Detailing Brick Structures

Today I am going to talk about brick structures. There are several different ways to model them, the most common being structure kits molded in plastic with a brick pattern molded right into the plastic. You can also get paper brick sheets, which glue to the material you're using to build the structure, and have a brick pattern printed on them. These are fully finished for you, but offer less detail because the brick pattern is two-dimensional. I am going to focus on detailing plastic brick patterns.

There are three ways to model a brick building in plastic. You can get a kit that has all the pieces you need. Some companies, like Walthers and DPM, offer modular brick systems, where you can buy different components and use them to construct a custom-designed building. You can also scratchbuild a structure with plastic brick-pattern sheets available from several manufacturers. You can combine these methods, but make sure that if you use different materials, the brick patterns match each other unless you are going for a mismatched look, often found in buildings that have been expanded over time. Walthers brick sheets match the pattern and colors found in their modulars and most of their kits, so you can scratchbuild an annex or another portion of the building using their brick sheets.

One problem with plastic brick is the obvious lack of mortar. Some brick buildings are painted over, so the brick and mortar are all the same color. These are easy to model, but most brick buildings do not get painted over. I have tried several mortar techniques, and I will share two of them today. Both techniques require you to paint the bricks first, if they are not already the color you want. This can be done by airbrushing or using a spray can. Brick colors vary, so color matching isn't much of an issue.

The first technique I tried was using acrylic paints. I used a white paint and thinned it down, and then spread it over a portion of the brick pattern. Most of it soaked into the low areas, where the mortar goes. Then, with a damp paper towel, quickly wipe down the area you just painted. Thinned acrylic paint dries quickly, so you have to work in small sections so you can wipe it down quickly. This can leave white streaks on the brick faces, which some buildings have, so it is not completely unrealistic. This method is easy and provides a very even finish for the mortar. I do not have any photos of buildings I have mortared with this technique.

The second method, which I found in an old Walthers catalog, is also quite a bit harder and more tedious, but I tend to use it more. This involves using spackle, a wallboard putty, as the mortar. Using your finger, get a small lump of spackle and spread it over the brick pattern. It will fill in the mortar crevices and leave a nice finish. However, it will also lump into other areas, such as under window sills and in doorways, where you do not want it. After it has dried, use a dull hobby knife to remove these unwanted lumps. Using this technique makes it harder to get an even fill in the mortar, and requires much more patience, but I think the results are worth it.

Once the mortar is in place, it is time to focus our attention on the bricks themselves. If you're really ambitious, you can use a hobby knife to chip away at some bricks to give them an aged look. I'm not that ambitious, so I leave the shapes alone. However, I do take colored pencils, usually a bright red, a grey, and a white, and individually recolor some of the bricks. How many and what colors are up to you, as every building is different. Some newer buildings don't have any miscolored bricks, thanks to advances in the kiln technology which allows all the bricks to get fired evenly, regardless of where they are in the kiln. If you didn't repaint your bricks, it is a good idea to spray them with dullcoat before doing this step. Colored pencils do not write on bare plastic, but they do work well on paint.

To weather the bricks, use whatever techniques you usually use for weathering structures. I try to keep most of the dirt near the ground. If the building has a chimney, put some soot near the top of the chimney. Window sills often have streaks running down from them, caused by rain. On bigger buildings, big bolts were often used to hold the wooden beams inside the building to the exterior brick walls. These bolts often have star-shaped decorative washers. You can get plastic models of these. Streak the paint coming off of those with a burnt umber or black oil paint, using the same technique I've shared for rusting in a previous post. Notice the star washer with the streaked paint in the photo of brick mill in Nashua.

Well, there you have it. With just a little work (okay, the colored pencil step takes a while), you have a well detailed brick building. No more solid red brick walls on your layout now!

Another Project Begins

I have been thinking about building a model of the Union Pacific Depot, in Salt Lake City, UT, for some time now.  It is an old brick and stone station building, which is now part of a nice outdoor mall called The Gateway.  The station was used as such until the late 1990's, by Amtrak.  During that time, the city officials wanted to consolidate the various railroad lines in town and develop some of the neighborhoods they occupied.  At one time, Salt Lake City was home to the Union Pacific, Southern Pacific, Western Pacific, and Denver & Rio Grand Western, among other short lines.  Since these railroads were competing with each other, they all had their own yard and station facilities, as well as their own rights of way.  Downtown Salt Lake City was covered in railroad tracks.  By the late 1990's, all those different railroad lines were owned by the Union Pacific, which meant consolidation was a realistic possibility.  As the rail lines were consolidated, the right of way was moved several blocks away from the Union Pacific Depot, and an "Amshack" was built to accommodate the Amtrak trains that serve the city.

Union Pacific Station, seen from the EnergySoluntions Arena.
Photo by James Ogden

Originally the station was built by the Oregon Short Line and the San Pedro, Los Angeles, and Salt Lake Railroad.  It was completed in 1909.  Both railroad lines eventually were acquired by the Union Pacific Railroad, and with that, they also received the station in Salt Lake City.  The building itself is a large, French Renaissance style building.  It is constructed of brick and stone, with a copper roof.  The copper roof was installed in 1978 to replace a badly leaking slate roof.  On the top of the building, above the front entrances, there is a large, neon, Union Pacific sign, complete with the shield logo of the railroad.  The track were once located behind the building.  Today, though not used as a station anymore, the neon sign is lit every night, and the building remains a landmark in Salt Lake City.

The front entrance of the station.
Photo by James Ogden

My plan is to model this building in HO scale.  I will model it with the tracks out back, as it would have been found when in use as a station.  I am also going to model the copper roof, even though that was not added until 1978.  I do plan to model a basic interior.  I would like to have an accurate representation of the main concourse.  The whole station will be lighted, and there will be people inside.  Of course, it will get the landmark neon Union Pacific sign on the roof too.  Actually, the whole project came about because of that sign.  I had been wanting to model this for some time now, but I found a model of that very sign at a train show recently, and I bought it.  I guess that was the first piece of the project.

HO Factory Project: Introduction

Today I am going to talk about a modeling project that I recently picked up again. It started out as a mill building for the Lakes Region railroad, and when that layout went into storage the unfinished mill building went on the back burner for a while.

I was recently digging around my structure kits and whatnot when I found this half completed mill. With no near-future prospects of the Lakes Region layout seeing action any time soon, I decided to change the building's purpose a bit. I thought, why not model an old mill building that has a new tenant that needed the building expanded? I would finish the model as I designed it, but kitbash it so it has a corrugated steel addition built onto the side. Since I have no place on a layout for this model, I will build it as the main focus of a diorama.

The original building will be built the same, except I am going to add a story to it. This is partly because I have already started detailing the brick, and I want to go through that process step by step with photos on the blog, and also because a bigger building just looks cooler. The addition will be built off of one end of the building, and will feature loading docks and a big door where rail cars can go into the building, as well as a front office and possibly a small store area. I'm thinking of modeling it as a furniture factory right now, although that is still up in the air. If I go with that plan, the building will also need a large, paved over area for unloading lumber off of centerbeam cars. I have the space on the diorama for that, and I'm not sure what else to do with the space. I'm also toying with the idea of the factory going through a "going green" initiative, and have solar panels on the roof. I don't know of any HO scale solar panels out there, but it would be fun and easy to scratchbuild those. A small woodchip-fired power plant built onto the side of the factory would be cool too, and realistic in a furniture factory that has plenty of woodchips to fire it with.

The original building will be built out of Walthers Modulars kits. These things are great. They are molded as brick walls, and several different door and window styles are available. They fit together very easily, and you can easily build a structure as big or small as you want and whatever design you choose. They come molded in appropriate colors, but are easy enough to paint over if you are following a specific prototype. For the addition, I am searching for Walthers recently discontinued "Peterson Tool Specialties" kit, a model of a corrugated steel warehouse. It is no longer available from Walthers, but it was discontinued quite recently so it is still available elsewhere. Walthers has other corrugated steel warehouses, but I want this one because it has the rail car door and the front office. While I could kitbash those onto a different building if I have to, it's easier if I use a kit that already has those features out of the box.

Speaking of kitbashing, I won't be building the Peterson Tool Specialties the way the instructions want me to. If it's like other Walthers kits, I can probably arrange the office, loading docks, and doors however I want, which will be nice for fitting it to the other building, but it won't be a stand alone building. It will be attached to the original brick structure, so I will need to combine the walls and roof (it will be lower than the brick building) smoothly to make it look like it really is an addition. I know this kit is designed to be able to combine with other kits for a bigger building, but I'm sure it's not meant to combine with a brick warehouse out of the box. Also, I won't be using the roofs that come with either building. I will be using sheet styrene and digital photos to create a realistic tar paper roof, a staple of modern industrial buildings.

As a full time student, I won't be making major progress every week, so I won't be posting new stuff for this project every week. My next post will be about prototype information, which is always a useful in making a building look realistic. I will go around the next few weeks and take photos of old mill buildings and new corrugated steel buildings so I have stuff to work from and some photos to share here.