For those who have been following this series on the basics of model railroading, this part is the kicker - the one that ties it all together. Hopefully during this series what began as a train set is now well on its way to being a model railroad. Now we'll take a look at some of the things that help make those train models come alive, giving them something to do and a place to go. It is time to consider structures and scenery
Trains form only a small part of the world around us. A railroad is a narrow ribbon of twin steel running between cities, industries and yards. There is a countryside along that ribbon, one with rural land, small towns and medium and large cities that are linked by a transportation system, the railroad. This network is there to move goods and people. That is why the trains exist, and providing realistic scenery and buildings will help give them the appearance and purposes of real life.
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Like the prototypes, model structures come in many shapes and sizes and can be built out of greatly differing materials. There are all kinds of railroad buildings, like shacks and sheds, depots and towers, and engine and car shops and servicing buildings. There are farms, and in the towns and cities, homes and industries. The selection of buildings that can be used is limited only by one's imagination and how they fit in with the layout's theme.
The typical model railroader builds most of the structures on his layout from kits. There's good reason for this - the variety of structure kits available in HO (and N) is almost unbelievable. Look at a Walthers or Con-Cor catalog if you question this, then look at the shelves of your hobby shop. While the shops can't carry everything, what is there is likely to be impressive, and, if the kits aren't enough, wood, windows and parts are made for scratch building.
By far the most common material used in buildings is plastic. There are a great number of good plastic buildings on the market that can be built exactly as they come from the box and that make nice additions to a layout. If you wish to have something different, a little paint can do wonders to change the look of a straight-from-the-box kit. Leaving off some details, or changing, adding or moving others can be done, too, to create something that fits your layout, needs or tastes better. You can also combine parts of many kits or cut them up and use the pieces as raw material for making a building of your own design or to come close to a favorite prototype structure; the phrase 'kitbashing" is used to describe such modeling. The flexibility in building structures and scenery makes them really enjoyable modeling activities.
There are wood kits available, as well as kits molded in Hydrocal®, which is a hard plaster, cast polyester resin and cardstock. Kits with metal panels that need to be cemented with cyanoacrylate cement or soldered are made, and you can always build from scratch with the doors and windows and other details available in white metal and plastic. Extra doors and windows can be added to most kits easily and they can also be closed off by filling them in, just as you see on many older buildings near the tracks. What you use will be what you are most comfortable with. I've been using cardstock for a number of the structures I've built from scratch lately.
Time and patience we the keys to having a model come out the way you expect. I have a close friend who only uses plastic buildings. He's afraid he'll ruin other types of buildings. There is nothing wrong with this at all, and he has a railroad that looks good. He does have one kit that uses cardstock, wood and metal that is partially done. It looks good, but he may never finish it because he just doesn't like working with cardstock. The message is simple: work with materials that you like and don't think you have to scratchbuild everything. As an example, just about every issue of Railroad Model Craftsman, and many of the other modeling magazines, has an article about scratchbuilding or kitbashing some kind of structure. Most are quite manageable for modelers with just a little building experience; many are designed to be good first projects. Even if you are not intending to build the model that is the subject of the article, read it through to pick up new modeling techniques.
There is one kit line that I would like to mention, because many modelers might pass them up because they are metal and they might think they will be "too hard." Woodland Scenics makes small buildings, scenes and vehicles from white metal. (There are other companies with white metal kits for cars and trucks, too, like Walker, Lee Town, Ivers and Wheel Works, to name a few.) They make nice additions to any layout, so don't be afraid of them. You can use cyanoacrylate cement, which model railroaders sometimes call "ACC" (though almost no one else does! It's more commonly called 'Super Glue'), to assemble them. Vehicles add to the total effect of the scenery and structures; since they are such a normal part of what we see in real life, a layout looks odd without them, even though it might be hard to figure out why at first.
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