Building a Coal Tipple with Aiden

In my initial post I mentioned that I had a layout with my son's over 25 years ago.  Well, I had started to build a Coal Tipple back then but only got about 25% done before the boys had lost interest in trains and everything was packed up.  I had packed this structure away and whenever we moved or cleaned up I saw the box and said to myself that someday I would finish it. 

Over the past few weeks I've been working on it and Aiden is visiting for a few days over July 4th holiday.  Today he helped make the roof.  We are using black construction paper for the base and will texture it and weather it.

Here is the coal tipple without the roof.

We cut the construction paper into strips that are scaled to real tar paper and then Aiden sanded one side with 220 sandpaper to simulate a rough texture.

After they were sanded we applied glue and put them onto a cardboard backing overlapping them as we moved from the bottom to the top.

Once both sides of the top were done Aiden put glue around the edge of the coal tipple's top and we placed the roof onto the top.

We now have a roof!!!   We then took an x-acto knife and picked up various portions of the paper to simulate the paper peeling up due to age and the weather.  The goal is to make the roof look aged.

Tomorrow's goal will be to add some chalks to the roof to continue to weather the top.  Will probably use some light browns and white. 

A little while after we finished, Aiden said to me..."I really enjoyed doing that with you".   Not a dry eye in the house!!!