From reading the forum I know many of you have built this great building kit for your layouts. I purchased one for use in my yard area as a signal and switching tower. As many here know, this kit just begs for customization, so here's my spin on this venerable kit.
We all start out with this, the basic kit in the standard molded colors.
In order to get rid of the shinny plastic effect on the various parts, they do need to be painted or at the very least the application of a flat clear coat. I choose my color scheme to tie in with the coaling tower that already occupies the yard area, so that called for barn red siding with light gray trim. I did decide to use two components in their original colors that being the roof shingles and the brick wall panels for the lower level. The roof color tied into my color scheme. My reasoning for using the molded brick color was that the molded mortar lines were rather shallow so I was concerned that painting them would further complicate the "mortaring" of the brick joints. There were a total of 13 different colors used in creating this project.
If you plan on illuminating the building you need to plan ahead in the painting process since the molded plastic wall panels are NOT opaque and nobody needs a "glowing" building on your layout. The easiest way to make the wall panels opaque to the interior lighting is to paint one side black. So I proceed to mask the exterior sides of the wall panels and airbrushed on a coat of flat black followed by a coat of a flat light tan color for the interior.
I used a crème colored acrylic paint to "mortar" the brick joints in the lower level wall panels as well as the chimney parts. I applied that paint to the pieces, rubbed it around with my finger to insure a complete fill of the joints and simply wiped off the excess with a shop towel. Once the paint setup a bit I used a rag with some window cleaner on it to give the pieces a final clean up.
I partitioned the lower level into three separate rooms or areas. An Electrical/Mechanical Room, a Shop Area and a small Toilet Room in the corner. In this case, the electrical room will really be an electrical room where I terminated all of the wiring.
The upper level shares the same wall color as the lower level. I did add simulated red oak flooring, radiators and a ceiling to the area. The ceiling provides a mounting surface for the LED's.
Illumination is provided by eight LED's. Four interior and four exterior. The interior is lite by three 5MM straw hat type and one round tipped 3MM LED's. Two upstairs and two downstairs. The exterior light fixtures are actually HO scale lights I picked up on Ebay. With a 3/4" projection on the stem of the fixture that would equal a 36" projection in scale which works well. The LED's are powered by a small circuit consisting of a full wave bridge rectifier and two 150 OHM, 2 watt resistors located on the floor of the electrical room. Each resistor serves four LED's.
Made a base/floor for the building using 1/8" thick polystyrene sheeting. The floor incorporates the door stoops as well as concrete slabs for mounting the fuel oil tank and the drums of lubricate that would have been needed to service the locomotives and rolling stock. The base was painted a flat concrete color and the stoops and exterior slabs were "aged" a bit.
The entire building was then mounted to a piece of 1/4" plywood that was routed on the bottom side with a slot to bring the wires out from the building. Primed the plywood using a gray colored primer to prevent it from absorbing the white glue I used to adhere the ballast to in order to simulate a gravel lot around the building.
