Peter's Model Railroading | Articles | Structures | PRR Passenger Shelter
Painting

For that natural oak wood look of the bench, I stained the bench with Minwax' "Dark Walnut".

The PRR had a standard paint scheme for their structures, which I try to follow as best as I can. I have been using this Polly Scale "D&RGW Building Cream" color for the main wood panels.

I hand-painted the panels with the cream color first. Most of the brush marks were still visible, so I went back over them again with a second coat. This did the track. For the PRR standard dark brown accent color, I believe I used Polly Scale "D&RGW Building Brown". One coat was sufficient for this, but I had to use a brush with some very small and relatively stiff bristles, to avoid hitting the cream color. This took me two evening modeling sessions to complete. I then had to go back and re-apply some touch-ups here and there with the cream color. It is not perfect, but I am not sure I would have been able to do any better with proper masking techniques. In the future, when this model is actually installed on the layout, I will likely weather it and so it will naturally hide any of the imperfections. The floor I painted a gray color to simulate a wooden floor, but it has so much dirt and grime on it that it no longer looks like wood.

I purposely painted the main building first before applying the roof shingles, so as to avoid getting any paint on the shingles. Applying the shingles wasn't difficult, but it was a bit tedious and took a bit of time. You line up the first strip with the first laser line at the bottom of the roof. You can then follow the remaining lines to put the next strip, overlapping about half of the strip. I drew a light pencil line just above where the glue line on the previous strip should stop, so that I didn't get any glue on the strip that was already there that wasn't going to get covered by the new strip. I put one strip on one side, and then did the same thing on the other side. By the time I was done with the second side, the strip on the first side was mostly fixed in the place and so I could put the next layer on. The last strip was a bit of a challenge, as it is not clear from the instructions how you are supposed to tackle that. What I did was I glued the last strip such that the remaining, uncovered area of the previous strip was about the same as all of the others. I then applied the glue for the last strip and attached it. I set is aside for a while to let the glue cure. When it was sufficiently cured, I used a sharp hobby knife to cut away the excess of that strip at the roof line. I then did the same thing with the last strip on the other side. For the ridge line piece, I used one of the thin strips that come with the kit. I applied glue to one side of the roof, just a tiny bit all along that side of the ridge. I then applied the strip, and let that cure. When it was cured, I then used a flat file to bend the strip over the ridge line to the other side of the roof. Once I was happy with the bend, I used a toothpick to very carefully try to work in a bit of glue under the folded strip of paper. When finished, I used the flat file to push the entire strip into the glue line. This took several tries until the glue finally started to take a hold.

The PRR standard color has a red roof. This Vallejo "German Red Brown" (part #73.605) was close enough for me, and will be my standard from now.

One coat on the roof was all that was needed, and I am very happy with how this turned out.

It was a bit hard to photograph, but the last thing I did was insert the bench. Due to it being a tad bit wider than the interior width of the building, a combination of filing and test fitting was needed repeatedly. In the process one of the delicate front legs broke off, which I tried to glue back in place as best I could. I applied some superglue to the tip of a toothpick to wick it into several spots to make sure the bench remained attached to the building. With this, the project is finished. Weathering and adding details will be done in the future when this structure is installed on the layout.