...To this point

Dolores Conoco Plant

I am building the Ragg's...to Riches Dolores Conoco Plant. Although I have already started the kit I will attempt to cover what I have already done and then continue with this blog as I build it. I think Ragg's kits have the best instructions out there and his kits are so well thought out. I have a couple more in boxes that I will be building in the future. Durango Depot and Alladin General Store.

Metal Sheeting -

3 out of the 4 buildings in this kit are metal buildings covered with galvanized iron sheets. Three heights are provided, 6’, 8’ and 10', in strips. The first step in building this kit is to slice this strips into 98 30” pieces using a little block of wood as a jig to keep the width uniform. I think I worried about having to do all that cutting for a month before I actually started. Two of the jigs are provided just in case you can talk a friend into helping. Alas, no volunteers. It really didn’t take all that long anyway. 

After they are cut you stick them to cardboard with double sided tape and paint them. This was interesting to me and I would depart from the instructions at this point if you are building the kit. The instructions say to use Rust-Oleum “Clean Metal Primer” to paint all these pieces.  I wondered at the time why not use an airbrush. I bought my can of spray paint and followed the instructions. Luckily for me, the product was defective and it would only spray while being held upside down, and even at that it was not the usual intensity of spray paint.  It is basically a white paint. I took the paint back and exchanged it. When I tried to touch up my previous work I nearly drowned my little corrugations in paint. I quickly wiped it off and from then on I used my airbrush. I did this by decanting the paint into a little bottle. Very messy. My advice is to prime it with Floquil Primer and then paint it white-ish.

After it is all painted with the white, all of the roof panels are painted green, using Floquil Dark Green.

Painted Panels

Office - This is your typical wooden laser cut building that takes an hour or so to build. It is to be painted with the Clean Metal Primer but again, use an airbrush. I’m going to wait to weather everything after I am finished with all four buildings.

 

Garage - Metal covered. To do this you apply double sided tape covering each side, lying flat, and stick the metal panels to it. It works pretty well. I have had to go back and glue loose panels down in a spot or two using Aleene’s Tack Glue.  There is a syringe included in the kit to make it very easy to spot glue places.

Now here either I mis-understood the instructions, or would do it differently if I were to build it again. The instructions specify to start laying the lower course of panels from left to right, and then to apply the upper course of panels right to left. Doing it this way makes the vertical seems not line up. Living in a neighborhood of airplane hangars, (metal buildings), I can’t find a single example of the seams not lining up but I did it as instructed and I think it would have looked better with them lining up. Now I have seen some weird stuff in buildings as old as these so maybe they were really done that way. I can’t find any photographs of the real buildings to look at. Take a look at the roof of the old Durango car barn and you will see what I mean. The link is a picture of the one I built for my layout. Funny enough, I Googled  “Durango car barn” and the first hit is my website. Didn’t know I was so famous.

After sticking the metal panels to the sides, the sides are assembled around the floor. The corners are a little tricky since there isn’t any trim to hide the seams but it comes out looking pretty good. Looks better in real life than the microscope of the camera.

The roof panels are then attached in the same manner and then the doors and it is finished. 

Platform – I really like Raggs approach to building the platform.  I wish I had taken pictures as it was assembled but too late now.  The platform is made up of what would be called a large pile of sticks if they were all loose. He uses a self adhesive panel of laser cut boards that are held together on the ends by the usual little cut tabs of laser cut wood. You peel the paper off from underneath the boards that will comprise the platform and lay it on top of the substrate. Then you cut off the ends and you just glued down a hundred or so individual boards. Looks great. Instructions, once again, specify  to paint this with a spray can but I just can’t see that working so I will use my airbrush once again.

 Next I will cover building the main warehouse as I build it.