While I'd sworn off making any new cardboard faux-tin for awhile, my friend Robert flipped me a web-shot of someone's effort to make a garage to mate with a Lionel 184 bungalow. After a bit of pondering, we kinda decided to try to make one similar using the matt-board/cardstock/paper construction method.

Using Paul Race's graphics from his "Tin-Style Cottage" project kit, I mucked around using MS Paint to come up with a version of the garage that would sorta match the look of an original Lionel bungalow (the early version with the vines/shrubbery lithography). I drew a pair of vintage-style garage doors using Paint, similar to the ones the original designer came up with. Print/assembly was the standard process...cut out the windows and doors, paint the matt board edges, than paste a cardstock copy in from behind to add a bit of depth to the otherwise slab-sided graphics. The roof paper I similarly printed from Paul's Tribute to Tinplate site under "Tinplate Textures". The base is a scrap of masonite from the shop, covered in dyed sawdust as manufactured by Life-Like some 20 years ago (fortunately I have a couple boxes of that stuff purchased before Life-Like went away). My grandfather used to make his own in a bucket in the basement; a bit of sawdust from the shop floor, some water and green RIT dye, and a stirrer "borrowed" from my grandmother's kitchen. A couple weeks later it was dry and ready to scenic the 1st-gen German-American's Christmas tree putz...but I digress.

Anyway, here's what we came up with. Upper left is the pic provided by the original designer, upper right is our version, and lower is Robert's two-bungalow plot with one cottage replaced by the garage:



The lithography on the original bungalow on Robert's plot looks pretty dark, likely the result of getting a coat of varnish by the owner at some point. It should appear quite a bit lighter than that, although probably not as light as the color used on the garage. I have a couple of Lionel prewar tunnels that got a similar varnish coat at some point in their lives, a treatment I think folks thought would preserve the painted finish. Unfortunately, the varnish darkens considerably over time.

Here's a pic of an original 184 compared to the garage graphics...still a bit too light, at least in the photos:



The three bungalows I have all are repros of the late version, having just a simple single-color enamel finish (no lithography). I'll have to see if I can find an early one with an unfaded/unvarnished lithographed finish so we can try to better match it up.

Anyway, another fun project. Now back to cleaning up the basement layout.