Weathered Barn Wood texture sheet 

I photographed a barn near my home and created this texture sheet for making card models. You are welcome to download it.

Another Small Factory Buiilding

Designed from a photo of a Petit Properties kit, using my own brick texture, this little workshop will fill a hole in the middle distance at Scots' Landing on my Ceresco & Wolf River HO short line. The scale of the building is 1/87. (I see the chimney is leaning a bit -- I'll have to fix that.)

The shingles and chimney are from Clever Models. The brick texture sheet is my own creation; feel free to download it.

The Old Brick texture sheet is my own creation. You are welcome to download it.

Toothpick Factory -- HO Scale Paper Model

This is my scratchbuilt copy of the "Johhson Leather Works" kit once offered by Banta Modelworks. The walls, floors, platforms, and roofs are texture sheets from Clever Models. The stairway and the platform supports are basswood. The windows come from Paper Creek's Randsburg Barber Shop paper kit.

 

Tom's Small Engine Repair -- HO Scale

This is my first FOS kit (a "Kit of the Month"), my first laser-cut kit, and my first attempt at sponge painting. I can see lots of things that could have been done better, but it's all about practice, and I am happy with the results. I am also really impressed with the quality of the kit.

Most of the buildings on my HO scale layout are paper models with opaque windows, so I gave this kit a similar treatment using a tarpaper texture from the Texture Library (texture.com) instead of the clear plastic that came with the kit. I think I'll redo the front windows with clear plastic backed by the texture sheet, to give them some shine.

I used the same Texture Library sheet for the office roof and Clever Models' tarpaper strips for the garage roof. I made the signs in Photoshop. I will add details like oil barrels and a junk pile when the building is placed on the layout.

F-15C Cockpit Tour

This is an excellent video tour of the F-15C cockpit. Also, it gives a new meaning to the term "hotshot pilot."

Two more structures for Scots' Landing

Two more large structures for Scots' Landing on  my HO scale RR. Both are scratchbuilt paper models using texture sheets mainly from Clever Models. Cape & Armstrong Co. is adapted from photos of a kit from Sea Port Model Works. Neill & Sons was built from plans available from Builders In Scale. Both have lots of details yet to be added.

Armstrong Woolen Mill - design for an HO structure

I've been busy at my computer drawing up a design for what will probably be the largest industry on my HO model railroad. "Armstrong Woolen Mill" is adapted from photos of a diorama by Mark Dalrymple. His photos are on the Worldwide Modeling Web site. The site offers hundreds of examples of world-class model railroading -- lots of ideas and inspiration. With all the great models to look at, it might take you a while to get there.

Back to Armstrong Mill. I wanted a complex that would be perched on a steep wooded slope and  include several buildings of different sizes, shapes, and textures. I chose white clapboard, board & batten, and brick (all from Clever Models) because light colors make buildings look larger, and because white would have been a common color for 19th-century buildings. I varied the foundation materials slightly from one building to the next, to suggest a complex that grew over time, instead of being built all at once. Foundations and roofs also came from Clever Models. Materials for the tarpaper lean-to came from Paper Creek's Randsburg Barber Shop kit, available in the downloads section of Papermodelers.com.

Working one building at a time from Mr. Dalrymple's photographs, I first laid out windows and doors using Tichy Train Group items. When the proportions looked right, I drew the edges of the walls, roofs, and foundations. It's all based on precise  L.A.R. engineering ("Looks About Right"), and I made some changes from Dalrymple's design.

One of the big advantages of working with Photoshop is that I can take a single texture sheet and change its lightness/darkness, contrast, and color to match a prototype structure or just to create a unique texture sheet.

I drew each building separately in Photoshop Elements, and then combined them all into the elevation drawings you see below. Creating the elevations was tedious but worth the effort, as it revealed a few problems I needed to fix. There are only two elevations -- south and west -- because the mill will sit in a corner of the layout with only these two sides visible from the aisle. I try not to spend time building and detailing things viewers won't be able to see.

Armstrong is the name of a long-time friend, Amy Armstrong, who knits, weaves, and spins wool. As a Scottish name, Armstrong also fits with one of the minor themes of my layout, honoring my ancestry. One of the two terminals on the layout is Scots' Landing, and the largest shipper there is McIntyre Marine, named for my grandfather.

I will eventually build the mill as a diorama and then incorporate it into the layout. It may be some time before I get that far, and the Mill might go through some changes before then, but so far, I'm happy with  the design. It's big and imposing, it sort of flows down the hillside, and it looks as if it were built piece by piece over time.

My layout is set in September 1943. The war has created high demand for wool socks, sweaters, blankets, long-johns, coats, and caps, and business is humming along at the Armstrong Mill. Workers -- mostly women -- arrive by train from neaarby towns. (I'll have to add a passenger platform to the complex.) Bales of raw wool come in and finished products go out  in boxcars several times a week.