Lackawanna Railroad Concrete Tower in HO model scale

I have been working on and off on my model railroad, the New York, Erie & Western, for something like 25 years.  It is a freelanced version of the Erie Lackawanna that combines all of the Erie Lackawanna era into one era.  The layout features more locomotives much more rolling stock than I can ever fit onto the layout.  I painted most of the of the engines myself and fitted the fleet with DCC decoders and use an NCE DCC system to run the show.

I started collecting rolling stock and painting the locomotive fleet before I began work on the layout. My former home was not suitable for a model railroad that I hand in mind so I painted engines and collected boxes and boxes of interesting rolling stock. This brings us to the subject line of this little story. 

On 10-19-1992 I purchased two HO scale model kits of Lackawanna Railroad concrete towers, for a grand total of $84.90.  I don't recall how I came across the advertisement for these but I may have heard about the kits from an Erie Lackawanna Historical Society flyer.  The kits were sold by The Hobby Gallery, 1810 Meridan Road, Wolcott, CT 06716.  These kits are long out of production and I have found very little information about the kits or The Hobby Gallery.  These kits may have been made by Crow River Products, which I also have no information about.  Here are images of the box lid and box end label as well as a Hobby Gallery advertisement.



The kits were made of white plaster castings, something that I have never had experienced working with before.  There were thick plaster castings of the roof and walls and one small bay window part.  The kit also contained unpainted metal parts.  There were also many unpainted metal parts.  Metal parts included all the windows,many metal roof rafter tails, a metal side door roof overhang, metal bay window parts and a metal chimney.  And then there were many unpainted wooded sticks, each stick was about a foot long and were 1/32x1/32 square or 1/16x1/16 square, and 3/64x3/32 square.  The wooden sticks were to be cut to make the spacers between the windows, somehow.

These kits were bewildering to me and thus sat untouched for 33+ years in their boxes. 

The The Hobby Gallery kits I purchased back in 1992 feature the smaller version of the Lackawanna Railroad concrete towers that fit the type seen at Port Morris, NJ., Mattes Street signal tower, Scranton, PA., and Greendell, NJ.  The Lackawanna had some wider concrete towers which had and additional windows on each side of the bay window.








Looking about the Internet in 2026 I find no references to the The Hobby Gallery Lackawanna tower models.  But I did come across images of what seems to be the plaster Hobby Gallery Lackawanna tower models on Jeff Mutters's very impressive layout.  The models appear in an unfinished plaster window-less state, and judging on what an ordeal its was for me to put them together, I am not surprised they are unfinished in the photos.










    

Here in 2026, I see that another firm "The N Scale Architect" offers nice looking model Lackawanna Railroad concrete towers made from laser cut fiberboard.  They offer both the smaller and larger version of the Lackawanna Railroad concrete towers in laser cut fiberboard.   The model on the left is the larger wider version of a Lackawanna Railroad concrete towers and is available in HO scale. 

The image on the right is the smaller version of a Lackawanna Railroad concrete towers and is modeled in N scale.












In the summer of 2026 I got up enough nerve to try to tackle this seemingly difficult plaster model kit.  I started by a thorough study the images that came with the structures.  Here is the entirety of the paperwork that came with the kits.


The plaster parts needed to be filed a bit to remove casting irregularities.  All the plaster parts got two coats of Testors Spray Lacquer Clear Coat / dull coat spray. 
All of the metal parts; the windows, the many roof rafter tails, the metal side door roof overhang, and the metal portion of the bay window needed filing to removed metal flash.
 





The paints that I used were:

  1- Rust-oleum Painter's Touch, UltraCover Paint+Primer, satin, in "Stone Gray".  This was used as a base coat to further seals the thirsty porous plaster.
  2- Rust-oleum Painter's Touch, UltraCover Paint+Primer, satin, in "Fossil" color.  This was used for the walls, all the wooden sticks, roof rafter tails, and the big roof casting.
  3- Rust-oleum Mutlicolor Textured "Desert Bisque".  This has a bumpy textured finish and mimics rough concrete in the model. This was sprayed to the walls and then masked off so a further application of "Fossil" could be applied.
  4- Rust-oleum Gloss Protective Enamel, "Hunter Green".  This was used on the roof and windows.
  5- I also used a bit of Vallejo Surface Primer, Grey Acrylic Primer and Black Acrylic Primer.  This was applied as a mixture diluted in alcohol to weather the roof of the structure.




Here are the plaster wall panels and bay window parts after being painted with Rust-oleum Mutlicolor Textured "Desert Bisque" textured paint.  Blue and white masking tape has been applied to the areas where the "Desert Bisque" paint is to be shielded from the next layer of paint, which would be Rust-oleum Painter's Touch, UltraCover Paint+Primer, satin, in "Fossil".






The Windows came as individual metal castings which I painted Rust-oleum Gloss Protective Enamel, "Hunter Green".  I assembled the multiple window assemblies using a little right angle jig that I made out of some Lego pieces.  On the underneath the windows I used a piece of clear plastic (from a grocery store fresh lettuce packaging lid) that I cut into a rectangles slightly larger in size than the final window assembly would be.  This clear plastic would serve as window glazing and the backbone structure of the window assembly. 

I then arranged the little "Fossil" colored wooden strips and green windows in an alternating pattern on top of the clear plastic sheet using the Lego jig to help keep things lined up.  Once I was happy with how the windows and wooden strips looked in the jig I added a bit of Testors Clear Parts Cement & Window Makers to glue the assembly together.  After the glue had time to set, I trimmed the excess clear plastic and the result was a multiple pane window assembly held together by the clear plastic window pane sheet.





Then the window assemblies needed to be installed into the plaster walls.  This again required filing and sanding of both the plaster and the window assemblies.  The window assemblies fell apart on two occasions that then required another trip to the Lego glueing jig.  The assemblies were glued into the plaster openings with Testors Clear Parts Cement & Window Makers to glue.  At this point I did not install the end windows nor the bay windows.  That adventure would happen later.  But first, the walls needed to be glued together.






The walls needed to be glued with 90 degree angles between them.  The plaster castings had no reference points to do so.  So I made another jig out of Lego.  The jig was wrapped in a bit of tape to bring it up to the right dimensions and greased with plumbers lubricant so the glue would not adhere to the jig.  I used plain white Elmer's glue and gently clamped the walls to the jig.  I was careful to inset the side walls 1/32" which "defined the corner columns" as stated in the instructions.

This Lego jig was made with the inside hollow.  After the plaster set, I was able to remove the Lego jig by pulling the Lego pieces inwards into the hollow space.  Had I not left the Lego core hollow, I doubt I would have been able to remove the Lego jig from the four walls of the building.






The building's bay window assembly consists of an upper trapezoidal plaster casting that also establishes the upper edge of the bay windows.  The lower part is a trapezoidal metal casting along with three metal wall pieces, one long and the other two short.  This would establish the lower edge of the bay windows.  Much time was spent with a trial and error dry fitting of these pieces, filing where necessary.  The spacing between the upper plaster trapezoidal plaster casting and the lower metal bay window assembly needed to be just right so that the actual window assemblies would fit.

Eventually, when things looked as good as they were going to get, I glued the lower four metal pieces together using UV resin glue.  This glue is a sticky clear glue with the consistency of honey.  When exposed to ultraviolet lights using a special UV flashlight, it hardens in less than a minute.  This glue was a game changer as it allowed me to adjust fiddly parts till they were just in the right position and then I would zap the area with the ultraviolet light and the parts would stay put.

The photo to the left shows two of the lower metal bay window assemblies, one is right side up and the other upside down.  Then I installed the bay windows into the opening created between the upper bay plaster casting and the lower
metal bay assembly. 



After much adoo, the bay windows were installed.  That was perhaps the most difficult par of the project.

The roof casting has a flat bottom without any markings.  I had to establish where the roof should rest on the sidewalls.  Getting this centered took a lot of measuring and re-measuring.  I then glued little wooden shafts to the underside of the roof so the roof could be keyed to the wall structures.  This allowed easy roof removal and re-installation. 

I also glued some wooden shafts to the inside walls to support the second floor which would be added later.  The kit came with a thin scribed wooden sheet that I painted brown and cut and fit to the second floor area.








With the building inverted on its roof casting (supported on a plastic bowl), I proceeded to glue all the little roof rafter tails into position.  The roof rafter tails needed to be perpendicular to the building and roof edge.  I trimmed the roof rafter tails to fit between the building and the edge of the building then and glued each roof rafter tail in using the UV curing glue.

The original instructions had the roof rafter tails extending outwards past the edge of the roof and the roof rafter tails were to support a tiny wooden shafts that would represent rain gutters.  I omitted this as I did not see fragile wooden gutters lasting very long on this model.
I like to install LED lighting in my buildings.  My layout as a dedicated 12v DC lighting circuit powered by some old 12volt 7.5 amp switching adapter that I had in my junk pile.  It supplies my whole layout's lighting with a steady 12v DC current without flicker.







Inside the tower structure I installed two vertical wires, one for positive and one for negative.  And before I put the wooden second floor panels in, I mounted two horizontal brass bars which serve as lighting support and power supply bus bars for the LED lights that are soldered between them. 
The upper level also got bus bars.

For the single light above the side door, I used a size 0603 Pre-Wired Micro LED, 2.8-3.3V, Warm White.  I soldered it to the power bus bars with a 50,000 ohm resistor in series.
For the other indoor lights in the building, 3 on the lower floor and 5 on the upper floor, I installed 3030 SMD LED Diode Lights, Warm White.  Each of these were connected to the bus bar, each having a 3000 ohm resistor in series.

The resistors are essential otherwise the LED's will fail instantly.





Here is how the lighing looks.



 

I decided to make sturdy bases for the towers.  One tower is destined to be a desk display item, the other tower will be a layout structure.

Using Hydrocal, a greased sheet of metal, and Lego molds or forms, I cast hydrocal into the molds.  The hydrocal would be white but I added pigment to it.  My pigment recipe is for each 100cc of dry hydrocal, I add water, and then I add colorant, (Quikrete Buff Cement color No.1317 and Quikrete Charcoal Cement color No.1317).  The Quikrete colorant bottles needed to be vigorously shaken as it settles in the bottles.  I added 0.1cc of each Buff and Charcoal Quikrete colorant into the hydrocal mixture. 



Here we see the future desk display tower with the base attached and the power wire coming out the bottom.







Here is the desk display model tower with roof with chimney and the base attached.  The base was sprayed with Rust-oleum Mutlicolor Textured "Desert Bisque".







Some more views of the desk display model tower upon completion.









And some views of the display tower displaying itself.













The second tower model was destined to be placed in this layout location on a built up foundation made of hydrocal castings.  The tower's base casting was used as the dimensional template for the foundation perimeter.












Here is the tower, and its hydrocal cast base.  Using Lego pieces to center the tower onto the base, I used Elmer's glue to glue the tower to the base casting.













The tower seen here in its location.  Lights are on, the roof is installed, let the trains roll.






Email:  axm11@case.edu

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