Buildings Part 3 - Painting and Assembling Lineside Huts
There are four sections to the buildings section and, for ease of navigation, a link to each of the other three pages is listed below - though you can navigate yourself sequentially through this section using the links at the bottom of each page should you so wish - so that you don't have to navigate your way through all four pages of this section if you don't want to!
Part 1 - Painting Brickwork
Part 2 - Painting Brickwork on a Ratio Kit
Part 3 - Painting and Assembling Lineside
Huts
Part 4 - The Train Washer
Painting Ratio SR Concrete Lineside Huts
The unpainted lineside huts kit
Whenever I used to travel on the train to school from Sheerness to Chatham back in the 1980's, one of the things you always used to see was concrete lineside huts. Ratio do an N gauge kit of these so I decided that some of these were a must-have. On a recent trip to a local model railway shop (The Signal Box in Rochester) I bought one of these kits. I decided, initially, to try and paint the models as I had the brick buildings with Theory 1. In this case it didn't really work because of how runny the Rendered Concrete paint was. It also had the same problem regarding the paint not drying, being very sticky to the touch when it should have dried completely and had the shine that the modern industrial unit had when I used this paint. Time to ditch the enamel paints permanently I think. I thought that a similar approach to Theory 2 with the brick buildings would pay more dividends.
I didn't need to drybrush on any mortar on this model so what I did was to prime the model and add 3 thins coats of Games Workshop Bleached Bone paint. The colour isn't quite a match for Rendered Concrete but is a near enough match to my untrained eye and can be lightened or darkened easily enough should I wish to change the colour slightly. The window frames will be painted white as the still-standing lineside hut just outside Rochester had white window frames when I saw it the other day so I know that white window frames is prototypical. I haven't decided on a door colour yet but it's likely to be white as well. Given the attitude of British Rail, who were still running the railway network at the time that my layout is set, they would not have been likely to give their workers 2 different coloured paints for the simple task of painting a small lineside hut. That was BR for you!
The lineside hut models painted with Games Workshop's Bleached Bone acrylic paint
As you can see in the 2nd picture, the Bleached Bone paint does a fair representation of concrete so I'm fairly happy with it. I'll be painting the doors and window frames as soon as I can find a pot of white acrylic paint or buy one if I don't have one. As soon as I've done that, I'll assemble the kit and put a finished model photo up on this page so you can have a look and see what you think of it.
Well, the model of the biggest of the 2 buildings in the kit is now finished apart from the glazing for the windows. That's only because I've found that I don't have anything to use for the glazing despite thinking I had. I painted the doors and window frames in white as I said I would, have assembled to kit and filled in the inevitable gaps that always seem to be in a finished model no matter how much care I take to ensure the parts all fit together snugly!
It's the first model that I've actually got anywhere close to finishing in years. That's how good I am at actually completing thing's that I start. I've lost count of the models I've started that I haven't finished. It's normally a case of frustration over the paint finish so, now I've started using acrylics instead of enamels, I should actually start getting somewhere with all the kits I've got.
The finished main hut of the kit
I was also pleased to see that one of these lineside huts is situated a little outside Sheerness station in real life. I've never noticed before as I've always got my eyes on the road ahead when driving. Honest! I didn't see the smaller equipment shed but will use the one supplied in the kit anyway. There's no point in wasting it even considering the size of the finished building.
So that's the kits I have to date built. On the next page in the buildings section I'll be going through my attempts to scratch build an old style UK train washer circa 1970's-1980's. The buildings part of the project also has it's own forum devoted to it at the site's online forum. Should you be interested, a link to the site's forum has been added below.
:: Next Page - The Train Washer
