Missouri, Kansas, & Texas Railroad along the Missouri River by Cathead - 1/87 (HO) scale - model railroad with steamboat

[Cathead]

Thanks, Robert! I'm curious what specific ideas you've found useful?

[robert952]

Mainly the weathering you have done on everything.

 

The buildings are weathered very nicely. I tend to 'overweather' items.  You show a light touch to make a nice effect. Seeing the Inman building progress was interesting. 

 

Similarly, the landscaping texturing is very nice on the tunnel and rock faces. 

 

For a small boat (dinghy) project on my planning board, I want to make it a diorama. Though the scale will effect my approach (it's 1:12 - doll house scale?), the way you layer shows me a techinique to use.

[Cathead]

OK, here's the partner building to the grocer. This one is the "Haberdashery" from Berkshire Valley Models, a kit-maker known to me. I like their kits and as you'll see, this one addresses several of the issues I had with the previous one. Follow the link to see what the default kit building looks like.

 

Right away this gets a big thing correct by assembling the walls ahead of time. A layer of scribed siding is glued onto a sub-layer of thin plywood, but doing it on individual walls means  you can clamp these all you want. I added some internal bracing to help ensure flatness.

Windows and doors are the usual procedure for kits like this, built up from several layers of thin laser-cut wood. But again, installed ahead of time so it's much easier to get them right. The kit also includes two scribed floors (unlike the other one), which I initially weathered even though I ended up deciding that the upper floor wouldn't be visible.

The walls can be assembled into a separate box that sits on the base (meaning it can also be detached), making it much easier to do an interior. I decided this building would be a drugstore. It's a nice complement to the grocer and it lends itself to an interesting interior. Here's a couple of reference photos of period drugstore interiors from Missouri in this era, both from the State Historical Society of Missouri digital collections (public domain, no copyright). The first one is actually from Rocheport's own Dimmitt Drugstore:

And this one's from nearby Miami (MO):

The key elements here are lots of tall dark wall shelving loaded with bottles and packages, along with prominent glass cases. Some period drugstores also had tables. I had another great reference photo showing a collection of well-dressed ladies and gents lounging around several round tables in the center aisle of a drugstore similar to those above, but I can't remember where I found it, so can't share it here. But here's my version:

The tall "walnut" shelving conveys that idea nicely. I built the glass cases from thin strip wood and leftover window glass. The tables are just cut-off dowels. The back wall is affixed to the base. Note how the building base is a nice solid piece, with the floor designed as an inset. This lets the building "box" slide down nice and snug on top, so you can remove the building if you need to mess with the interior. Much better than the other building's integrated floor. This building has only front windows, no large side windows like the other, so the interior really only needs to hint at detail. I think this is plenty.

 

Starting to assemble the "box". The upper floor glues in as part of the structure, but since you can remove the box from the lower base and you can make the upper roof removable, this doesn't matter. I decided I didn't want any part of the upper floor visible, so installed some basic "curtains" behind all the second-floor windows.

 

Here's the partially completed walls being test-fit into the "box", with the companion building next door. Note that all the layers of detail on the front haven't been completed in this view, nor the windows.

And here are three views of the finished building:

I like how this color scheme came out. Not too bright, distinct from its neighbor, but sharing a hint of the same color palette so they don't clash. 

 

I gave this one a generic "drugstore" label. I hadn't found the Dimmitts photo when I lettered this, but even if I had, I wouldn't have used the name since I also found an exterior photo of the real Dimmitt's and it's a brick building. I might letter a more specific name up top, or just leave it be. 

 

In a followup post I'll set these two buildings onto the layout with the wooden walkway that goes in front of them. But that's a project for another day. Hope you enjoyed this simple build and thanks for reading along! There are just a couple more buildings to go, and eventually I'll have some more scenery projects to share as well.

 

At some point this winter I'll also start building the benchwork for the next town down the line, starting this whole process over in a new setting! This one will be simpler, as it's a narrower scene with far fewer buildings. But that's in the future.

 

Edited Thursday at 02:57 AM by Cathead

[Keith Black]

 The drugstore turned out great and the colors are perfect, Eric. 👍

[Canute]

Like the fact you're including interiors from the start. My club had to retrofit the interiors of some buildings, mainly stores. Although, we do have a firehouse responding as a later alarm for a simulated fire across the tracks from the depot. Its fun when you can tell a story. Look forward to your continuation of your railroad.

[Rik Thistle]

Eric,

 

That is a great pic.... it has scale, detail, good focus, clearly shows all the additions inside the room and a clean background. Good stuff.

 

Richard

 

Edited Friday at 03:23 PM by Rik Thistle

[Cathead]

On 1/7/2026 at 10:04 PM, Keith Black said:

 The drugstore turned out great and the colors are perfect, Eric. 👍

Mrs. Cathead gets some credit here as I consulted with her when picking out those colors. She has a good eye for this sort of thing (also very good at flower arrangements) and is also a good reference for how a non-modeler sees a scene. We went through my paint collection in comparison with the other building (which I chose the palette for on my own) and she guided me toward that mix, which I hadn't initially considered. I agree I'm very pleased with it and am mildly disappointed that this is a semi-hidden background building (you'll see what I mean in a future post).

 

4 hours ago, Canute said:

Like the fact you're including interiors from the start.

Only a handful, but it's a fun quirk. I'm glad I'm not doing all of them, and I'm happy with my decision not to light them (which would require more detailed and thorough interiors). It does make an interesting diversion for certain structures. The only one I think I regret not doing an interior for is the depot, and it's too late now as that was another "sealed box" kit. Maybe I'll do a depot interior for McBaine (the next town down the line).

 

2 hours ago, Rik Thistle said:

That is a great pic.... it has scale, detail, good focus, clearly shows all the additions inside the room and a clean background. Good stuff.

 

Thank you! I've been trying to remind myself to pay more attention to photograph quality at least sometimes. That was taken against the corkboard backdrop of my workbench, which gives a nice neutral background that's well-lit. I think it worked well for the exterior photos, too. Thanks for noticing!

[kurtvd19]

1 hour ago, Cathead said:

We went through my paint collection in comparison with the other building (which I chose the palette for on my own) and she guided me toward that mix, which I hadn't initially considered

Eric:

I hope you made a note of the colors used for the mixture to get the color in case it is needed later to match a repair.  I am assuming your text mention of "mix" refers to the finished color but realize it could refer to the mix of colors on the building as a whole.

I have found that keeping a record of paints used on any build is a good idea for later reference of what color was used for a particular build or part.

Kurt

[Cathead]

Kurt, good point. I meant the color palette used overall; no paints were directly mixed to create custom shades. I usually don't mix paints for that exact reason! Poor phrasing on my part and thanks for checking on it.

 

You're correct that I haven't kept a record of which paints were used on which buildings, though, and that's not a bad idea. That'll also be an issue on future sections of the layout, as I made several seat-of-the-pants, on-the-fly color mixes for things like scenery and backdrop, and did not keep records of what I did. So it'll be fun to try and recreate those closely in a new scene! At least in those cases there's no direct overlap so a subtle change won't matter, unlike touching up a specific spot on a model.

[Keith Black]

 Isn't a little mismatched paint part of the overall weathering effect? 

[kurtvd19]

23 minutes ago, Keith Black said:

Isn't a little mismatched paint part of the overall weathering effect? 

Absolutely!  To good effect - when that's the wanted result.

[Cathead]

OK, here's this pair of buildings set loosely in place, with their wooden sidewalk. These aren't attached permanently and I haven't done any blending of scenery around them or the sidewalk, but this gives the visual context of their setting.

You can see how the drugstore building sort of hides behind the other one, but I want that other one in the foreground because of the larger windows. At least that's been my assumption. Two more views:

This shows how you can see enough of the interior to tell it's not an empty box:

And a view from the back, with a nice alley:

 

 

[Keith Black]

 They look great next to each other and the placement is perfect. Larger in the fore and smaller in the background giving a sense of visual diminishing scale. 👍 

[Literalman]

Great work, and I've been enjoying your whole series of posts.