SP's moss green.  I spray paint the roofs with one coat of paint, but usually find I need to back this up with a light brush coating.  The paper shingles absorb water from the acrylic paint and pull back a bit.  The brush also allowed me to better control the paint around the edges and at the cupolas.  Yes, I could do a much more thorough masking job, but this combination of spray first followed by brush works well for me.

Section Foreman's House at Cruzatte.

The Cruzatte company village with the Train Order Office and operator houses in front and the section gang housing extending to the rear, concluding with the foreman's house.

Section Foreman and Signal Maintainer houses at Cascade Summit.

I now have housing completed for two company villages on my climb up the Cascades.  I have a couple of additional structures to add at Cascade Summit--notably a "Beanery" using a wood passenger car on the ground (no wheels and trucks) at its core.  Still, I have enough of the structures done to begin terrain formation.