Bungalow garage
Posted: Fri Sep 06, 2024 3:08 pm
While I'd sworn off making any new cardboard faux-tin for awhile, my friend Robert flipped me a web-shot of someone's effort to make a garage to mate with a Lionel 184 bungalow. After a bit of pondering, we kinda decided to try to make one similar using the matt-board/cardstock/paper construction method.
Using Paul Race's graphics from his "Tin-Style Cottage" project kit, I mucked around using MS Paint to come up with a version of the garage that would sorta match the look of an original Lionel bungalow (the early version with the vines/shrubbery lithography). I drew a pair of vintage-style garage doors using Paint, similar to the ones the original designer came up with. Print/assembly was the standard process...cut out the windows and doors, paint the matt board edges, than paste a cardstock copy in from behind to add a bit of depth to the otherwise slab-sided graphics. The roof paper I similarly printed from Paul's Tribute to Tinplate site under "Tinplate Textures". The base is a scrap of masonite from the shop, covered in dyed sawdust as manufactured by Life-Like some 20 years ago (fortunately I have a couple boxes of that stuff purchased before Life-Like went away). My grandfather used to make his own in a bucket in the basement; a bit of sawdust from the shop floor, some water and green RIT dye, and a stirrer "borrowed" from my grandmother's kitchen. A couple weeks later it was dry and ready to scenic the 1st-gen German-American's Christmas tree putz...but I digress.
Anyway, here's what we came up with. Upper left is the pic provided by the original designer, upper right is our version, and lower is Robert's two-bungalow plot with one cottage replaced by the garage:
The lithography on the original bungalow on Robert's plot looks pretty dark, likely the result of getting a coat of varnish by the owner at some point. It should appear quite a bit lighter than that, although probably not as light as the color used on the garage. I have a couple of Lionel prewar tunnels that got a similar varnish coat at some point in their lives, a treatment I think folks thought would preserve the painted finish. Unfortunately, the varnish darkens considerably over time.
Here's a pic of an original 184 compared to the garage graphics...still a bit too light, at least in the photos:
The three bungalows I have all are repros of the late version, having just a simple single-color enamel finish (no lithography). I'll have to see if I can find an early one with an unfaded/unvarnished lithographed finish so we can try to better match it up.
Anyway, another fun project. Now back to cleaning up the basement layout.
Using Paul Race's graphics from his "Tin-Style Cottage" project kit, I mucked around using MS Paint to come up with a version of the garage that would sorta match the look of an original Lionel bungalow (the early version with the vines/shrubbery lithography). I drew a pair of vintage-style garage doors using Paint, similar to the ones the original designer came up with. Print/assembly was the standard process...cut out the windows and doors, paint the matt board edges, than paste a cardstock copy in from behind to add a bit of depth to the otherwise slab-sided graphics. The roof paper I similarly printed from Paul's Tribute to Tinplate site under "Tinplate Textures". The base is a scrap of masonite from the shop, covered in dyed sawdust as manufactured by Life-Like some 20 years ago (fortunately I have a couple boxes of that stuff purchased before Life-Like went away). My grandfather used to make his own in a bucket in the basement; a bit of sawdust from the shop floor, some water and green RIT dye, and a stirrer "borrowed" from my grandmother's kitchen. A couple weeks later it was dry and ready to scenic the 1st-gen German-American's Christmas tree putz...but I digress.
Anyway, here's what we came up with. Upper left is the pic provided by the original designer, upper right is our version, and lower is Robert's two-bungalow plot with one cottage replaced by the garage:
The lithography on the original bungalow on Robert's plot looks pretty dark, likely the result of getting a coat of varnish by the owner at some point. It should appear quite a bit lighter than that, although probably not as light as the color used on the garage. I have a couple of Lionel prewar tunnels that got a similar varnish coat at some point in their lives, a treatment I think folks thought would preserve the painted finish. Unfortunately, the varnish darkens considerably over time.
Here's a pic of an original 184 compared to the garage graphics...still a bit too light, at least in the photos:
The three bungalows I have all are repros of the late version, having just a simple single-color enamel finish (no lithography). I'll have to see if I can find an early one with an unfaded/unvarnished lithographed finish so we can try to better match it up.
Anyway, another fun project. Now back to cleaning up the basement layout.