Paper Print Building

Hello and welcome to a Model Railroad Academy video in which we will work with the printed flat style buildings to create depth in narrow space. So here is my engine facility. It's slightly elevated from the main passing the front and behind it, it's just a blue sky. And that makes it look like it's hovering in the sky. We're gonna do something about that by using a few different simple elements. The challenge I have here with the design which is same as on many model railroads is that the line is very close to the backdrop, only two inches or 50 millimeters away. That requires us to use flat style buildings. And for this, I use printed paper buildings. This one I found on Scale Scenes. I just Googled or searched the internet. Here's some fence I found, as well. This one's from a Clever Models, but there are really a massive amount of them out there. There are even some free printable buildings I found. This one was from MRR Tutorials. And I'm gonna use this office building. I liked it. This was downloaded as a PDF file and I printed it using just normal office paper. It will look a bit better if you use photo paper instead. Once it's been printed out I cut the pieces with a scissor. Next step is to glue it to a balsa sheet. Make sure to purchase a soft piece of balsa. This one's one 32 inch or 1.5 millimeter thick. So I smear some Elmer construction glue or PVA glue on this. And then I just push the printed building front into this balsa so it sticks properly all around like this. Next move is to cut it out. For that I use a scalpel or a razor blade. ut several times before cutting through to avoid cracking. Now we want the eaves to be sticking out to give this flat building some three dimensional look and to do that I'm gluing another building front onto my balsa sheet. Cut it out, but this time I'm only cutting out the front eve and I will glue this to my building front. This will provide some shadowing effect down on the building front and thereby get some 3D perspective. Now you can also cut out the doors and windows if you like and glue them back slightly recessed to also improve the 3D look. This has to do a bit with how far away from the viewer the buildings are. The further away, the less 3D effect I think it requires. Okay, now I got the eve in place. All we need to do now is to paint the edges. And for that I'm using a gray, kind of basic gray acrylic paint. So I'm just giving it a coat to hide the balsa color and texture. Yeah. Now the next move is to give this some walls, side walls. I do have my two inches to play with, so why not use them? So I cut and glue pieces of the wall and glue them in place. Here comes the roof. This is also same type used balsa. I cut a small slot in that and I bend it slightly. And once that's done, I glue it in place. I'll cut out a roof piece from the paper and we're gluing that roof piece paper onto this balsa sheet using also Elmer construction glue like this. And then I fold the edge of the roof around the balsa sheet so it hides that edge of the balsa like this and then we take the other piece and glue it in the same manner. All right, so we're finished with the building. We glue it in place on the layout using fast set glue. I will combine this shed with some wooden planking or fence. I have made a tutorial previously here on Model Railroad Academy, how to make these fences. It's really easy and fast. So check for that. Search the index for wooden plank and you will find that video. And I just glue this in place next to that office building, both sides. It kind of gives a barrier between the blue sky and our engine facility. Then I finish off by gluing some green stuff behind the fence, which really, really helps us to sell the depth effect on this narrow space, and a figure in front of the cabin. Yeah. And we're done here. What a world of difference these small things did to the total appearance of the engine facility. All right. So this is one way to create depth in narrow space close to your backdrop on your model railroad. Hey, have you signed up yet for a premium subscription here on Model Railroad Academy? If not, please do. Thank you very much for watching this video. See you in the next one.