Small Town Fire Station...by Don Janes

The completed fire hall will make a nice addition to my Wells River town scene

A Fire Hall From A Hydrocal Kit

     Several years ago I ordered a fire station from Railroad Kits.  I had seen their add and really liked the building as it  had a real New England flavour to it.  Railroad Kits had a large selection of kits and one group were all made from hydrocal castings.  Upon checking their web site I see they no longer carry the hydrocal kit but still have a nice variety of wood kits for sale.   

      When I opened the box I found a group of well packaged hydrocal parts, a bag of Tichy windows and other detail parts and several sheets of written instructions including a sheet with photos of the finished model. I find all the written instructions get very complicated and much prefer a few in progress photos to show how the kit goes together.  The photos of the finished model really help in building the kit.  All the walls,bell tower and roof are hydrocal castings that were extremely well poured and detailed.  They required very little sanding and went together very nicely. The base and bottom row of large stone blocks is one piece.   The only problem I had putting the kit together was that I broke the very delicate casting for the two walls of the bell tower, right below the bell opening.  They had long narrow openings for two long narrow windows and I put too much pressure on them and broke them.  My solution was to make new wall sections from N Scale Architect styrene brick material and blend it into the plaster parts.  I decided to forgo the long narrow windows ind just made plain walls which I feel still look quite good. This would likely have been the tower where the firemen hung their hoses to dry. 

      The kit included a sheet of black paper to make a tar paper roof but I opted to use South River Model Works slate shingle which I think look way better than tar paper. The roof on the bell tower is cast to represent a slate roof so I think it all blended together quite nicely. The large bell in the tower was a hydrocal casting which I painted brass colour.  

    For painting the building I first gave all the brick parts a coat of red auto primer then brushed some cheap acrylic brick red hobby paint over that.  I then added the mortar lines.  The other parts such as doors, windows and fire escape were airbrushed Floquil depot buff.  The cement and stone parts were primed with gray auto primer then painted a concrete colour.

    There were some extremely thin hydrocal castings for the garage doors but they fell apart when I tried to sand them so I will make new folding style doors from sheet styrene in the near future.

   

Another view of the front of the building

This shot of the rear shows the nice roof lines and trim around the gables

I have a very nice Athearn Mac fire truck which goes very well with this structure. The large front doors still need to be built and added.

   

The bell tower features a large bell made of hydrocal and the decorative trim is Tichy porch railing sections. Note how nice the hydrocal slate roof and roof trim look.  The section below the bell is made of styrene

I added Tichy light shades with 0603 Surface Mount LED's installed in them

For fun I detailed the interior of one room to represent a bathroom complete with toilet, sink and radiators. The room is lit with LED's

Another view looking into the bathroom.

    I decided to add outside light fixtures over the entrance doors using Tichy light shades and small LED's.  I also detailed a bathroom and used LED's to light it.  The main garage also Has three LED's to light the interior. 
    I plan to make a mold and pour another driveway section using hydrocal to extend the driveway to the street so I can add a couple more vehicles to the scene. This structure really came out quite well and I am looking forward to adding it to my street scene in Wells River.