Before and After - Ice House

My finished model prior to the melted ice.

I couple of years ago I picked up this nicely constructed wooden ice house at the Ancaster, Ont. train show. I am not sure if it is scratch or a wooden built kit. Anyhow I thought it might work on the layout. As it turned out I did not use it but had updated it a bit. I sold it off at the WOD-NFR Paris show last year. The photo captions tell the story...George Dutka

I am about to apply some PanPastels to better weather this structure up. The walls are originally painted boxcar red. I went lightly over them with PanPastel burnt sienna. The pod is seen in the photo. It is a lighter brown which dulled down the look of the red. This is a really nicely built wooden kit.

The ice blocks are engine numberboard lens plastic that I shaped to look like an ice block. One can actually purchase ice blocks from Tichy. The deck is done with Hunterline weathering mix followed by a wash of Floquil grime. PanPastel grays are then applied. I ran a hobby knife over the boards first to add dents and cuts into the wood.

These decals came on the building which I decided to leave as they would not be seen anyhow.

I added a good amount of details to this structure. I ended up not using it on the layout as I did not feel it looked like anything that would have been in WRJ or Bellows Falls (the only location I had room for such a structure) so it was sold at the WOD-NFR train show last year. The roof got a dusting of PanPastel neutral gray then raw umber streaks.

Close up view of the loading deck. As mentioned before I added a bit of gloss coat around the ice blocks to emulate a bit of melting after a suggestion from Peter Mumby. I think it really makes the scene look much better.