An On30 Boxcab Locomotive Kitbash

Fun With Diecast -- Paint Detailing And Weathering

Build A Cottage Style Gas Station

Click here for the plans (PDF, 5 MB). The plans include printable windows, doors, trim, and printable brick texture.

An O Scale Campfire From A Flickering LED Tealight

How To Remove Foil Backing From Acrylic Rhinestones

How To Make Your Own O Scale Signs

Scratch Building Southern Pine Trees in O Scale

A Mid-Century Motel In O Scale - Part 4: Lighting, Stonework, Completing Assembly

The motel build is complete!

Here are some printable textures I used in the build. Some I posted before, but I've compiled them into a single PDF. Check print "actual size" in your printer dialog for O scale.

And here is the build vid:

A Mid-Century Motel In O Scale - Part 3: Windows and Siding

To me, one of the most challenging and fun aspects of scratch building is making windows. I have nothing against commercial window castings. I just really enjoy making them myself.

When you build windows from scratch, you can make them any size you want, and in any style you want. You aren't limited to what's in the detail parts catalogs.

There are several techniques for making windows. Most involve building up the sashes in layers. Muntins can be painted on, or made from graphic ruling tape, stripwood, or bits of wire. In this build, I'm using painted strips of paper, and using a glue stick to apply the strips. A glue stick has a nice advantage -- you can remove glue smears from the windows with a damp brush.

For the exterior of the walls, I'm using strips of card stock to simulate random-width siding. I'm leaving a tiny gap between strips. That allows the dark paint underneath to show through the thinned paint in the cracks, enhancing the detail.

I installed yellow LEDs in the front walls to simulate porch lights. Yellow "bug lights" were common back in the day. (Yellow bulbs were supposed to attract fewer bugs. I don't know if they really worked or not.) I'll be reducing the brightness of the LEDs by pairing each with a 390-ohm resistor. I plan to put some sort of fixture over them too.

For the interior walls, I printed a wood paneling texture. Here's the texture I used:

And here's the build video:

A Simple O Scale Ceiling Light Fixture

An O Scale Attraction Brochure Rack

Attraction brochure racks were common sights in motel offices and restaurants throughout the last half of the 20th century.

The size of this model is about 5 scale feet tall, and about 28 scale inches wide. It's built entirely from paper and white glue. I plan to wall mount mine in the interior of a model structure, about a scale foot above the floor.

Here is the build video. Dimensions and the printable brochure graphic (in png and jpg format) are posted below.

The brochures in the graphic are various vintage brochures from the southeastern United States. I picked them mainly for color, since they're illegible when printed scale size. You can use the picture as a template in a photo editing program and substitute your own if you like.

Typical trifold brochure size is 4 inches wide by 9 inches tall. Size the print to match your scale if you're not building in O scale.

You can modify the plans in several ways: You could make the cabinet section (the lower half) taller, you could add extra rows of brochures, or you could eliminate the bottom section and a row of brochures and make a counter top version.

Click on the pictures to enlarge, right-click to save them to your computer or device. Have fun building!

O Scale Soda Vending Machine Build

Here's the vid of my scratch build of an O scale classic soft drink vending machine from the 1950s and '60s. It was a blast to make.

I made the wrapper graphic using GIMP open-source image editing program, and printed several copies to use for the build.

And here is the wrapper, in png and jpg formats. Click on a picture to enlarge, then right-click (or long-click) and "save as" to save it to your computer or device.

Original Vendolator (later, Vendo) VMC-81 soft drink vending machines stand about 54 inches tall, 25 inches wide, and 18 inches deep.

Set your printing size and resolution to match your scale. Best results will be obtained using a laser color printer (although some inkjet printers are capable of fine detail), and building in O scale size (1:48, 1/4" = 1') or larger.

Have fun!

O Scale Folding Lawn Chair Build

I wanted some O scale folding lawn chairs!

This fun project is based on the fine instructions I found online here. My version is a little "looser" in execution. The build video is below.