I just finished my first HO scale DPM structure - City Cab Co. (http://www.dpmkits.com/images/112b.jpg). I think I did pretty well. I painted and weathered the building. The windows are a bit difficult because they are molded on. Hopefully, I am on my way to some craftsman kits. A little more practice and some tips from all of you will help.
I posted some pictures on Yahoo! so that you can see it. Go to http://photos.yahoo.com/spovlot and click on “HO DPM Structure” album to see the pictures. Please let me know your comments and constructive criticism. But be nice. [:D]
Looks good Scott, nice job. The roof is too good looking though, you need to mess it up .
Maybe some old TV antennas or patches to the roof. Try adding some hatch ways, Stand pipes, Vents.
Nice job with the weathering, Scott. I like the DPM kits and as you found out, painting the details like window trim, etc requires a steady hand and good eyes. I have a bunch of N scale DPM structures that I built over 10 years ago. I had removed them from my previous layout to recycle them into the new town of Muddy Creek. They’re sitting on a shelf by my workbench where I can admire the skill I had way back when I had a steady hand and good eyes…
The only thing I can offer by way of advice is that flat roofs start looking like crap before the roofing contractors have even put their ladders away. The sun beats down on it and turns glossy black to a filmy charcoal, dirt and leaves collect in corners, water rings from water standing in depressions are often visible, the inevitable leak requires patching and the workers find it easier to leave the empty 5 gallon cans on the roof than to dispose of them. In short, roofs require even more weathering than the rest of the structure.
I used a very fine grit sandpaper that I sprayed black, weathered and patched and glued it to the styrene roofing. There are other ways of distrssing the styrene but fine grit paper is what the Muddy Creek Roofing Company seems to prefer. Looking down on the town portion of the layout never was a pretty sight.
Nice job!!!
I have several DPM kits on my layout. I found even with my years of experance painting those window frames was a chore. I have done many craftsman kits and the main thing I can tell you is to work slowly and read and reread the instructons.
You will find that while you do more complex kits as your skills improve you will still find you self doing the simpler kits just because they fit your needs.
In 30+ years in this hobby I have built simple kits, craftsman kits and scratch built stuff as I needed . I even recently bought ( gasp!!!) a built-up structure.
The roof was interesting. First, I painted it gray. Then I weathered with
some washes. That looked blotchy. Then I tried to paint some tar lines
with Engine Black. That did not look good either. So I decided to add some
texture. I painted some 150-grit sandpaper black as an experiment. I
planned to cut it into strips to look like tar paper. Well, I found out
that I can’t cut a straight line. [%-)] So, frustrated, I got out the black
paint and covered it. Oh well. I may try to add a few more details.
Actually, using sandpaper is to represent the texture of the fine gravel that is spread after the roof is coated with hot tar. You wouldn’t see strips of material on a new roof, just an even coating of the small stone. (That is until the roof required patching, other work on the roof messed it up, tree limbs fell on it, etc.)
I cut the styrene sheet for the roof to size and used it as the template to cut the sandpaper. Glued it on and weighted it down over night. Then installed it on the building.
I like the sandpaper idea. Go to a Kniko’s or Office Depot or Office Max where they have copying machines and use their paper cutter to make straight cuts. You really should make some copies or something while there since it’s not nice to freeload in commercial places. I use their copy machines to make photocopies of building kits to play with how to best kitba***hem. Use their paper cutter to trim off most of the blank edges since my scissors work sometimes leaves a little to be desired.
The sandpaper idea seems to have a good following. I had trouble with the spray paints I used on the DPM kit causing the roof to “warp”. I posted on another forum, (railroadforum.com) and got this reply;
I noticed that one of your roofs was showing a little of the same symptoms as mine and think this “sanpaper” approach is worth a try. At least it’s going to be for me.
Nice job! I’m finishing up a DPM module kit. For the roof, I painted the stryrene black, sprinkled gray ballast on it. Now that it’s dry, I will spray paint the ballast black to give the gravel appearance.
The gravel on the roof can be almost any color. The black paint is good for the tar coat, and i would recommend a fine ballast of a “blend” color for smaller roofs. Larger roofs can have different sections of different colors. You can do almost anything you like, and it will be “proto-typical.” (I’m the plant engineer for the company I work for, and have over 450,000 sq ft of proto-type roof to take care of. About 180,000 sq ft of it is gravel covered, built-up, flat roof.)
