In the summer of 1989-90 I worked at The Roundhouse model railroad shop in the North Hollywood/San Fernando valley area of Los Angeles. I really enjoyed that summer job and bought several kits while I was there. One of them was Detail Associates kit number 7003, Foothill Station.

I’m very happy I recently finished the structure but embarrassed to say it took me 20 years to complete.

One of the great side effects of almost continually building things with young adults in our Autistry Studios workshops is that I find I am much better able to just sit down and build things without procrastination. I probably did 10% of this model’s construction in 1989-90,  another 10% in 2000, and the final 80% in a couple weeks of December 2009.

My review of the kit: This was actually a pretty tough kit. I did a little Google searching this evening and cannot find any pictures of this kit built-up. I’m thinking that maybe other folks found this kit hard too. What was hard?

The multi-level nature of the kit and the many walls which make the shape so appealing are really hard to get properly square and level. In fact, I failed to get the walls truly square although it does not show in the pictures. Overall it is a great kit and I’m really pleased with how it came out.

The building has a VERY small footprint which makes it ideal for smaller layouts. The admittedly UGLY bunches of grass around the various posts as they enter the ground scenery are intentional and hide that the building is not glued to the base so the posts all are in rather large holes in the scenery. Hopefully someday I will move the building to my layout.

Don’t get me started about how long I have been “building” my layout!

If I can’t build things a bit faster — I’ll be dead before I make any sort of a dent in my un-built kit collection! NOTE: the picture above was what it looked like three years ago — I have even more kits now.

Here’s the recipe I came up with.

• Apply Campbell Shingles or other paper/wood shingle material
• Ink-alchohol wash lightly
• Dry brush Tamiya XF-66 LIGHT GREY
• Dry brush Tamiya XF-23 LIGHT BLUE, followed immediately by more ink-alchohol
• Very lightly dry brush Tamiya XF-21 SKY
• Highlight with china white pencil
• Seal with Dullcote
• Add more highligts with ink-alchohol and very small brush

Hindsight: airbrushing a control color to tone down the contrast would have made the effect a bit better.

The final result on the model: