As most visitors to the site know I built a little Sinclair service station a few months ago as a tutorial for basic scratch building.  Sense creating that little service station and much to my surprise, it has become the most popular article I have written.  Because of it I have seen one person use that article on their first scratch build attempt and do a great job.

Recently I had a person purchase a few structures that I built last year and also wanted more, I asked what he wanted and he said he wanted the Sinclair.  Not wanting to part with it I told him that I would build a custom one for him, the only thing that he wanted differently was he wanted it in working order.  I loved this idea because I toyed with this idea when I was building the original.

The Building

For the most part the structure is identical, I did not make any major changes because everything worked the first go-around.  The big changes that came are all cosmetic, such as the interior, garage door and windows.

Interior

After I had the styrene structure built, I went right to the interior and then finished the exterior later.  The base is cut from .020″ sheet styrene and if you look carefully at sheet styrene it has two different faces.  One side that is very smooth and the other has a very fine texture, I chose to have the texture facing up so the concrete floor would not look too perfect.  I then scribed expansion joints in the sheet with an x-acto knife.  Next I sprayed on a coat of Polly Scale Concrete (414317) to the top.  I made some tire marks with india ink/alcohol mixture and then added a few oil stains with PS Oily Black (414326).  I then took more of the ink wash and added a few stains to the floor.

The car is a GHQ 1936 Buick Coupe that I painted and weathered so it was not so new looking.  The figure under the car was also painted by me and is actually a fisherman (I had to cut the poor fish from his hand).  I then scratch built a pair of floor jacks from .020″ brass wire and strip styrene.  The potbelly stove is from I believe Period Miniatures (I am very much aware that there is no chimney or vent on the roof yet).  The work bench is from a company that I can remember because I bought it a few years ago.

Exterior

As I stated before, the exterior is largely unchanged from the original.  The most noticeable change is the garage door.  On the original it is a weird combination of bi-fold doors and I wanted the interior to be visible , so I made an executive decision and changed it to a flip-up slab door.  Also none of the windows are boarded up as they are on the original model.  A few of the other details are a light just above the Sinclair sign and all of the signage scattered about that found online.

Now that is done I am going to miss the little guy because I actually like it more than the original one I built, oh well, I guess I could always build another.