Like it......... No, I love

BB warehouse

Looks great. had to look close to see what was printed and what was 3-D. Looks like it's mostly printed. These make for a good looking building if placed more to the back. Put the Corner Stones up front. After all those kit/scratch built buildings cost a lot more in time and $$ than those in the back. I'm using some printed ones in the more distant scenes, With a little tweaking and add on items I even forget what they are.

OBTW, I see a pulpwood car behind the warehouse. They must be delivering an order of fiber!

Keep up the good work. I'm like you, cheap inexpensive.... thrifty!

Roy Hoffman's Blog

Nice work, Roy - sure wish you lived next door!

"S"tring boB

Very creative.

Thank you for sharing.

Upgrade

While the windows of one of the buildings looked pretty good, I thought that they were too flat looking. I decided to frame the windows with some basswood strips and I'm pleased with the results.

Fellow S scaler

Nice looking building complex Roy.The added trim around the windows was worth the effort. Looks like the round Tichy masonry window on top? Whichever one that is it looks sharp! I recently decided to build a new layout and like you I am looking to do it on the cheap. I am going with Sn42 for this reason (cheap HO track and cheap HO loco bashups for my motive power) and intend to scratchbuild all of my structures. I "cheated" a bit though and made my layout's location Mexico, circa 1880's. That eliminates most of the modern building details right off the bat, and reduces my foliage requirements nearly to zero. I don't get to use all of the nice Ertl 1:64 stuff, though. Well, maybe some of the livestock...

Happy Railroading, James B.

"S"ounds neat

I've had the round windows for a while. I think they're Grandt Line RGS depot parts, but I'm not sure. Are there any good books covering the location and era that you'll be modeling? Sounds like it will be a neat MR and might end up looking a bit like the old G&D.

Good Luck,

Roy

Prototype Mexican Railroads

Sure, lot's of information is available about early Mexican Railroads. Here is a "typical" narrow gauge cogway with organic loco and first class passenger coach:

Seriously though, I am just beginning to do research for my layout's pretext, which is that of a German corporation operating a mine and associated railway in Mexico, importing much of the gear from Germany. I am using OO (1:76) Euro style fixed axle wagons which pass pretty good as 1:64 S scale mining carts. Here is a pic taken in the 1960's of a German Mallet 0-4-4-0 still in in use in Mexico:

The German / Mexican mining connection is real, although my layout is an amalgamation of the historical facts.

One of the hard things to find (especially at reasonable prices) is proving to be S scale figures. But recently I discovered that Ertl makes a whole bunch of 1:64 Farm items, including a great selection of livestock and baseball cap wearing farmers (read: Engineers). I also have been exploring the 1:72 Military model area for figures. Here is a pic of some Mexican rail hands :

Airfix has a good "fix" for this:

Thanks to my Military modeling of yore I have plenty of experience tweaking the positions and implements of Airfix figures. The hats and shirts are perfect and only the ammo packs need grinding off, no backpacks to deal with.        And @ $5 for 48 figures you can't beat the price, especially in the MRR figure world.Anybody familiar with Airfix knows that their figure tend to have really good detail, and Airfix figures tend to be a little overscale @ about 1 1/8", or about 5' 4" in S scale. Perfect. With a little Dremel, Soldering Iron, and Bondo I see these being my Mexican miner/Rail hand workforce. I guess the best thing for me to do is to start a thread here and see what information I can glean from the MRH community about my chosen locale and scale.