World War II Project - Buildings - Sarissa Precision Railway Station (NO 36) - Concept

Next up in the building parade is one of the railway stations from Sarissa Precision, more precisely kit NO 36. I see this station as one that would be typically found in a large village or small town. When I went on my flurry of kit buying I envisioned this one as another candidate for the photo realism technique. After the finishing the Charlie Foxtrot Models kit I decided to sit down and take a closer look at this kit before making a final decision on how to approach it and maybe map out in advance any modifications that might need to be made.

Like most MDF kits this one is pretty much dead flat with any detail engraved as panel lines. After seeing what some of the model railroad kit creators are doing with laser cuts (Monster Model Works is an excellent example) I find this lack of detail a bit discouraging, I know details like brick and stone can be done much better than what is currently being sold to the wargame market. On the other hand detail like that also takes a lot of time and laser time is money so trade offs must be made and that leaves it to the builder to decide how to approach finishing detail. But I still want finishing to be as easy as possible.

One of those easy things has come to my attention through a series of postings on LAF. This particular post can be found in the WWII forums and is simply listed as Stalingrad. The level of detail that has been achieved in a short time is pretty amazing. One of the shortcuts taken to achieve this is the use of brick sheets. These sheets are printed on "bumpy" paper and give the impression of 3D bricks. I can apply these sheets in the same way as I did on the Dormer House 2 model and I'm looking forward to seeing how it looks. Unlike the CFM kit Sarissa doesn't use puzzle cut corners so I don't have to hide those, but I do need to hide the slot and tab style that they do use. This is much easier to handle and I can actually wrap brick sheeting around the corners to get a nice fit.

Something else I want to do though is similar to the sills that I created for the Dormer House. In this case the exposed decorative brick at the corners and around the windows. I want to raise this up "above" the surface of the side of the building to enhance the 3D affect. My initial thought is to buy either bass or balsa sheeting 1/8" thick and cut that to match the engraved details. I'll wrap the brick paper around this sheeting and apply the sheeting to the building. I think that will work quite nicely. Looking at the actual pieces from the kit I'm hopeful that I can pull this off. I'm hoping to trace the detail from the parts on to a template and use that to guide the cutting on the basswood. Since the rest of the walls appear to warrant a stucco look I might just apply some of my terrain pastes to the exterior and just be prepared to finish the whole thing off with the airbrush. I'll likely just paint the interior walls directly as well, which means I need to do some interior painting work before I start the build. I'm not quite sure how I'm going to chop up these tasks yet.

Here's a look at what I'll be dealing with for this build:

Sarissa does some nice instructions for their kits and these are no exception. My biggest issue with Sarissa is usually the quality control of the MDF they use. Sometimes a piece that is out of spec works it way in and is thicker than everything else in the kit which means a lot of filing to make things fit right. I always dry fit everything from Sarissa before I assemble it.

2mm thick MDF, pretty standard stuff.

Big flat roof panels, shingles are definitely called for on this kit. Maybe something similar to the ones I used on the Dormer House 2 model but cut into strips and overlapped this time.

There are a few components that are thin cardboard, mostly doors and shutters. I might enhance these with a bit of woodwork as well just to make them pop a bit more.

This is a sheet of the "bumpy" brick sheeting that I acquired off of eBay. This is lighter in color and is the same sheeting used in the Stalingrad build on LAF. This is a more finished style of brick.

This is another version using a darker and rougher looking brick. I also have this in a smooth version that I might use underneath the stucco in exposed areas where the stucco has broken away. Both sets of brick were billed as being O Scale but I find them to be a lot closer to S Scale. This fit in nicely with the scale of the miniatures.