Sheet styrene is a great material to work with, I bought a sheet 2’x4’ years back and had never used it before, I built 3 large scale Frank Lloyd Wright houses with nothing but cut- to- fit styrene, I made windows, doors, roofing, siding, gutters, doorsteps etc etc , roofs were etched with an x-acto knife as was siding and bricks and stone work, easy to do and fun, painted with acrylic paints they almost look real. Just carried on in a smaller scale (HO) and make all my buildings, bridges, etc out of styrene, a sheet is cheap at a plastics store. easy to cut, sand, bend, shape and glues up instantly, go ahead try it.
Unfortunately the selection of N scale brick styrene sheets is rather limited, but here is one example that is reasonably priced:
http://www.walthers.com/exec/productinfo/405-37964
Here is some styrene tile roofing
http://www.walthers.com/exec/productinfo/570-91640
Here is the selection of N scale windows that Walthers offers:
As for starting with the station as a first project, my prediction would be that you will get it right on the second try, or maybe the third. Getting it wrong will get expensive. That is one reason why several people have suggested choosing a simpler project to learn on. I did make the mistake that you might be about to make. I dove into a large engine service shop using too much glue around the windows (I was trying to fill light gaps). The result was that the excess glue caused the window frames to swell which resulted in the muntins warping and breaking. There were only about 50 large windows affected. No big deal![D)][swg][(-D]
Dave
I know this discussion is about styrene but do consider paper textures. They are especially effective for brick buildings. Here are some sources. Just the desired texture, pay for it, download to your computer and you can print as much as you need:
Clever Models http://clevermodels.squarespace.com/
Scale Scenes http://scalescenes.com/
You can purchase Brickyard a program that has 20 styles of brick and stone from Evans Design http://www.modeltrainsoftware.com/ Their Model Builder program as many textures, (Brick, Wood, Metal, Doors and Windows) In Model Builder you can design brick textures, controlling color, mortor thickness, and adding weathering effects.
A free website that lets you genererate and print may styles of brick is Brickpaper http://paperbrick.co.uk/index.php?action=home
RSLaser makes laser cut wood peel & stick brick sheets http://www.rslaserkits.com/N-Details.html
thanks for all of the links I will check them out, I can build kits I’m just waiting on some special tweezers for the finer pieces like the ones I will be working with While I superdetail my GP15-1, my project has changed from the station to maybe some thing slightly smaller like my house, kitbashing, at the moment I’m trying to figure out how to get a tichy rotary plow and a lifelike BN F7 shell together to look like a BN prototype.
thank you for all the responses.