Cardboard Buildings

When I was a teenager, somebody bought me a book of cardboard cutout buildings that was published by Railroad Model Craftsman magazine. They were pretty crude -- most of them, as I recall, not much more than four printed walls and a roof -- but for a kid with a near-nonexistent modeling budget, they were a good way to fill up space on my layout.

I was thinking that something similar would be useful on the Amargosa layout. I've previously worked almost exclusively in H.O., and nearly always in larger spaces, and I was having trouble visualizing what I could fit into the available space. Some cardboard mockups would be helpful in planning the town of Amargosa and figuring out what permanent buildings I need.

I went looking for freebies online, and found a web site -- Clever Models -- that has a large selection of downloadable cardstock building kits. Most of the other companies that sell paper/cardstock models are European prototypes, but Clever Models is nearly all U.S. stuff. Best of all, all of their buildings come in O scale, with instructions to downsize to smaller scales.

This Maintenance Shed was my first Clever Models build. Once again, I was surprised by how large O Scale buildings are.

They do have a few free downloads, but even the paid models are pretty reasonable compared to modern laser-cut wood kits or even good quality plastic models, mostly $9.95 or less. I downloaded one of their free models, a corrugated metal building called the "Silver City Tool Shop" that fits the mining town image I'm going for, and paid $9.95 for a small false-front store. A few days later, they announced a Black Friday deal where all their kits are half off, and at that price, I had to buy several more. I'm not even sure I'll ever build them all, but for $25 I got at least five more buildings that will fit in on the Amargosa, including a small flagstop station, an engine house, a water tank, an industrial/warehouse building that I plan to repurpose as a brewery, another false front business, and this nondescript maintenance shed.

These cardstock models are much more detailed than the ones I had as a kid. Doors and windows are built up with multiple layers, trim pieces are cut out and applied separately, and roof coverings like shingles can be applied in strips for dimension. On the other hand, if you just want a placeholder, you can cut out the basic walls and roof, glue them together, and have something to fill up an empty space.

Here's a work in progress picture of the maintenance shed. The hardest part, by far, is cutting out the windows. From customer submitted pictures on their web site, it looks like a lot of people just leave the printed cardboard panes in place, but I elected to cut each window pane individually. This is extremely time consuming, and I'm not entirely satisfied with the results. On future builds, if I'm not detailing the interior I'll consider not cutting out the window panes, or if I want see-through windows, I may try making the mullions by applying narrow strips of tape to the glazing.

Current state of the build. I didn't pre-spray the printed sheets with clear flat to protect them from moisture, and now I need to do that after the fact. I need to spray before I can glaze the windows, and I need to glaze the windows before I add the roof. I do like the separately applied rafters.

This is a wall unit in progress. It's hard to see in this picture, but the doors are made up of 13 separate pieces, including four tiny paper hinges.

Here's a sheet before cutting. There are six sheets for this 3 x 4 inch building, printed on 65 pound cardstock. You can see here (upper right) all the different layers that go into a window -- though if you wanted to make a quick placeholder building, there's a complete window already printed on the wall.

Addendum, 11/29: The hardest part of building these kits, at least so far, is the windows. With a multi-pane window like this, each pane must be cut out individually, leaving the thin mullion in place. Hard enough in O scale; I can hardly imagine doing it in H.O., much less N scale. In this closeup of a window on the Maintenance Shed build, notice the irregular cutting and "fuzz", especially around the mullions:

I decided to try something different, and did a test window where I removed the window panes in one unit, including the mullions; glued a piece of clear plastic "glass" on the back; then added mullions using white, 1/32" Chartpak graphic tape:

Granted, this is a simpler window with fewer panes, but it looks a lot cleaner, and it was definitely easier to make. I'm going to try this on the next Clever building -- I think it will get me better results with less effort.

Addendum 11/30. Here it is, near finished. Not terrible, but room for improvement. The windows are rough, and there's a little warping in the walls. Next build, I'll try the Chartpack tape mullions. As for warping, for this one I used a single layer of 65 pound cardstock. I'll see if doubling it helps, and also add some stripwood bracing.

Not related to this specific build, but another application of Clever and other paper models: I printed the Flagstop Depot on plain paper with my laser printer, cut it out and glued it together, and in about 10 minutes I had a mockup to test fit on the layout.