It's A Small World After All: Kellogg's Fire Dept. (K.F.D.) - Fire House From Engine House Project - Pt 1 Fire House Memories

I think it best to give you a bit of background info before getting into the nuts-&-bolts of this project. My fascination with fire and emergency vehicles, fire stations, and all that stuff goes back to my childhood. Approx. 200' or so from our house, on the next street over, stood Engine Company 28. The station was built in 1904 (as the capstone above the door indicates and helps in dating the neighborhood I grew up in) and was activated in 1905. The station was located in the Merrill Park district of Milwaukee and I would go in there and visit fairly often. Here's a tidbit of nostalgia: back in the day - 1950s & '60s, one had to go to the local fire station to get their bicycles inspected and to get a license. The licenses were purely voluntary, but it was kind of a public relations thing for the kids to see their local fire fighters.

My uncle Eddie worked at Engine Co. 28 and my parents always said, "He drove the chief." Okay, soooo as an adult trying to put 2-&-2 together he was most likely the assistant fire chief for that station. I had seen him 'in action' at fires in the neighborhood and he was definitely not handling hoses, axes, or other equipment. I saw him walking around and directing other firemen to hot spots needing attention. One fire in particular was a tire warehouse which was ablaze just a couple of blocks away in the Menomonee River Valley - what a stinky fire that was!! And there he was traversing the perimeter and directing the fire firemen.

That being said, I seldom actually saw him in the fire house and I never interrupted his work or ask to see him. One of the other memories I had was that of an old pumper truck (likely '40s or early '50s era) with open cab and split windshield. What a beauty! It was always parked towards the left rear of the station as one entered through the bay door. The photos below are Google street view images from a few years back.

Apparently Engine Co. 28 was in continuous service from 1905 to 2017 when it was deactivated. Now that alone defies all logic as that whole neighborhood was a fire waiting to happen, and growing up in it I saw plenty of them! In any case, somebody with more sense and foresight decided to reactivate it and the station reopened just last year. The full story, along with a history of the fire house, can be found on the OnMilwaukee blog by Bobby Tanzilo. BTW, the capstone with "1904" above the bay door can best be seen in the blog article by Mr. Tanzilo - it doesn't show up well on the Google street view images. Stay tuned for our next installment: Inspiration and planning the fire house. Enjoy! Opa Fritz

Kellogg's Engine House to Fire House Project Templates!!!

HOOORAY! I've been able to recover the .PDF file for the templates. Here's what happened. Not long before the external hard drive went kaput I had downloaded the file to Google Docs, then when I went back to the docs page I couldn't find it!!! arrrrrrgh@!**#  

So today I went back to Google Docs and played around with the settings (Google re-formatted their screens from the last time I used them and I was a tad lost) and found the file along with several others that were 'lost'. Below is the shared link to the file. Enjoy! Opa Fritz and Oma Bettina

Kellogg's Fire House Template

I hope the template is easy enough to follow and that someone out there is able to do a much better build than me. I'd be interested to see your results.

Kellogg's Fire House From Engine House Project - Pt 4

Losing our external hard drive with so many of our photos on it was depressing and quite frankly we haven't felt like blogging much. I'm gonna try to get back in the swing of things though. Eventually I'll probably send the hard drive back to the manufacturer to see if they can repair it, but it's no longer under warranty and the holiday season is too close to have to spend money fixing gadgets. That being said not everything is lost and we'll do what we can in the meantime.

I know I promised there would be templates to go along with this Kellogg's Fire Engine project and while I was able to get the photos downloaded to Google, the .PDF file remains tucked away on the broke hard drive. Sorry. So anyway, here at least are photos of the completed project. Enjoy - I hope. Opa Fritz and Oma Bettina

You'll notice the walls don't go together well at the top. When the top couple rows of bricks were folded down, and the glue tab then folded up there always seems to be a problem joining those corners together. I've had this same problem on other buildings with similar construction techniques and it's been bothering me. I thought it over and have come to realize that further trimming is needed on those portions of the wall that get folded over. I won't be able to re-assemble this building until I recover the .PDF file though 

Going to the scrap box yielded several detail parts to add a little interest to the wide expanse of roof. An o-gauge diesel horjn was place atop the hose drying tower to act as a siren and was surrounded by lengths of HO scale fencing. The tower top is accessed by an HO scale ladder. A small plastic tube is a vent and a piece of cardboard became the access hatch

The building measures about 7 3/16" square. I could have made a wider building with less depth and five bays but this is what I ended up with for better or worse.

Kellogg's Fire House From Engine House Project - Pt 3

I'm getting there folks, I'm getting there. The Fire House now has a new roof which measures 7 1/8" (18.09cm) square. There's a bunch of stripwood framing on it to ensure a nice flat roof, and it makes it easier to to take off as well. When applying the stripwood the outer pieces are set in from the edges just enough to clear the stripwood on the walls. Also, a couple of the glue tabs on the walls were a tad too long, sticking out from the framing enough to require a little trimming. Enjoy! Opa Fritz and Opa Bettina

Kellogg's Fire House From Engine House Project - Pt 2

Well, progress is slow but sure on the Kellogg's Engine House turned Fire House Project. This week I managed to carve out enough time to build what may be the final version of this. I posted pics of the mock-up in the Oct 23 post and that mock-up helped me identify some big errors in my template. I think the changes I made will result in a model good enough for anyone with a little experience to put together a decent model. 

As I was building this it became apparent that plenty of bracing was needed. At first stripwood was glued to the top, bottom, and sides of each wall, but then the middle portion of the walls started bowing inward calling for additional bracing. The front wall ended up requiring a whole bunch of bracing so that it would stand straight with the doors open, otherwise it would have bowed outwards. Anywho, it seems to be working out okay. Once I get this all built up and photographed I'll make sure to post the template for it. Enjoy! Opa Fritz and Oma Bettina

I braced the heck out of the front wall, but it stands nice and straight without bowing outward

Kellogg's Fire House From Engine House Project - Pt1

For the past couple of months I've been hinting at a project in the works for those diminutive Kellogg's Corn Flakes cereal premium fire trucks featured here. A normal person would have cranked this out in a couple of weeks but so far it's taken me several months and I'm still not finished! Well, okay, but at least now there's some progress to report.

This whole thing started last year when I bought a vintage 1975, unassembled paper N-Scale Engine House (also a Kellogg's cereal premium). The problem was two-fold:

-I don't operate N-scale model trains and don't have use for an engine house

-We didn't have a scanner big enough to scan the sheets

The graphics were cool enough that I thought they could be used for some other kind of building and when the idea of re-posting the Kellogg's fire engine cereal premiums took hold, so did the idea for the Fire House project. By this time we had a large format printer/scanner/copier and so the project took off - at a snail's pace. That's okay, at least it got started. This is my first ever attempt at putting together a building of my own design and I must say it's a lot more work than I expected. Along the way I did a lot of stupid things (my forehead has a bruise from constantly hitting it with my palm and exclaiming, "Doh! Why did I do that?")

Here's the original sheet for Kellogg's Engine House kit. It was already folded in half making it easier to scan.

Between Photoshop and Microsoft Picture Manager I cropped the walls and further cropped out various architectural elements from the original artwork like doors, windows, course of brick, etc., and saved them as individual files or 'parts' for the new 'kit'.

Here's a low quality B&W print-out of the wall posed behind one of the Kellogg's trucks just to see if the size was right

This is as far as I've gotten so far, a full size mock-up of the station. It's designed to accommodate the shortest engine and the fire chief's car, one in front of the other in one of the bays. That ensures all the other engines would fit as well.

I wanted the doors to be displayed open but I now know it will take a good deal of bracing in order for the front wall to sit nice and straight. The building may have to be glued to a base.

I designed three different side walls. Two have varying window arrangements and one is solid brick, with graphics used from a sheet of brick paper that's been laying around The Cave like, since forever.

That tower in the corner is meant to represent the hose drying tower found in fire houses. The other boxy looking thing is the HVAC (heating, ventilation, air conditioning) unit.

No bracing on the mock-up. It just ended up being square. It was the proportion that just worked out better for me.

There's still more work to do on the building. I have to re-arrange windows and some other odds-&-ends after which I'll build another mock-up

Enjoy! Opa Fritz and Oma Bettina