Model Railway Buildings
Self built: Very cheap and quick to build buildings out of card. A splash
of paint and there you have it. Below is a picture of a scratch built engine
shed. It was built out of card. The for the brick work I used a computer
printed sheet, which is downloadable from this website(click here).
There are however some tips of the trade so to speak.
Tip 1. when
you fold card it tends to buckle at the corner. This is because
the card is being squeezed on the inside of the fold. If you
first remove some of the material on the inside of the fold by
cutting a V-shape in the card with a craft knife this wont
happen. The result is a shape corner on all your buildings.
Tip 2. A square is not a ridged shape and so a
square building can become deformed easily. To avoid this and give your building
extra strength insert triangular tabs into each corner.
Tip 3. Almost every building has a window.
so too make this effect simply stick some clear plastic (acetate) on to the
inside. One cheep supply of clear plastic is on the display boxes of some
modelling products. Don't trough it away save it and use it. Windows look
very good lit, so don't be afraid to put a light inside. See the
electronics page for info on lighting.
Ready built:
Hornby as well as many others supply ready built and ready
painted buildings. These look good but the selection is limited
and the cost is high.
Plastic kits:
Sort of a halfway house between scratch build and ready built. They are very
cheep and if you enjoy modelling you should get hours of fun building and
painting them. For tips on plastic building plastic model building see the plastic kits page.
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