4.10. Spano's Service Station (a.k.a. Dave's Auto Repair)

Model

The starting point was Cornerstone's Al's Victory Service kit. Originally it was to be an operational station, until I got about this far when I decided to totally trash it:

Here's a progress shot from 18 July 2018. The collapsed roof is posed over an abandoned car in the bay, visible through the decaying remains of the roll-up doors. The details are all derived from the reference images below.

After a time, I grew dissatisfied with the look of the model at this point, and felt the doors looked hokey: cutting and bending plastic doesn't look the same as broken wood, so I made new doors from stripwood, then distressed the finished doors. I've always felt that broken things look better when you start with something finished and proper, and then break it, as opposed to trying to model something broken from the get-go.

The finished effect was much more satisfying, and the rest of the model began to come together quickly.

I dialed back the weathering with some alcohol, and painted the interior walls. Then it was time for graf. Lots and lots of graf. Followed by seemingly gallons of Micro-Sol. After installing the roof parts permanently, the finishing touch was some weeds.

The guys at The Railwire liked it.

Reference

There's more than enough reference material available for abandoned service stations. I wish the first one was in color; I love the hand-rendered sign.

This one provided guidance for the roll-up doors and the abandoned car.

This image helps with the graffiti, and also convinced me to leave the large corner windows open and graf the office interior.

Hopefully I can model the gas pumps.

I wasn't sure how far to take things with respect to the building's structural condition until I came across this photo; the collapsed roof totally sold me.

Since the interior of the repair bay will be visible from above, I needed to know what a  collapsed flat roof looked like from the inside. Image search to the rescue.

There was some discussion over the "cleanliness" of the roof on the model. Seems they don't get all that messy, even after abandonment.

Disposition

The building was moved from the front left corner of the layout down to the original location of the Stockton Freight Depot, back to the corner, and then back down to the depot location yet again. It was also renamed twice: Spano's Service Station, then Dave's Auto Repair, then back to Spano's.

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