If you want your buildings to look really good, you have to paint and weather them, right? I’m talking about the ‘Aggro look’ here but on buildings. So what is the recommended way to get rid of the plastic look? Is it possible to take the buildings to the ‘scratch build level’ just by painting and weathering them?
First off, all plastic used in model railroads should be painted. No exceptions. With flat paint; shiny surfaces scream “plastic”! That is just a start towards making a plastic structure look more realistic. A lot depends upon the structure type too - plastic trying to look like wood doesn’t always work, so a scratchbuilt one made from real wood can always look better. Brick buildings are another matter, as using available material to scratch build one would probably result in one less precise than a kit.
Weathering doesn’t always mean something is made to look old and decrepit. Weathering can or should making subtle effects to make something more real looking.
Models are scratch built because they are either not available in kit form, or the kits aren’t all that great.
Bob Boudreau
Before I start in on weathering/coloring a stock kit to bring up it’s appearances, I have to make a comment. Most of the structures on my layout are plastic, and well over 40 of them are scratchbuilt. So bringing “plastic buildings up to scvratch levels” really doesn’t mean much. For me, plastic is a MUCH better scratchbuilding medium than any other, for ANY modelling project.
With that off my chest…yes, you can make plastic buildings look VERY realistic, using a variety of methods. YOu definitely DON’T want any unpainted plastic on a layout, especaially when it comes to things made out of natural materials. Plastic is too shiny to look realistic for brick, stone, concrete or wood, and all these materials have too many subtle (but important) shading differences to be represented by a single plasticy color.
Unfortunately, there’s no sure-fire, whiz-bang, single method I can describe here to tell you how to do this. It takes a variety of methods, and a variety of colorizing agents. The best I can say is to go out and take a few detail pictures of buildings similar to the ones you’ve got, and start fiddling around until you find something that works for you. Coloring bare wood, bare concrete, the several styles of bricks, and painted wood are all different, and some techniques work better for some things, and some others better for others.
As a general introductory guide, I highly suggest a one month membership to the NEB&W website:
http://railroad.union.rpi.edu
Not only is this site one of the best around for prototype freight car data, but it’s sections on scenery modelling are second to none. The section on how to accurately detail & color brick buildings is worth the $7 subscription alone.
Electro, one of the easiest ways to improve the look of plastic buildings is just a coat of Testors Dull Cote. They can be weathered with chalk for added appeal.
ordinary plastic models become quite convincing with proper finishing…after proper paint and weathering they look more “3 dimensional” to my eye…flat paint, subtle colors, acohol/india ink weathering to provide 'lowlights" and dry brushing to add highlights…I have recently purchased several RDA kits (injection molded) and am looking forward to the process…I think almost all materials yield good results, with proper (and differing) techniques
Thanks guys for the great info as usual [:D]
I think that the key to being realistic is the kit itself. Check the doors and especially the windows. Many of these parts are grossly out of scale on lots of plastic I see. It seems to me that evenn with weathering and paint that you won’t approach the level of detail in a fine scale kit without addressing this issue. Grandt line and several companies sell windows and doors that you can use as replacements.
If it is brick I like to give it a coat of a flat red and fill in the mortar lines with joint compound. Than I give it a wash of black to tone down the white joint coumpound.
If you look in the back ground to the left you can see my manufacturing company I did that way…(click to enlarge)
same here…(click to enlarge)
Here’s a Korber Models kit that I did. It’s the modular system. It’s all plastic and I used some of the same weathering techniques used above. The bottom line is that you have to start with a good product to get good results. You can get these at www.korbermodels.com
Yes, it is possible to make plastic structures look good. As mentioned by another, it depends on the kit. There are alot of great kits available that would make a nice kitbash project. It just takes practice and trial and error to create what you would like to see. We at Pine Canyon use a stain process called Woodsy Stains on resin and plastic to give it a real wood look. Apply the stains, then you can drybrush color over this to represent peeling paint or what ever. It is important to make the entire structure dull. No shine. If you use Dullcoat, just apply a light coat. Heavy coats will bring back quite a bit of shine. Here is a link to our page with info on the Woodsy Stains http://www.pinecanyonscalemodels.com/woodsy_stains.htm
Happy Railroading, Keith
Here’s a $7 Lifelike kit.
Another thing I notice on a lot of layouts. The builder of the structures never took the time to make sure all the joints were nice and tight. Sometimes it takes some light sanding at the corners of buildings to get them to look right. To me nothing looks worse than a 1/8" gap where there should be none.
Bob DeWoody
As stated above all plastic must be painted, it takes a little more work, but even plastic can be made to look like wood. It has to be distressed(files and razor saws),and painting is a lot trickier,but it can be done.Just take pictures of everything you’ll need.