Card Modelling

  This section has been done by Bob Rowlands who has built a complete layout using these skills

Until recently card modelling has been out of favour with many modellers. Plastic card became the norm. Now paper and card are making a comeback as you can now download kits off the internet. Many years ago most modellers bought Bilteezi kits for their model railway or built their own with cardboard and Merco brick paper.

 There were many books on the subject. I recommend Miniature Building Construction by John H Ahern. If you are building a layout and want to design and build model buildings then this is the book to get. It has been out of print for a few years, but you could get a second hand one from one of the book sellers that go to exhibitions. If you are not sure about scratch building, you can get pre printed and partially cut out kits from Metcalf models or the old favourite Superquick. With a bit of detail such a gutters and drainpipes and a bit of weathering these kits can be made more realistic.

The new trend seems to be downloading kits from the likes of Smart Models and Scalescenes. For a small fee you can download a kit which you print out. This is ideal, say, if you wanted a row of terrace houses as you now can print out as many as want without further charge. You can also download brick paper to match so that you can build sheds or walls to match the original.

You can print them out on card which available from stationers such as Rymans or WH Smith. The most suitable card is 160 – 240 gsm. When printing on card sometimes the colour looks washed out. I use matt coated photo paper as this makes the colours seem more vivid, this is glued onto thicker card for support.
In eastern Europe during the cold war, plastic for making models was in short supply and was of such poor quality, so many firms started making models out of cardboard. You can now buy them in this country from specialist firms or order them on the internet. Firms such as Modelik or GPM make fantastic kits. They make ships, cars, buses, buildings and of course locomotives and rolling stock. Go onto Google, type in card or paper models and click on images, you will be amazed what came be done.
FREE MODELS
While on Google, search for Papermau or Papercraft square, you can download hundreds of models for free. Just follow the links .Or type in free paper model downloads.

 
Photo 1
A row of shops in N Gauge built from Metcalf kits



Photo 2
A free download of a German P6 locomotive from Kartonbau,de from links on the Papermau website, the model was designed by A Pirling and is 1/38 scale.