The HO Scale Project From Hell

[finescalerr]

As some vaguely may recall, last December (2022) I began work on an HO scale model of the Southern Pacific depot at Goleta, California. I had taken photos back in 1991 and finally started drawing plans in 2-D CAD a mere 32 years later. My photos lacked some minor details so I had to do a lot of research and download more photos from the Internet. The drawing took a couple of months to complete and required many minor revisions after I began building. Construction began in February of this year. I finished the model last Wednesday, August 30, 2023 at about 1:30 p.m.

Since 1991 most of my modeling has been in 1:48 scale so why HO? First, it's a big structure in HO, about 20 inches end to end, and we have little space to store or display models. Second, I have a lot of HO scale SP locos and rolling stock but none in a larger scale. Finally, a former contributor, Ed Morris, wanted me to design an HO kit for each of us, an idea he soon regretted after realizing how clumsy I am at kit design and hearing about the aggravating problems I encountered over the next half year as I fumbled along.

[finescalerr]

If you count test builds, I must have designed, redesigned, built, and rebuilt the depot at least five times. The second to the last time I had erected the walls and was test fitting a laser cut roof panel when a piece of charcoal fell onto the rear of the freight section and indelibly stained it. In disgust I built the whole damned thing again.

But that was after my laser broke for the second time, conveniently a couple of weeks after the warranty expired. (Why do you think that piece of charcoal occurred?) I spent all of April arguing with the less than honest and more than greedy American distributor, finally told him to jump in a lake, and appealed directly to the manufacturer in Australia. The owner has integrity, sent replacement parts, and assigned his tech rep to instruct me via e-mail in testing and replacing parts. That took another three weeks. Construction resumed late in May.

The result is the wood and cardstock structure you see in the photos. It is 100% scratchbuilt from the photos to the plans to the doors, walls, trim, windows, shingles, chimney, and ladder leaning against the rear freight house wall.

[Lawrence@NZFinescale]

it'll be OK once you add a bit of grime :-)

[finescalerr]

So there it is, as accurate a model of the Goleta depot as you are likely to find and a model that makes me seriously question my sanity. Especially since I live in a region, thanks to climate change, now notorious for the likelihood of a massive brush fire. That means the original 1:1 scale Goleta depot, from 1904, well may outlast my miniature version.

Any questions? Just ask.

Russ

[finescalerr]

Lawrence, please feel free to stand in the corner. Illustrated instructions attached. -- Russ

[Lawrence@NZFinescale]

I'm working on a building myself just now.

The building itself has been relatively painless, but the addition of grime has been a bit more exhausting.

[finescalerr]

I built my depot "as new" because all the early photos show it in good shape. I think it's the only "as new" model I've built. Besides, weathering takes more time than building and I'm fed up with this project. So there! -- Russ

[Lawrence@NZFinescale]

The old 'whether to weather' debate.

[Design-HSB]

Russ, I'm totally OK with building a model in pristine condition.  Because it's about building a model as close as possible to reality and if we look around in reality, there are more accurate buildings than ramshackle decaying ones.  Also, it's normal for a perfect goal to work things out and learn along the way.  You will certainly have learned a lot and will be able to take this into account in the next model.  I'm still learning and build some model parts more than once.  So I just built parts of a dump truck unloading device up to 5 times until it finally worked satisfactorily.

[Bill Gill]

Russ, You done good.

[TRAINS1941]

It's looks great from here!!!!

Well done Unc.

Jerry

[Ray Dunakin]

Wow! Very impressive!

[Sami]

Russ, your work is spectacular ! You did well to persevere

[finescalerr]

Thanks, Sami. -- Russ

[Barney]

Very neat stuff - with fine workmanship
Barney