Painted Sheds

Having been side tracked by building some OO9 gauge track, I've finally gone back and painted the two N gauge sheds built from the Severn Models kit. Both models involved me trying a new technique in their painting.

I painted the walls and door of the wooden shed using my standard approach for aged wood which has worked well on the OO9 wagons I've recently been building. This seems to work well for N gauge buildings as well. When it came to the roof, however, I wasn't happy with the very flat look of painted brass. To add a little texture I painted it with RailMatch roof dirt and then blew on a small amount of polyfilla while the paint was still wet. Once the paint had dried I then painted it again to cover the white plaster. This seems to have given a nice surface, although I don't think the same would work in 4mm scale as the texture would still be fairly smooth.

I've never tried painting red brick before and the second shed caused quite a few problems. I tried a number of different approaches before I settled on something that mostly worked. In the end I painted the walls with RailMatch dark brick, and then used thinned down RailMatch weathered stone run into the mortar gaps. A final patchy black wash made things look nice and dirty. The corrugated roof was initially painted with roof dirt before a dry brushing of Model Color London grey. This gave a nice approximation of new corrugated tin which was then aged using repeated applications of MIG Productions standard rust effects.

While I did enjoy building and painting these sheds, the slight detour back to N gauge modelling has confirmed that I'm much happier working at 4mm to the foot scale so I don't think I'll be returning to N gauge at any future point.

A Tiny Brick Shed

Okay, so I'm easily seduced by shiny brass models.

This one went together just as easily as the wooden shed. I haven't started painting either of them yet as I haven't been at home when it hasn't been raining so I've been unable to spray them with primer. Hopefully the weather will improve and I can finish these off soon. I did, however, pick up a pot of RailMath Dark Brick (#2424) on the way home so I think I now have the paints I need to paint both models.

A Tiny Wooden Shed

So here we have the first of the two sheds from the Severn Models kit I showed you yesterday. As expected it went together nice and easily. I soldered everything but the barge boards (just too fiddly) even though the instructions say to just use glue. In retrospect I think this was a good idea as I had problems with the barge boards as the superglue took an awful long time to grab properly. As you can see it really is tiny, given that it's sat on a 50p piece.

So that's half the kit built (there is the brick shed to go) and I think we can agree it builds up into a nice model. I'll paint this one next before building the other shed, as I know how to paint old looking wood, but I've no idea how to go about painting brick work.

A House in Your Hand

A shiny new brass kit fell through the letterbox today. Given that I've shifted to modelling at 4mm to the foot scale from the 2mm scale of N gauge and have now boxed up and stored Jerusalem in the loft (to make way for me as yet unannounced new OO9 gauge layout) you may be surprised to see that it is in fact an N gauge kit.

I didn't actually buy this kit in the normal sense of the verb "to buy". This is actually a reward for backing a crowd funding project on Kickstarter. Specifically the project aimed at developing a number of etched brass building kits for N gauge model railways with the tag line being "A House in Your Hand". Now while there was the option of lots of lovely kits for large buildings, given that I wasn't modelling in N gauge at the moment, I went for the cheaper option of a kit for two small sheds, as a way of getting something to play with while showing my support for the project.

Now you do have to be careful with Kickstarter projects, in that you are essentially putting up money to fund the development of something that might not turn out to be feasible. There have been some projects that have raised huge amounts of money yet failed to deliver on their promises, so it really is buyer beware. My rule of thumb is never back a project for more money than you would be willing to write off. So far I've backed 10 projects and four have delivered. Five of them have completion dates in the future but one, in fact the first project I backed, should have finished in January, so is at least 8 months behind schedule. This was also an N gauge related project, but I'm now sceptical that it will ever grace this blog. Anyway back to this kit...

First impressions are that the etching looks great, although the instructions are a little thin. There is a side of A4 telling you general things about building brass kits (they suggest superglue but I think I'll solder for added strength), and then two exploded diagrams one for each shed. Unfortunately in a couple of places the orientation of some parts (barge boards mostly) is a little unclear, although I think once I actually try to assemble it things will become more obvious.

Currently the kits aren't publicly available to buy, but a website for Severn Models is under construction so hopefully that will change shortly. While I have no immediate use for these sheds I'll be assembling and painting them when I get a chance so I'll let you know how I get on.