Thick acryllic plastic, preformed and glued to windows.
Use glass glue and fill the between the muntins (the little bars that separate the glass into panes)
Extra thin real glass sheets (cover slips)
I’m starting to lean more and more toward #1. I like doing interiors and thick glass just throws things off if you have a big interior view. Also if a part becomes damaged, I can just cut a new one from a sheet and not worry if there are spares on the sprue.
Easy to use and looks good. Dont like thick acrylic material beacuse it requires more effort to fit and trim. Really don’t like the glue in the muntins - I think it looks bad in the finished product.
Here you can see the difference between the thick plastic ones Walthers issues and a cover slip. I think real glass looks way better on the outside as well. I put a couple of broken panes in my round house by simply pushing on them, the effect is great.
I usually work with clear acetate since it is inexpensive, cuts easily and does not scratch easily. However, another model railroad magazine has an article this month about using plastic food wrap and hair spray to glaze window frames. Sounds interesting and something I’ll have to try.
Clear acetate for me, too. It’s easy to work with and comes with most kits, anyway. Thick plastic is cloudy and obscures the view of the interior.
City Classics sells acetate sheets pre-printed with signs, window shades and curtains. Just cut them out and glue them in.
I like to use Canopy Cement to glue windows to the inside of the walls. It holds well and turns clear when set. At that point, you can scrape off any excess with a toothpick without damaging the window or the frame.
I’ve used Canopy Cement and filled the space between the mullions. The effect is that of “bullet glass” because it does not dry flat and you end up with a small distorting “lens” in each window pane. This transmits light well, but it’s impossible to focus through the windows. That’s ideal for a large structure that you want to illuminate but not bother with detailing the interior.
They are microscope slide coverslips. You can score them and snap them but you will lose some along the way. They come in many different sizes though and I have been able to get close enough just by having different sizes on hand.
You can order unsterile ones from China for pennies, so I ordered about five different sizes, all for under $5.00 including postage.
Spray adhesive is a really good glue to use with them.
I have used microscope cover slips for a different reason: I can’t stand unprototypical window-opening depth or nonscale specular reflection from windows. This applies far more to locomotives and rolling stock than to most fixed structures.
For a while I applied the cover slips over the sort of ‘press-in’ thick plastic block window that puts the apparent glass surface ‘where it ought to be’, using glass-grinding tools and materials to shape the thin glass and an adhesive with reasonably comparable index of refraction. This can be refined into cutting away most of the center of the plastic pane, leaving just a frame to cement the thin slip to. I have also tried beveling thick shells ‘from the back’ and cementing slip glass in the resulting opening with flexible clear adhesive, but you need watchmaker skillz to do this on any particular scale, and lining up parallel windows in passenger cars is an exercise in frustration.
Probably the ‘best’ solution for streamlined passenger-car windows is the use of thin brass or acetate car sides, with detail painted (or today, perhaps, 3D-printed) on both sides ‘to scale’. This either with acetate/transparency sheet or glass for the window ‘layer’ or band. I did experiment with thin-glass car sides (obtained from a source making large cover slips before they cut them to size as slips; today you’d get Gorilla Glass stock for making smartphone screen protectors) with built-up reinforcement (including acetate printed sides on the front and structural siding, including brass sheet, on the reverse). These require the care in handling you’d expect but the windows stay aligned and clear ‘forever’ and are more easily cleaned than acetate ones. However, they do produce a “system” exquisitely amenable to producing any combination of exterior paint scheme and window configuration for relatively low marginal tooling and setup cost, same as the older sys
I use transparency film and print out my windows with curtains, window covering and windows with signs. I print them on inkjet, laser and Alps printers. All three printers do an excellent job.
Lately I’ve been using a dob of 527 on a toothpick to apply the film.
Mel
Modeling the early to mid 1950s SP in HO scale since 1951
The clear plastic that almost everything you buy comes in. Its free,easy to cut, I use a CA to glue it,should you screw up;toss it grab another , did I mention free
This. I also use it for shimming under my low rails and for superelevation. I operate my turnouts manually, some with rods and levers, some just with a kabob skewer if they are within reach. Some of those are a little loose at the throwbar, so a shim of the same material under the throwbar seems to tighten things enough that a thrown point will stay where I need it. If it shows up in imagery, a light ‘weathering’ with acrylics takes care of that.
I use crystal clear Acetate and some times glass from Ngineering which is.005’'…problem with those are…they only come in two sizes and extremely hard to cut, without damage.
In the pic’…one of the buildings has real glass for the windows and the rest have the Acetate…can You tell the difference?
I get mine through Amazon…two sizes, thin for My truck/car models and medium for structures. It is crystal clear with protective covering on both sides easy to remove/cut:
I’m with Overmod: cover slides or some other type of real glass. The inaccurate specularity/reflection of anything else drives me nuts, and I’m by no means a prototype modeler much less a rivet counter. Real glass has significant reflection from any angle other than 90 degrees—and as that reflection increases, opacity decreases. That’s why when you walk down the street, the windows ahead of you reflect their surroundings—and the only ones you can see directly into are the ones you are immediately in front of. Plastic or acetate just doesn’t act that way.
I used acetate in the '50s and '60s, but now prefer clear styrene, as it doesn’t yellow with age, like acetate did. Easy to cut, and affixes to styrene with solvent-type cement, or to metal with contact cement. I also use the thick plastic “glass” which comes with most structure kits, but I seldom bother with interiors, so it’s “good enough” for my needs.
