Roundhouse Machine Shop Complete

The small shop building from Vollmer #5750 comes with cute green windows, and I built it that way. However, when I put that next to the roundhouse, the green windows and green door clashed with the grey windows in the roundhouse.

Tonight, I pulled out a small brush and fixed windows and door. I also finished up and weathered the roof. I will need to add an outside light and the message board, but that will have to wait until I'm done with the concrete paving in the engine facility.

For the machine shop I used the following approach to paint the bricks:
I paint the brick surface in PollyScale "Maroon", which makes it a bit too dark. Once dry (wait at least a couple hours) I lay the brick pieces on a flat surface. Next I put a very small amount of water in a lid, dip the brush in a light grey or sandy tone of PollyScale (e.g. "LT undercoat grey", "sand", or similar) and mix the color into the water. This creates a very runny mixture, which gets applied liberally with a brush on the brick. Most of the pigment settles in the crevices forming mortar lines, the rest remains on the brick work, toning down the maroon color and provide random variation for individual stones. It's easy to overdo this, so I tend to apply one coat, let it settle and dry a little bit and then apply some more in areas that need more definition. The trick is to keep the brick surface horizontal while the soup dries, so that pigment settles where you want it.

The roundhouse was done with a similar approach, but using more color in the water and then wipe if off once the color starts to dry. This creates "smear lines" that I didn't quite like on the finished building. We'll see what I'll do about them, if anything. 

Next up on the list is the coaling crane and bunker. This is the well-known Faller kit #120147. I'm planning a little twist and motorize the crane. As mentioned before the coal bunker arrangement will also be very different.