The large warehouse, which serves as the centerpiece for the new LAJ extension module, is now complete.
With the Alco Line project now installed, my focus is on my next book, “Student to Master, the Lifelong Journey to Model Railroading Excellence”. More details on that soon.
The warehouse illustrates some points of the book, the focus of which is decision-making and being really clear on what contributes to visual impact and focusing your efforts there.
The warehouse really isn’t that difficult to build, well within the reach of a modeler with a year or two of experience….and an open mind to try new things. A large part of success in our hobby comes down to decision-making. Sure, skill matters, but less so. Decisions come in the form of what warehouse to model, an eye-catcher or the norm? The decision to kitbash or scratch-build and move on from out-of-the-box kits. The decision to add the ubiquitous lot in front instead of doing the typical model railroad scene stuffing thing.
One of the topics I mention in a sidebar in the book is that of color depth and opacity. The natural inclination would be to paint the warehouse a pure, opaque, fairly brilliant, and saturated white. Realism is enhanced if you go another route. For this model, I laid down a base layer of gray first, and then lightly fogged on a layer of Tamiya Matt White.