As part of my improvement in my modelling abilities, I will be updating my cards kits bit by bit & the first one to get a make over will be this one




such as re-tiling the roof with strips from Scalescenes roof tiles; gutters & downpipes; a door way at this end onto a small platform: adding some relief with sills & lintels; hiding those vertical edges with brick.

To start with, this kit is red brick but is far redder than the basic Scalescenes red brick paper so I added more magenta in the colour output via my printer. The top strip is standard Scalescenes & the bottom is the Sol version.




that looks the part & the next photo shows the strip in place to hide the card join on the top buttress




the updating will be slow as my modelling life for the next couple or 3 weeks will be full with meetings here with differrnt groups plus one club I am a member of,  slowly moving home so a lot of packing & transporting.

With creating Solscenes papers by altering Red brick Scalescenes on a printer, it gets a reasonable colour match ( well it did) .


thicker lintel & sills & together with weathering, the reds should merge in.




half of the main roof re-tiled


with individual strips - left hand side done so far

That looks so much better, Ron.

I've always thought the weakest part of the Metcalfe range is their printed roofs. They do make excellent bases for detailing and improving as you are doing to this one.

Looking good Ron, will keep my eye out for future installments.

How easy was it to build?

I have got a Metcalfe signal box kit to build when I get around to it.

I want to know how hard it would be to build, and if it's worth building more Metcalfe in the future.

 

Regards Connor

 

 

 

IMHO Connor, the Metcalfe kits are just about as easy to build as you can get.  Certainly I found them easier than the Superquick kits and I'm no master-modeller !!!

If you take your time and study the instructions, anyone can build them.  A bit of care is needed in the "after-build" to hide the card edges - usually by painting otherwise each corner and all the door/window surrounds will have a brown edge.

They're also pretty tough models.  The only downside is that there will be hundred or thousands of layouts with the same engine shed/signal box/station etc. etc. unless you do what Sol is doing and "personalise" them.  But then that's the case with all "kit built" stuff.

Roof now tiled plus a platform




gutters, downpipes & some weathering to come.

Good job, Ron.
The weathering will bring it to life.

Gutter, downpipes & some weathering




This end only easily seen from outside the train room door so not as detailed.