Building and Painting My First Structure Kit in 30 Years

Posted Jan 24, 2019
Updated Oct 01, 2022

At the Great Train Show in Puyallup last weekend, I picked up two small DPM kits for $15 each: Pam’s Pet Shop and Kelly’s Saloon. They’re both fairly small, two-story structures. I immediately started working on building and painting the pet shop kit, which I think I’ll make a cafe or restaurant out of.

As with most situations involving a user manual or instruction sheets, I first read the entire instructions, and then re-read parts of it more than once, to fully understand the manufacturer’s intentions before doing anything. But I modified the assembly procedure slightly, based on tips I’ve read in Model Railroader. For example, the instructions say to assemble and glue the entire model before painting, and it didn’t mention using a primer, but I followed MR’s advice by using a primer made for plastic (Montana Plastic Primer, as recommended by a clerk at my local Blick Art Supplies), and I airbrushed the window frames before gluing them to the walls. As I write this, the windows still aren’t attached (more on that later).

Again following advice from Kalmbach’s Basic Painting & Weathering for Model Railroaders, I painted the exterior walls a base …

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B&O Color Notes

Posted Jan 14, 2019
Updated Oct 01, 2022

From the Yahoo! B&O Group:

Here is a thumbnail B&O passenger car timeline:

  • In Civil War times into the 1880’s, mention is made of B&O passenger cars painted brown.  Photos suggest head end cars might be yellow. 
  • At some point, the olive coach green was adopted, it is close enough to Pullman Green for most modelers.
  • During 1900-1906 or so, passenger cars on the New York – Washington Royal Blue route were painted blue.  Discontinued due to durability problems.
  • B&O introduced the famous blue and gray with the new Capitol Limited train sets in 1937.  This scheme was restricted to name train matched sets and their substitute cars until 1953.   All other cars remained olive coach green until 1947, including head end cars.
  • In early 1947, B&O replaced olive coach green with Bando blue with an imitation gold stripe, for most cars including head end cars.   Wagontop express cars did not have the gold stripe, name train car sets remained blue and gray.
  • In early 1953 the blue and gray scheme was extended to most cars.  Exceptions were express cars, which remained blue.  There was a 1953 B&O memo that non-air conditioned cars would remain blue too, yet this was
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