Building Project #1 - Roberts Dry Goods

Today I started building my first structure kit in twenty years.  This is a Design Preservation Models kit #10200 - Roberts Dry Goods.

This is also my first time building a DPM kit, because when I was modelling US outline back in the late eighties there was nowhere in the UK to buy these kits from, I had to make do with enviously looking at the pictures and reviews in Model Railroader magazine.

I bought this kit from LSWR Penguin at a show a few months ago and it has been sitting on the 'to do' list ever since.  For a while I had it taped together and placed on my freemo baseboard to check the size of space I need for the town section on my board.  I will have five buildings in the completed town - a mixture of DPM and RIX kits.

The kit is moulded in large, simple sections with doors and windows as one-piece.  The components are plastic and the kit includes a piece of plasticard to make the roof and some clear plastic for glazing.

The kit has a fair amount of flash and moulding tabs that need to be cut off before assembly.

The window edges need to be carefully trimmed to remove flash otherwise the uneven edges will show up when the details are painted.

The edges of the walls are not square, so some sanding is required to make sure that everything joins together without gaps.  I have ordered a Northwest Short Lines 'True Sander' which will make this job easier, but in the meatime I used the edge of a wooden box as a makeshift square edge.  A few seconds of sanding and the walls are square enough to assemble.

I added strips of square profile evergreen styrene to reinforce the corner joints, and I used a metal square edge to keep everything straight while assemblinf the walls.

The kit goes together very quickly and after a short while the main structure is complete.  The outer walls meet with only a thin edge to show where the flat edge of the wall is glued together.  I expect some careful scribing will help to make the join invisible.

The final step is to assemble the three sections that make up the front entrance to the store.  These require a little extra sanding to make sure they are true, then they glue together as a sub-assembly before attaching to the front of the store.

With the walls completed, the next step will be to add the roof and prepare the building for painting.