OScale Trains

234tinue all the way across the wall, spacingthe strips slightly apart and leaving twogaps. One gap is for a small 18" squareaccess hatch is located a scale 7’-3” fromthe bottom edge and 5’-6” from the lefthandcorner. The other gap is for the slidingdoor, which measures 3’-3” x 7’ andis 12’-6” from the left edge and one footfrom the bottom (See the elevation drawingand Photo 5.)5out. If you are following along, just laythe siding material all the way across thesub-wall.Once all the siding was on, I sanded itwith some 80-grit sandpaper to impart awood grain texture to the smooth styrene.This doesn’t take a lot of effort since the80-grit paper is pretty aggressive. Be certainto sand in an up-and-down directiononly. You don’t want the grain runningsideways! This effect doesn’t really showup well in the photos until the walls arepainted and weathered.To begin turning this plastic intosomething resembling wood, I startedwith a wash coat of Floquil Grimy Blackpaint. As you can see in Photo 6, this is a6very thin mix (really more of a stain thanpaint). I just gave the bottle a couple ofshakes to mix the paint, testing things ona scrap piece until I got what I wanted. Ialso dusted on some brown pastel dustand brushed it in along the bottom wherethe weathering would be heavier. Next,I dry-brushed a layer of red, using ModelMaster #4632 Guards Red acrylic paint.Once again, this is more of a stainingcoat, although a little heavier. I reallygave the brush a workout here, as youwant to have the Grimy Black undercoatshowing through (Photo 7). If it seems7doesn’t look right to you, try it again.Practice on scrap material until things satisfyyou before risking the actual model.Photo 8 shows the partially finishedwall section. I painted the opening for the8loading door Grimy Black (full strength foronce), and added the track for the loadingdoor. The track is made from some brassscraps I had in my material drawer. I don’thave any sizes to give here. The hangingrail was soldered to the two brackets andthe whole thing attached to the wall withWalthers Goo. I crudded things up withthe usual mixture of Grimy Black andburnt sienna chalk dust for a nice rustyeffect. The door was made with a core of0.040” styrene covered with more of the0.020” x 0.188” strips, sanded for woodgrain, painted, and weathered like therest of the wall. The hangers are madeof wire (I think it was 1/32” piano wire,but I’m really not sure.) They were justeyeballed into the shape needed with apair of needlenose pliers and attached tothe door with Walthers Goo. The bracketshook over the door track, althoughthe door itself was glued to the wall withstyrene cement. The walls can finallybe glued together now. Much has beenwritten about building basic boxes, so Iwon’t go into a lot of detail. Just make surethings are square and well-braced againstwarpage (Photos 9-10).Being new to O Scale, I’m still learningwhat’s available and what isn’t. At thetime I didn’t know of a source for corrugatedmetal siding in a scale thickness, soI made my own using heavy-duty aluminumfoil. Using a sheet of Evergreen metalsiding as a guide, I taped a piece of thefoil to it and scribed in the corrugations9One mistake I made at this point wasnot running the siding all the way acrossthe wall. You’ll notice in the photos thatI left a gap at each end, to be covered bythe corrugated siding. Without somethingunderneath this gap, though, a bumpwould show after the corrugated tin wasapplied. I wound up gluing in some stripsof 0.020” x 0.188” styrene to level things18 • O Scale Trains - Sept/Oct ’06that I’m a bit vague with the instructionsat this point, it’s because these types ofeffects are very subjective. The sameeffect will look great to one person andlousy to another. Furthermore, most ofthe time I’m just flying blind doing this,experimenting as I go. Dumb luck is ahuge factor in my modeling. If something