Using Building Flats to Create a City

Most model railroaders usually aren’t blessed with enough space to model a whole three-dimensional city. So, building a model railroad means making a series of comprises. Expert modeler Tom Lund shares some tips for creating the illusion of a large city in a compressed space using building flats, or flat buildings. And best of all, it doesn’t cost an arm and a leg!

PRINTED PAPER BUILDING FLATS

Tom models Duluth, Minnesota, in his HO layout. It’s a city that is built on hills, therefore giving it many tiers and layers. He needed an inexpensive yet effective way to fill a shallow industrial area with a variety of structures in different sizes, shapes, and colors. One way to accomplish this is with printed paper building flats that come in rolls and can be applied directly to your backdrop with an adhesive. (Tip: You can also glue to poster board or foamcore, and carefully cut off around the edges of the building before applying to your backdrop to give the buildings more depth.)

But Tom demonstrates how he begins with actual modular building flats, or sides, from any number of commercially available kits. He paints them a variety of realistic brick colors, and weathers them to represent different ages (some newer, some older). It’s really like architectural model making.

COLOR COPIER BUILDING FLATS

Next, he prints several sets of the building flats in actual HO size on a color copier and applies to foamcore. To show distance as the buildings climb the “hills” or tiered streets of Duluth, he prints more sets slightly smaller for a “forced perspective.” The illusion “fools” the eye into thinking there’s much more depth to the scene that there actually is.

The variety of sizes, shapes and colors look totally realistic when mixed and matched. Tom shares a tip on painting the window “glass” on the flats a primer gray shade since it appears more realistically as a blank window.

Using these techniques, you can build your own urban buildings in a fraction of the time and cost (and in a much smaller space) than creating three-dimensional structures.