ANTIQUE STORE
For the corner across the street from the rail-served Stern & Childers factory, I needed a wide storefront. I selected a Smalltown USA kit, Rusty’s Graphic Arts. These kits are usually not much more complicated than DPM’s offerings. That was perfect, because I wanted a quick and easy build for this unobtrusive structure. But I made a number of mistakes that made this building take a lot more time and work than I would have liked.
My first mistake was in not reading the product description closely enough to realize it was more of a kitbash than a kit. Rather than having one-piece front and back walls, the kit came with three back pieces, plus directions to splice them together into a single wall. The front was even more complex, with the bottom to be scratchbuilt from various sizes of strip styrene. I did a pretty good job on the front, but was unhappy with how visible the splice lines were on the brick back walls. I added some strip styrene downspouts to disguise these joints.
The spray paint I chose for the facade of the building came out of the nozzle thick and clumpy, leaving a finish that could most charitably be described as “textured.” After it dried, I scraped the window and door frames with a chiselbladed hobby knife. I then rubbed the rest with a sanding stick to knock off the biggest lumps. It kind of looks like stone, so I decided to live with it.
I was also not happy with the mortar wash I applied to the brick walls. I scrubbed it off, painted over it, and started over several times. Finally the flat sides looked OK, but the back was still blotchy. I added a Walthers fire escape, some printed paper posters, and a ground-foam climbing vine to draw the eye and distract from the uneven weathering.
The blank side walls of the building looked boring, so I added a billboard to one side. I created the artwork for the furniture store advertisement using creator.nightcafe.studio, a free online artificial intelligence (AI) art generator. I wrote an article showing how I did it for our website, at trains.com/ mrr/how-to/expert-tips/making-a-sign-from-an-ai-generatedimage/. I also used NightCafe to create three interior scenes for the front windows, as I did with the commercial block (see page 36).