The Jetty Hotel refit

It's time to catch-up on some of the improvements that have occurred since Philden Beach made it's exhibition debut back in September of this year. To complete my NSW North Coast setting, the square shell of a structure that sat atop the overpass looking out over the rail yard for the past two years, has finally been refitted as the historic Jetty Hotel.

With the Coffs Harbour Jetty such a noticeable feature of my layout's backdrop, there really wasn't a better choice of name to adorn the top of the Century-old sandstone and clapboard hotel.

The kit is a Walker Models laser cut timber kit of the Royal Hotel, a building that is seen on quite a number of Australian model railway layouts. However, I have a penchant for doing things differently, and along with asking Stuart to custom change the signage to say Jetty Hotel when I first started planning to build a NSW North Coast layout, I also set about altering the appearance somewhat, starting with opening up the window frames on the top balcony level to provide a better glimpse inside the structure.

Some years back, a chap wrote into a magazine that one of my previous layouts had been featured in, lamenting the drop in quality of modelling given that my structures had omitted the roof capping. Fair point I guess. However I just don't like the look of a folded strip of paper glued along the ridge peaks, nor using strip styrene which tends to look a bit out of scale.

So, given that I was working with the styrene roof sections supplied with the kit, I turned to a sneaky cheat trick that I have been using with great success, in that I simply filed the ridge caps smooth with a small hobby file prior to painting the roof.

Once painted, the lines on the corrugated styrene sheet look as though they disappear into the smoothly filed strip along the ridge peaks, and as far as I'm concerned looks more to scale as simulated ridge capping than using a thin strip of folded paper. I use a silver paint pen to highlight the ridge peaks prior to spray painting the roof with Rust-o-leum silver, as this adds a slight elevated layer of paint to the ridge that remains visible once painted. As you can see, the building is a background structure, and as such will remain away from view from the armchair judges.

The next step was to paint the .mdf board shell of the kit to resemble a rendered sandstone wall.

The roof was then painted, weathered in 50 shades of grey and grime, sealed with clear matte acrylic and set aside to dry while I painted and weathered the sandstone shell of the building. This is where I once again veered away from building the kit as supplied, given that it had parts to finish all four sides in weatherboard cladding. Instead, I masked and sprayed the building shell with Rust-o-leum Ivory Silk as the basis for the sandstone colour, then achieved the weathering effect as I outlined in my book Model Railway Weathered Wonders.

You may recognise the above picture from pages 66-67, as it was one of the final weathering methods to make it into the book.

The finished look resembles weathered and peeling, rendered sandstone walls.

I left the roof removable on this structure, as I wanted to have a little fun for my own benefit by modelling a stage complete with a band playing inside on the top level. The HO scale figures are by Noch, and the packet I used was the 15563 Street Performers.

I could only fit 5 of the 6 figures on my small stage, and the guy from this packet standing infront of a red music box cart I'd already installed as a spooky looking prop inside my Haunted Bookstore. The stage was built from card, with the images sourced from the internet, resized, printed and glued to the card. I double imposed the stage by printing a second identical image and cutting it to the outline of the curtains to give the stage some 3D depth. The rest of the interior was painted satin gold, so that the interior lighting would throw out a warm glow.

The band has just started playing for the night, and my wife and I are first onto the dancefloor.

Knowing that I wanted the band to be visible through the open French-windows, I built a raised stage and kept the area in front clear of any figurines that would only block the view. Except of course for my wife Denise and I, who just happened to be the first couple to hit the dance floor. (Everyone else is still outside on the top balcony drinking... and probably watching the trains!).

I added the French-windows and figures to the upper balcony before gluing the balcony in place.

Modelling the French-windows was again a cheeky shortcut... I simply filed the as-provided window frame sashes flush, glued a benchtop bar in place on the lower portion of the opened-up window frame, and glued the windows on an angle to look as though they had been concertinaed open. I did the same with the doors so that it looks like the crowd is coming -and-going from the balcony and the stage area.

The figures were this time a mix of Woodlands Scenics WOOA1836 HO scale Tourists and WOOA1833 Lovers. The unused ones will pop-up somewhere else on the layout in good time. I didn't want to over-populate the upper level with too many figurines, as once the roof is in place, I still wanted the band to be easily seen inside. Plus they're expensive little critters once you start ordering a packet of this and a packet of that!

A false bar was added against the left side wall, and an interchangable band poster to the outside.

As the kit had extra doors and stairwells on the upper level that I did not include, I back filled the stairwell doors with some Chooch Industries latex stone wall sheeting I had leftover in my scrap box, and topped the scrap box back up with my leftover doors and stairwell frames. You never know when stuff like this will come in handy.

Some white styrene roof guttering and rusty downpipes were added, and the building sat in place.

I finished the building off with some decorative stone capping around the street-side entrance doors, and added some H channel strip styrene to the roof edging to represent freshly-installed roof guttering. That's right, I cheated again by not even painting it. It looks all-white to me!

The balcony facades were glued into place, and the balcony roof secured to the verandah posts with some super glue. Only then did I notice that one of the verandah posts was sitting a mm lower than the other three, giving the balcony roof the impression of having sagged a little in the middle, (see very top photo). But, being a Century-old building, I decided to leave it as is, and tell myself that it adds a little character and charm.

Finally I painted and fixed some H channel styrene to the side of the building and made myself a set of 6 different band posters to slide in-and-out on the side of the building. I feel that over time, they will add some background variety for future photos of my trains trundling in-and-out of the railway yard below. So more on that later. As for the remnant trams tracks from the days of Philden Street Yard, (see the Philden Museum if you'd like to read all about that), they too are now gone, and I've almost finished modelling the Philden Beach Markets scene that will replace them atop the overpass.

From here on, it's all a bit of fun for me. As I continue working on the next and final Philden Model Railway book, there is a lot happening model-wise behind the scenes. I'll try to keep you updated as soon as I can. Until next time...