A New Building for the Pizza, A New Low in Craftsmanship
I have a reputation for making something out of nothing, well Allen aka Mik (RIP) was the true impresario at that, but I might be touching his robe with this one…
During the last Anaheim show on Saturday where we were flooded with children, many who despite their parents best intentions, just couldn’t resist grabbing the powerpack controls and testing the top speed of my trains!!!
Luckily there were no “dead man’s curve” incidents…
However for Sunday I figured I really needed to do something to cover the packs from inquisitive little hands so I brought a small cardboard box to do the job, and for the 1st two-hours of the show it worked fine, but there were issues.
One, it was a real hassle to have to lift up the box from the sides to modify speeds.
Two, it trapped the heat generated by the packs not allowing it to dissipate. Those little packs can generate quite a bit of it without ventilation.
Three, it just plain looked farking ugly! Like someone left a mail delivery on the layout.
So given it was a little slower on Sunday and my little brain was just fixated on how ugly the box looked and that a building, even something I could just cobbled together that morning would look better than a farking box! So out came my tape, my repair glue, and my trusty little Swiss Army knife:
About 1-1/2 hours of bodging between visitor and questions, I came up with a rough, VERY rough building that I determined would best see service as a jailhouse. It worked, it worked very well, not a single kid despite a few that tried to climb into the layout, none attempted to seize control of the reigns.
In fact even as roughshod as it was still looked better than the exposed packs. I continued
throughout the rest of the day to cut new windows and skylights to improve the heat ventilation. At the end of the show I was telling folks that for the next show I was going to do a permanent lift off building for the spot, and I meant it.
Fast forward to now, with the Red Comet well underway and still having 3 weeks to go and not
wanting to go bat-guano crazy and ruining the Red Comet by over doing it (its already a tad
overcooked :-0 ) I decided to try and do this permanent replacement building for the pizza. But the more I thought about it, the more I remembered half jokingly telling Sandra Baxter that I was going to finish off the roughshod cardboard bodge-building, well why not???
So I give you, a new low in model railroad craftsmanship, the cardboard box bodge-building:
Here I have already started filling in the gaps and openings in the corrigation with caulking adhesive
The rear shows where I plan to have a jailbreak scene on the final layout, shades of Steve
McQueen or Paul Newman in “Cool Hand” mode here.
Detailing almost done, all just whatever I could dig up, mostly cardstock balsa and lots and lots of caulking adhesive
Shows the lift-off slot handle opening in the roof plus added balsa to even out the roof
Next stop primer and paint, still a bit of a pigs ear, the silk purse is still somewhere over the
rainbow.
