One of the photos I saved from the Historic Pittsburgh site was the above photo of an Atlantic gas station on Perrysville Avenue in West View (just outside of Pittsburgh). Its simple architecture stood out to me as a good choice for my first shot at building a model structure completely from scratch. Historic photos of the areas I’m modeling show other Atlantic gas stations, and some quick Googling shows that this was a common style of gas station design, with the enameled metal panels on the front and often the same layout as the building in the photo.
For guidance on how to model the structure, I first looked at the Crafton Avenue Service Station model kit made by City Classics. It’s a little too simplified for my taste, and has a chunky look to it, so I didn’t get much inspiration from it, and moved on. Next, I searched the Model Railroader archive and found a helpful article with plans for building a similar type of gas station (Scratchbuild a Pair of Gas Stations, by Jeff Wilson, November 1993). Prior to reading this article, I wasn’t sure how to make the raised lettering for the front …