Adding Small Details Outside Model Railroad Buildings
MRA EditorsWant to know a simple step that will bring your scenery to life and make your work stand out from the rest? Adding small details outside model railroad buildings makes all the difference in the world. As we see in this video from MRA Master Model Railroader Gerry Leone, it may take a little extra time and effort, but the results really pay off!
Trackside Model Train Building Modifications
Gerry uses a fairly generic trackside model train building that he scratch-built. Before he places it on his layout, Gerry always plans on adding small external features to make the structure unique and come “alive.” Since the building will sit along the tracks, he decided a small loading dock would be appropriate below the boxcar freight doors on the backside. Using basswood stripwood, he scratch-built a small loading dock, and what a difference it suddenly made! The model was no longer generic—it had a purpose. Now it’s time to add small details like barrels, pallets, boxes, and crates to further “enliven the scene.”
Finally, using Woodland Scenics’ Accent Glue, which allows repositioning with its tacky properties, Gerry selects a human figure and affixes it to the dock and the scene is complete—and uniquely yours!
With very little time, effort, and expenditure, adding small details to model railroad buildings can really make your scenes stand out and appear more realistic.
Here are more ideas for making model railroad buildings for your layout.
The last thing we're going to add is external details to the building. One of the ways that you can really make your building stand out from everybody else's is by adding a loading dock. On this particular model, on the backside of the building, where the boxcar doors would be, there is no loading dock. But I've scratch-built a loading dock out of some strip bal--basswood, excuse me, not balsa, but basswood. I've stained it a little bit.
We can mount that right up against the building like so. And suddenly, your building looks like nobody else's building, because it's got this nice loading dock. And then we're gonna add some details to the loading dock. There are companies who make some great details. AM Models makes some wonderful-looking pallets that all you have to do is assemble them and weather them.
Preiser makes a whole kit of dock materials, barrels, and crates, and things to go on docks. You'll find just a myriad of details for dock details that are being sold all over. And we can add some of those, we've got some crates here with some labels on them, a 55-gallon drum is always a good thing to add to a dock. Like so. Again, piles of pallets, you always find piles of pallets around docks and industrial areas like that.
Couple of our crates here. And, of course, you don't wanna forget, you can also lean a crate, I always love this effect, is leaning a crate up against the dock on the ground. You don't wanna forget to add people. I've got a guy here, I've added some, I've used some Woodland Scenics Accent Glue. It's kind of a tacky glue that lets you reposition details and figures like this.
We can add a guy here who's just kind of looking at all this stuff, trying to figure out where it should go, there we go. And we can glue all that down when we put it down on the layout. So there you have it. All kinds of ways that you can turn an ordinary structure into a really outstanding structure. It takes just a little bit of extra time, little bit of extra effort, but it really pays off big dividends on your building.
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