Building Better Model Railroads Vol One

This DVD features models of the steam to diesel transition era. Our time will mostly be spent outlining building techniques and using various tools and materials that you might be unfamiliar with.

In this volume, we will see, and build, flatcars, boxcars, and tank car models. Structures modeled include a Fruit to Reefer loading-complex, a rail bridge, a highway bridge, plus simulating country road pavement.  A central theme covers scene planning and also re-purposing models built over the years before your layout was started. Many of these models shown here would still be appropriate in decades after the 1950s. That is especially true of the structures. Also, many of the techniques are useful in building or altering models in any era.

Bonus material is in a folder that you can print on your computer’s printer to have the plans and templates for building the Interlocking Tower in HO scale. Additional print files have the artwork for realistic flooring and stacked fruit crates.

Many of the freight cars in this DVD are from old kits that are both affordable and plentiful in supply on eBay and at railroad, swap meets. With some rewarding work, they can equal expensive ready-to-run models. They will also be more durable. The overarching thinking, here, is to adapt some less expensive resources into your plans, and to build up your skillset you might also expand your tool collection with the money you save in the process. Better tools can make more complex tasks easier -- and they will last through decades of model building.

Whether you are still building models for a future layout or trying to design a layout with models already built, this might help your ideas to crystallize.