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….................. --- 1950's N Scale Gas Station ---

............................ --- Paint and Assembly ---

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Below I'll show how I assembled the gas station but there are options.

Also please give me a little slack on the paint job. At 78 I'm finding my hands aren't as steady at they were even a year or so ago. Some of the painted detail is only .025” ( .6mm ) wide and/or deep. Since I hope to continue with the hobby for some time yet I'm learning to be more forgiving of my final results than I might have been a couple years ago.

One could glue the two parts of the gas station together. I decide for a while at least to put some tabs on the upper part that locate it to the bottom. This will allow me to easily remove it and the roof if I want to add interior detail or swap the garage door in and out occassionally.

I left the roof where it prints slightly large with my printer. I then filed the edges down just to the point that it was a tight fit getting it in and past the top of the building.

I designed the duct work a few years back ( HERE & HERE ) for some larger buildings and it is a little over sized in my opinion for this smaller structure. I did make the cooler a little smaller and the duct work not quite as tall but might reduce it in size more at some point. Since the roof pops in and out it will be easy to change out if I do that. If I do that I'll also add those files to thingiverse.com.

A couple of the tabs need to be cut shorter so they don't hang down into the window and garage door openings. You could make the tabs from a number of things. At times I'll do a print on what is called a 'raft' (if you don't have a printer). The printer lays down a thin layer of filament under the print and you separate them after the print. The raft stabilizes the print if it doesn't have much surface contact with the build plate on the printer. I save some of them and in this case cut one up with scissors and glued the tabs on with CA super glue.

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There is some pretty intricate detail on the print and I struggled to paint some of it. For instance the garage door ribs that make up the panel outlines are .025” wide and the panels are indented .025”.

Not sure what I'm going to do about the windows as I have no experience with windows. I've always left them open to this point. I did buy some Micro Kristal Klear but haven't tried it yet. I'd be interested in any thoughts/suggestions on them. I also have some .005” clear window material that can be cut. Here are the window sizes I'm working with on the buildings corner windows . Top windows are .110 x .250 & .450. Bottom larger windows are .250 x .350 & .350 x .500. Also need to do the door and garage windows. I'd think I might want to do all the same but open to suggestions.

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I'd be interested in pictures from any of you that print the gas station out and use it on your layout. You could contact me and send any pictures you would like to share ( HERE ).

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