I am working on my town for my 1950"s Iowa farm town, I would like to know the best place to get already put together buildings, stores, churches etc.
Woodland Scenics offers some nice town buildings both built-up and in kit form. Model Power also offers a fair amount of pre-builts but they are fairly toylike.
Hope this helps.
Well, if you’re willing to shell out a bunch of money for someone else’s creativity, Woodland Scenics offers a nice line of over priced prebuilt stuff.
If you’re willing to take a little time to challenge yourself to develop some skills, you can buy Design Preservation Models kits, spend a pleasant evening painting and assembling them. The added benefit is that the model becomes a reflection of you.
I know there are folks out there who don’t think they have the time or the talent to take on a simple task like building a few kits, but aside from the cost savings, the rewards you reap from “rolling your own” are immense.
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If you really want to save money and have more fun doing it, get some plastruct or Evergreen sheet stock and try scratching out something from raw materials.
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Buying a prebuilt structure is like going to see a movie before you’ve read the book… It kills your imagination’s ability to create its own vision. And the death of imagination is reinforced when the town on your layout looks just like the town on 10,000 other layouts, because everyone bought the same product.
Stand up for yourself! Stick it to the Man! Build it yourself!!!
Lee
I have used several of the Design Preservation kits. They look really good but can be challenging to paint. I have painted some myself but the best looking ones are the ones my artistic friend painted. Something else you might consider are the Walthers modular kits. Many different pieces that can be glued together in just about anything you can imagine. Walthers also has a built up line. If you are really up to the challenge you might look at Bar Mills Scale Models. They have some really nice looking products. Bar Mills are craftsman kits. They will seriously test your ability.
Good luck and have fun.
With regard to painting the DPM N-scale structure kits, do you have any good ideas about methods to paint the window and door frames which are cast into the structure walls? Hand painting each window and door frame with a very fine brush seems very tedious. I’ve heard of a method where the window and door frames are painted (airbrushed) first with their color and then they are masked off and the surrounding walls are airbrushed or, without masking on the windows and doors, painted with a brush.
I’ve got a bunch of DPM structure kits that need to be assembled but I’ve been waiting to get a clear idea of how to paint the windows and doors. DPM makes an excellent line of N-scale structures and I’d use them more if they were easier to paint.
Thanks for your help,
Bob
Here are a couple of eBay N Scale searches to start…
eBay = n dpm
eBay = n model power
eBay = n rix
Plaza Japan stocks reasonably-priced Japanese N Scale, and; combines shipping direct from Japan for quality manufacturers like Greenmax, Kato, Tomytec, Tomix, etc.
Bob,
I start by spraying the wall with the color I want on the windows. It could be flat white, tan, green or any color you like.
Once it’s good and dry, about 24 hours will do, take some clear packing tape and put it over the outside of the wall. Then, using a sharp xacto, trim around each window frame, leaving a clear tape mask over the window. When you’ve trimmed them all out, pull off the rest of the tape, and shoot the wall with your brick color. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.
Then I go back with a fine brush and hit the window ledges with a concrete color, and take care of any other details I want to highlight.
Lee
Lee,
Thanks for your reply. I’ll give your method a try. What brand of paint do you use on your structures? Is it latex-based or solvent based? Do you paint each wall section before assembly?
Thanks again,
Bob
I have found the kits from Pre-Fab to be great to build.They have a lot of small detail parts to enhance their appearance.You can use your imagination to paint and decorate them.
My favorite color is CHEAP. I usually pick up flat colors in big spray cans at Walmart for under a buck.
Solvent base is better if you don’t plan to prime, but you can go even cheaper by thinning those craft acrylic paints and using an air brush, but you shoot the building with a gray primer first.
Lee