As you know, the focus of this series is on constructing a suburban house on my model railroad layout, using a commercial kit. Before I continue that discussion, I need to point out that there are at least two other fairly common construction methods: kitbashing and building from scratch:

• Kitbashing refers to selectively bashing two (or more) kits together. You select whatever components you need in order to built a larger structure, by extending it in one, two, or all three dimensions, modify the instructions accordingly.
• Building from scratch is just what it sounds like. You use raw materials such as wood, plastic, cardboard, plaster, and so forth, following either your own plans or somebody else’s.

Both of these techniques are beyond my skill level, at least for now. So let’s return to building the main house in the kit.

First we have the current state of the front wall of the house. Note that the window frames now have windows installed (all cut from a single sheet of acetate — probably hard to see, since they’re transparent!) and three of them have drapes.

Next, the back wall, which appropriately shows more weathering than the front. No drapes yet.

Actually, the drapes are optional. How many of the window frames do you think should have drapes?

Finally the sides of the house. Actually, one of these photos may be upside down at the moment. Or maybe not. Your quiz for the day is to figure out which one — or both, or neither — is upside down:

Categories: Model Railroading