OScale Trains

Building Lauther’s Perfect Pickles - Part 2Martin BrechbielAt the end of Part One, I hadstopped with the first floor basically completed,except for the installation of the doors and windows, whichremain as one of the last steps. All of the interior details for thefirst floor were also installed, and the boiler house was nearlycompleted with only the actual roofing and the closing in of thegable end remaining. The pair of large exterior barrels were alsocompleted. At this point, I want to revisit defining the compassas it pertains to this building. You can refer back to Part Oneor just remember that, for the main building, the wall with theporch is “South”. The opposite trackside wall is “North”. Theboiler house is on the “East” wall, leaving the sheltered tanks atthe “West” wall. With that said, here’s how I built the secondfloor, the various roof components, and finished building Lauthers’Perfect Pickles.Building the Second Floor of the Main BuildingUnlike the modular prefabrication approach that I used forbuilding the first floor (pre-assembling the walls, then installingthem as completed units), I only partially applied this strategy tobuilding the second floor walls. I stopped at the framing stage,and installed these walls into the building prior to adding theclapboarding. I confess to not being entirely sure why I deviatedfrom how I started, but in part this was due to some uncertainty1 • O Scale Trains - Sept/Oct ’06as to how the porch roof and the roof overthose large barrels outside the West wall were both goingto be tied in.So, I started building the second story of the main buildingby installing perimeter sills of 1/16” x 3/16” dimensional lumber.These rest directly on the tops of the 2 x 4 caps of the first floor(Photo 1). I had to add a shim from the scrap box to the interiorof the East wall sill to bring it out flush with the interior wall.Then, the East stairway stringer was set in place with the top ofthe stringer being set flush against that same interior wall, withits top flush with the joist sill. The stair stringers were cut from1/32” scrap with a rather large rise-over-run ratio, as this wasintended to be a workspace as opposed to a residential stairway.The floor joists for the second floor were made from thesame 1/16” x 3/16” dimensional lumber as the sills. They wereinstalled starting from the West end of the building by first boxingin the shaft and supports for the “elevator”. The lighting unitswere also added during this phase, since they were mountedinto these joists prior to their being glued in place. After all thefloor joists were installed, going from West to East, and the stairwellwas boxed in, the West stairway stringer was set in place. Iused a chemical structure drawing program to create templatesfor making scale-able stairway stringers. The treads were cutfrom HO 3” x 22” and glued into place.Lighting the First FloorI decided that, if I was going to have a finished and accessibleinterior, lighting was required. The first step was toassemble actual lamp assemblies. I took nine Grandt Line #3510lampshades, modified (widened the aperture with my handyscalpel) to accept Model Power #255 amber bulbs. The bulbswere secured in place with a dab of Goo. I pre-painted theseunits with Floquil Brass on the inside and Polly S Steam Blackon the outside. Evergreen 1/8” styrene tubing was cut to lengthto span two floor joists with the wiring passed through a holedrilled in the middle of each piece of tubing. The wires for eachof the lamp assemblies were then threaded through the tub-