Another "cut-out" from a 1950s issue of
Toy Trains magazine, the fuel oil storage shanty:
![Image](https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/51136081506_22262a5e69_c.jpg)
With nothing but a single sliding door, this little shed is a pretty simple build. I scanned it from the magazine, then printed it on a sheet of cardstock. I then glued it onto some matt-board scraps I have laying around, cut each wall, then glued them together with basswood "corners" behind. My construction methods leave an exposed edge at each corner, so I have to cut out paper corners from the pattern and cement those on. Getting the "block" pattern to line up was a challenge, which you can see in the photos. I'll chalk that up to poor "lithography", lol.
The colors are pretty ghastly...who has ever seen cement block with a blue tint? I've gotten pretty competent at pixel art using MS Paint, so I could have recolored it into something more appropriate, but that was going to take way too much effort, so I left it. The deck had a wood surface drawn for it, but again, the color was way off, almost pink. I bagged that and decided to use a bit of my Floquil "concrete" stash to fashion a slab for the top of the platform. I used the timber-deck pattern to make a sliding door, recoloring it to a light-brown. A few signs printed from the internet completed the walls.
![Image](https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/51122648457_186ca878cc_c.jpg)
If Carstens included a roof for the shed, I couldn't find it in the magazine (I might be missing a page or two). No problem, we made one from a bit of corrugated from a USPS shipping box and a few strips of cardstock. I had a can of textured spray paint left over from another project, so I gave the roof a shot of that, then two coats of satin black. I wanted it to look like rolled-roofing, and this seemed to work. A couple more basswood strips for a glue surface, and the roof was cemented on.
The bit that bugs me is how would one get up onto the platform? A ladder? A ramp? A few steel rungs on the wall? I'll need to figure something out.
Anyway, that's it for the fuel oil storage shed. With these projects, I have to be careful to try to maintain a tinplate look. I don't want it to be too realistic or scale (if that makes any sense).
I've got a paper model for a yard tower printed years ago...might try that next.