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Building the DL&W/NYSW Franklin, NJ Station

By Dave Rutan

In Franklin's heyday the DL&W/NYSW station saw shipments of machinery, mail, L.C.L. freight and passengers.

 

Why would a novice modeler ever attempt to scratch build something as large as the Lackawanna's Franklin station? Well, call me a masochist if you like, but it would be a misnomer. I simply have a fascination with the railroad stations of the Lackawanna's Sussex Branch.

Having said that, and having decided to create an HO scale layout of said railroad, what better way than to juice up and learn the skills of modeling than by starting with a module? To me, the logical module was of a station I had no intention of including on the layout.

I would have to describe myself as a beginning modeler. As a matter of fact, when I began this project I had no basic modeling supplies other than a selection of hobby tools I bought some years ago when I first started getting this bug. (I now know that the secret to efficient modeling of any kind is to have lots of bits and pieces around from previous projects.)

I was fortunate to have a mentor in Don Spiro via email on this project, his patience and off the cuff attitude are the stuff of legends. Another benefit was an article he wrote on scratch building your first structure, A.K.A. the Andover passenger depot from the July 2002 issue of RMC. I simply used that article as an instruction guide and added in the parts that were different.

I began the project with a visit to a local hobby shop. Consulting a set of drawings I previously made of the station, I grabbed up such items as Evergreen novelty siding, appropriate doors, windows, and shutters. This gave me enough to make a start until more money came my way, (my hobbies operate on a shoestring budget don't you know.)

The first cut was the hardest as I had literally never done anything like this before. However, once begun, I pressed onward and got the walls all cut. Because of the length of the building, I treated the station as two separate structures which I would join together later.

Cutting the holes for the windows and doors was tedious, and I actually goofed enough to require remaking one wall. (If I had started by cutting the bottom windows instead of the top, I could have saved this wall by using it in a less conspicuous location.)

Bracing went onto the back side of the walls and the shell was glued together. I then painted the walls a light gray of my special formulation. The windows, doors and shutters, all prepainted in my trim color, Polly Scale Mech Pine Green, were next applied as were any trim pieces not involving the roof. Window glazing was next as well as shades and curtains (the operator lived on the second floor during the golden era of the station.)

I wanted the station to look alive, so I installed the freight doors in the open position. Believing that a child looking at this at eye level would certainly notice it's emptiness, I filled the interior of the freight house with boxes and barrels, arranging them specifically to block the view (or most of it) to the opposite side of the room.

The roof was a learning process in itself, and I actually made it twice. When I got it right, I used scribed styrene, blank side up, so that the eaves would have some board detail. I braced the roof with styrene scraps and installed it securely. It was at this time, I also installed lighting for the freight house end, so the kiddies could see all the boxes and barrels. The lighting is powered by a 9 volt battery under the module.

The shingles were a problem. Photos show that the slate roof of this station had a pattern. Four rows of rectangular shingles followed by four rows of scalloped. Well, shingles are hard to find these days, so I thought and thought some more. I ended up making my own custom shingles. This was done in a way which may be unavailable to most modelers unless they are particularly resourceful.

I wanted my shingles to be about a foot across, that's about 1/8th inch in HO scale. What I did was to reach back to my roots as a letter press printer. We used to have what are termed 'perf rules'. These are steel rules with notches in them like a comb with thick teeth. Ye old printshop that I once worked at had a box of dull perf rules and I was permitted to have one. The teeth are exactly 1/8th inch apart.

So here you say, "But Dave, what do you do with it?" It's a wonderful thing. You take a piece of 110# index paper, cut it to about 5 1/2 by 8 1/2 inches for ease of manipulation. Use the perf notches to mark 1/8th inch ticks up the sheet on both ends. Place the notched edge of the perf rule on the end of your index sheet and use a sharp #11 blade in your knife handle of choice to cut between your shingles. You may want to space it up from the edge depending on your desired reveal of the shingles.

After you've cut between the shingles, use the back side (the non-notched side) of the perf rule as a straight edge and slice off your first row of strip shingles. The perf rule is very stiff and works great for this. For added realism, you can cut the space between wider with a second swipe of the knife. I did this occasionally to simulate chipped or not completely square shingles.

I made the scalloped shingles with a pair of craft pinking shears, then I cut between the scallops freehand and sliced off my strip as before. Before gluing them onto the roof, I recommend coloring the undersides with a big black magic marker. When I installed mine, they lifted up a little tiny bit and I could see white.

The chimneys went on next, one for each gable of the office end of the depot. I also fashioned a 'spire' from a porch post to ornament the freight end gable.

Now, in photographs, it is plainly seen that Franklin's Lackawanna station and Branchville's had something in common. They both sported those unique trefoil eaves brackets. A detail like this is not to be missed, so I put my mind to the problem.

Hand cutting them from styrene was not something I seemed capable of, although if I managed even one, I could mass produce it for my needs using resin casting. Franklin needed 22 of them. At the suggestion of a friend, I contacted the fellows at The N-Scale Architects. I supplied an AutoCAD file of the trefoil and they supplied me with 25 1:87 versions of it in microplywood.

Finishing touches to the building included gutters and downspouts formed with styrene channel and rod. A station sign was created with Evergreen styrene and Railroad Roman decals in Dulux Gold. I started with a strip of styrene longer than I needed. I painted it black and applied the decals. Then I trimmed it to length, notched the four corners and edged it with gold paint.

Having taken the construction of this model in steps, in hindsight it didn't seem so difficult. About the only thing I'd do different if I had to build the station again would be to correct the position of the door-window pair on the office end. A photo I recently bought showed them to be a little off. Oh, well, it's likely I'm the only one who knows.

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