Building and Weathering the Atlas HO 3-Stall Roundhouse Book Review

By Michael Benolkin

Planning on using your modeling skills to build or expand your model railroad layout? Master modeler Mike Ashey provides some useful tips to transform the Atlas HO 3-Stall Roundhouse building kit into a realistic model. If you've been interested in model railroading (in addition to your other hobbies/interests), you'll recognize this Atlas kit as it has been around for decades. This kit goes together straight out of the box into a three-stall garage for your locomotives (usually built in conjunction with their turntable kit), but you could also buy their expansion kit (or complete kit) to add additional increments of three stalls to house your locomotive power.

In this title, the author walks through a build of this venerable kit with tips on how to improve the fit of the parts, filling gaps and seams, painting techniques for bricks, wood, and roofing, and basic weathering to add realism to your structure.

The techniques illustrated in this title provide tips on the effective use of primers, brick and mortar applications, shading and weathering. If you're planning to update or expand your railroad empire or build similar kits as backgrounds, the tips and techniques presented here are simple and effective, yet provide excellent results.

One other advantage to this series is that you can order what you need, when you need them, or collection them all for future projects.

My sincere thanks to Mike Ashey Publishing for this review copy!