James River Branch: Naughtright Fire Company

Naughtright Fire Company

To be honest, I never liked the look of the Miller Engineering Fire Engine Co. #2 kit, even though it's quite "classic," and I've found several photos of real buildings just like it. But the more I looked at the Crestline Theater, the more I saw it as my firehouse. So, in a strange twist of irony, I wound up using much of the firehouse kit for the theater, and much of the theater kit for the firehouse!

The first problem was that Miller Engineering switched this kit from brass to stainless steel (which makes no sense to me because the structure is 98% brick), and stainless steel is a much harder material to use for kitbashing. I needed an older version of the kit, when it was still brass, and thanks to eBay I was able to get one.

My plan was to more or less replicate what I'd done in N scale for my White River and Northern III. Real-life inspiration for that project came from a firehouse in Ewing, New Jersey, which has since been replaced. Based on a modified Design Preservations Models kit, the Laube Volunteer Fire Company featured a pair of typical-looking roll-up doors. Little did I know at the outset that my plans would begin a long kitbashing odyssey that wound up following a very similar path to that of several other buildings in the ever-changing town of Naughtright.

After a quick stroll through a couple hundred reference photos, I learned that there were no hard and fast design rules to follow; like the theater, I could do just about anything within reason. So, I started by making one large door on the left and leaving the small door intact on the right. The large opening was finished off using a piece of fret from an N scale high-tension tower kit, plus a thin strip of plain brass. It was a lot of work, but after hours of cutting and soldering, it just didn't look anything like what I had in my mind's eye. I tried to live with it for a while, but ultimately I hacked it all out with a flush cutters and de-soldered the remains.

The gaping hole was both a liberating sight and a reminder of the time and energy wasted on a futile effort. I realize this comes with the territory of kitbashing, but it's still irksome. Even more frustrating, my lengthy search for something else to fill the hole did not produce any workable solutions, despite having an obscene supply of etched brass materials on hand.

Eventually I started making progress by thinking outside of the Z scale box. In the past I've had good luck mixing parts from different scales (for instance, I learned that N scale bricks make good Z scale shingles), and this time the solution came in the form of the Miller Engineering N scale Gulf Gas Station kit. It was quite remarkable: I could not have designed better doors myself. Within minutes I had the part ready to install, and when I was done, it looked to me as if it was part of the original kit. Particularly intriguing was that the porcelain panels of the garage now looked like cut stone blocks.

Meanwhile, I was also working on the other end of the building, where I was planning an extension. At first, it was going to be a simple wooden structure tacked on the back, which I cobbled together from some laser-cut leftovers (of which I have entirely too many). It was nearly finished, but when I placed it up against the back of the main building, my face scrunched up into an "I'm not lovin' it" frown. For one thing, it would be impossible to see from the front of the layout, and while that's not all-important, I did want to more effectively break the pattern of yet another rectangular building for the town.

What I needed was a two-story extension, preferably one that blended in cosmetically with the main building. As it happened, one of Miller Engineering's two townhouse kits—which sat in a drawer, unlikely to ever be used—had, by happy coincidence, brickwork and windows identical in size and style to the main building. And so before you could say "kitbashing nightmare," I had the townhouse walls chopped up and soldered onto the back of the firehouse (which I'd replaced with solid brick, since the original windows along the top would have been bisected by the new extension). Could it have been better? Absolutely. Would it do? Absolutely.

Then, to add to the convoluted progress of this project, after I had finished ever-so-neatly soldering the chimneys to the walls, I made the surprising discovery that Miller Engineering had committed a faux pas in their design of this kit—two of them, actually: they placed windows under the chimneys—on both sides! I was going to let it be, and treat it like a brain teaser for people ("What's wrong with this picture?"), but then, after ordering a pair of SEARAILS fire engines to go inside, I began to contemplate the interior, and realized that, had the chimneys actually been built where they were, they would impinge on the space occupied by the fire equipment. So, I clipped the chimneys off, and extended the wall caps with a bit of solder.

One of the more important details of the typical firehouse is the siren. After flipping through a bunch of reference photos for ideas, I started with a section of tower extracted from an old Scale Link N scale windmill kit that I'd botched. The siren itself began as a pair of N scale dust separators from a Green Max industrial detailing kit; the two vent caps were grafted together to form the classic profile of a typical siren. The siren's base was a sliver of the dust separator left intact and trimmed square; this was bonded right to the top of the tower with CA. Then I carefully sanded the legs to suit the slope of the roof.

Another common firehouse rooftop detail is a set of radio antennas. Sometimes they'll be tacked onto the siren tower, but sometimes they'll have their own. I made my antenna tower from more of the N scale windmill (a handy and versatile kit, that one). After soldering the uppermost windmill tower sections together, I topped it with a tiny square of styrene, into which I installed a cluster of various antennas. Not only is it a lot of fun for me to make these details, but they have the benefit of giving a structure an authentic and lived-in look.

By the way, the blotchy grey coloring of the building in some of the images is part of my assembly process: it's spray paint that's applied to prevent solder from creeping onto the outer surfaces of the brass parts. For more details on this technique, see my article, Bashing Brass Buildings.

This project was last updated on 22 June 2009. More as it happens.