We’ll continue this project where we left off in Part 2 of this series.

Materials Needed (For Part 3)

• Polyscale Olive Drab
• Polyscale Coach Green
• Bragdon Enterprises Green Grunge weathering powder
• Dullcote
• .010″ acetate sheet
• Window signage design
• Transparency film

Painting

Base Coat

The kiosk is entirely painted olive drab.  To cover the kiosk in a nice thin coat of paint and not “clog” the photo-etched brass scroll work, I used an airbrush for this step.

Dry Brushing

Once the base coat was dry, I mixed olive drab and coach green paints — about a 50/50 mix.  I dry brushed this mix over the entire kiosk to help highlight details.

For those who have not used this technique, dry brushing means that you dip the brush into the paint as usual, but then wipe off almost all of the paint onto a paper towel or other surface before applying to the model. Wiping on a paper towel until almost no paint traces show up leaves only the smallest amount of paint on the brush.  Then, using next to no pressure on the brush, very lightly drag the brush over the model.  This will leave paint on any raised details only, creating a highlighting effect.

The coach green is a brighter, more saturated green than the olive, so a 50/50 mix leaves subtle highlights.  Some modelers might prefer stronger highlights, in which case, more coach green or even white could be added to the mix.

It’s extremely difficult (if not impossible) to see the difference between the base coat, dry brushing and weathering (next step) in the photos that I have but you will see the difference in person.

Weathering

Many modelers use an India Ink wash to weather their structures. I prefer to use weathering powders and I used a green weathering powder for the kiosk.

The weathering powders used are produced by Bragdon Enterprises and contain a light adhesive that helps the powders stick to the model surface. I used is Bragdon powder set, item number FF-162, that contains yellow, green, blue and red. Bragdon’s names for these colors are “Old Yeller”, “Green Grunge”, “The Blues” and “Used Brick” respectively.

The green is a fairly light shade of green, much lighter than the olive and even the coach green. Using  large, soft brush, I brushed on a liberal amount of the Green Grunge color. This serves to lighten the overall look of the kiosk, apply even more highlight effect and weather it at the same time.

Although not really necessary because of the powder’s adhesive, I knew I would be handling the model quite a bit so I sealed this weathering with Dullcote. Dullcote tends to weaken the effects of powders so I usually over-weather with powder then seal it.

Window Glazing

I was a little intimidated by the thought of adding window glazing to such a small structure. Not to mention that the angles of the roof and small margin for error made this worse. However, I was presently surprised at how (relatively) easy it was to add the glazing.

To glaze the kiosk windows, I created a paper template of the window areas using the blueprints as  guide and double-checking measurements against the model. It took a few tries to have a basic template for each side.  Note, you’ll probably want to do a separate template for each side unless you kiosk is 100% symmetrical, square and true, which I would think would be literally impossible by hand.

From the template, I cut appropriately sized pieces from .010″ acetate sheet. Rather than keep the acetate in large pieces, I found it easier to cut this into three separate pieces per side.  One for the main entrance area, one for the middle angled area and one for the small rear area.  This gave me some play and room for adjustment as I went.

I glued the acetate in place using Testor’s clear canopy glue because I was out of the Elmer’s Stix-All that I typically use.

In the above photo, you should be able to see the edge of the glazing.  To give you an idea of size, keep in mind that what appears to be a thick edge to the glazing is a mere .010″.  Also, while you can see the glazing from this angle with a macro lens on an digital SLR camera, you really don’t see this in person.

Once the main sides were done, I followed a similar method of paper templates and .010″ acetate for the remaining window segments.

Painted Window Signage

The prototype IRT kiosk includes painted signage on the inside of the transom windows in the main entrance area. For “entrance” kiosks with the domed roof, the prototype included the word “Entrance” as well as its location.  ”Exit” kiosks with a pyramidic roof simply used the word “Exit”.

Since I’m modeling an entrance kiosk, I used the location “Down Town” to mimic a 1940s reference photo I was using. Download the design for the kiosk entrance.

To create the actual painted signage, I printed the appropriate text on transparency film. I printed this on a laser printer so the text would not run when exposed to the moisture of the glue. This can happen if printed on an ink jet printer, especially when printing to a slick surface like transparency film.

Again, to illustrate just how small this kiosk is, note that the individual dots of the laser printout (300 dots per inch) are clearly visible in the photo. The words “Down Town” are so small that they’re barely formed by the printer.

I cut this to the size of the main transom windows and again attached with Testor’s clear canopy glue.

Size Reference

In recent comments on one of the previous kiosk articles, I promised to include some photos to give you a better idea of just how small the kiosk is.  These aren’t the clearest photos, but should be clear enough to show the size.

To Be Continued

I’ll have just one more quick update to this series to add a full interior — yes, you read that right. This will include photo-etched brass railing, descending stairs, tiled stairwell and destination signage over the stairs.  The interior is meant to be sunk below the ground level of your layout and is only necessary if you’d like your layout visitors to be able to look down into the kiosk entrance.  Since I eventually intend to light the kiosk, I felt this interior was important.

In the final article, I’ll also include several photos of the completed kiosk.