Many times, alongside commercial buildings, you’ll find stacks of crates, barrels, and sacks. These details add realism and character to your model railroad layout, making the scenes around warehouses, shops, freight depots, and other commercial buildings look more authentic. This set includes 5 different configurations of crates, barrels, and sacks, perfect for adding realistic detail to your railroad scenery. One of the pictures shows an N scale painted version of one of the groups alongside an HO and a Z scale group.

Here are some painting tips:

Painting details like the "Crates, Barrels and Sacks Group" can be a fun and simple project to get very nice results.

The process will be: Prime > Dulcote > Paint > Gloss Seal > Sepia Wash > Dry Brush > Dulcote Seal > Pastel Weathering

1. Spray the parts with a white, lacquer based primer and allow to dry. Once dry, spray with Dulcote to give the paint a "tooth" to make it easy to brush paint.

2. We recommend acrylic paints for brush painting.

3. Since we will use a Sepia Wash over the paint, find a light wood brown for the boxes, light gray for the barrels and very light gray or light tan for the sacks. You can add white to the colors you choose to lighten them if you want. The Sepia Wash and weathering will darken the paint colors so keep that in mind.

4. Paint the clusters beginning with the lightest colors and ending with the darkest. Paint as close to the edges as you can but the Sepia Wash will cover many over-paints at the seams. You can always go back and touch up any spots if needed. Again, the wash will cover many goofs in the joints between the parts. We used a color (blue, green or yellow) to paint some of the rings of the drums to give them some contrast with the normal earth tones.

5. Once the paint has dried, spray the group with a High Gloss spray paint. This will reduce the effect of the Sepia Wash and not darken the overall paint color too much. We only want the wash in the corners and edges of the parts.

6. Dilute the Sepia Wash at least 1:1 with acrylic thinner. Sometimes 4 parts thinner and one part wash is best. If it is not dark enough, you can go back for a second application. Easy to add more; difficult to take away if it is too much. Add a drop of liquid soap to your mixture. This will help the wash mixture flow into the cracks and seams without beading up.

7. Once this wash coat is to your satisfaction and has dried, dry brush the parts with a white or light gray (or tan). This will bring out the details and give the wash more depth.

8. Lastly, spray the completed group with Dulcote to seal everything to this point.

9. If you want, you can add some black or dark brown pastel to the bottom and bottom side of the group with a small brush. This does not need sealing after application and the finished model is ready to place on your layout.