I made the mistake of visiting Scale Model Supplies a few weeks ago. Scale Model Supplies is an old-style hobby shop in St. Paul. It’s been around for a long, long time and has tons of stock. Not just model railroad stock, but they do have a lot of model railroad stock. A lot.
I managed to get out for only about $40, but that’s mainly because I didn’t go down all the aisles with model railroad stuff in them. One of the items I picked up was a laser cut kit to build a freight house. It was produced by Northeastern Scale Models, but they appear to have gone out of business. No matter.
This post will be picture heavy. Because I took a lot of pictures. 🙂
The decking came in four pieces. Two were just plywood for strength and two were embossed to look like planks. So step one was to glue those all together.
The next step was to cut out and assemble all the stringers under the deck. That was a lot of fun.
Then two of the long stringers were glued to the decking and cross stringers were glued into place.
Then rinse and repeat for the rest of the stringers.
Since the walls were a little flimsy, I glued some bracing on the back sides.
I like to paint as I go, so I painted all the wall sections, windows and doors next.
I also airbrushed the stringers and bottom of the deck with brown. I dry brushed the stringers with white and black to break up the plain brown. I was going for a creosote look.
Time to assemble the doors and windows and add the corner trim strips.
I decided it would be simpler to paint and weather the decking before I assembled the structure on top of it, so that was next.
Then it was time to assemble the buildings.
After assembling the buildings I fit the roof boards and painted the edges.
Before I installed the roof I added a view block made out of black paper and glued in a couple of crates that I laser cut.
The kit did not come with any roofing material. I decided I’d try some sand paper to see how that turned out. I used 600 grit paper and cut strips that were a scale 3′ wide to simulate roll roofing. I stuck them to the roof with some double-sided tape and overlapped them about 6″.
After all the sand paper was on the roof, including 2′ wide strips for the cap, I thinned some red paint and gave it a good wash. I think it looks okay.
I’m enjoying building laser kits. This one needs some more weathering, some steps so people can get onto the deck and maybe a hoist to get large items loaded. I also need to make some signs for it. But it’s finished for now.
Gorgeous!