Polar Express Buildings

[elvisp]

I am working on a Polar Express layout for Christmas. I am having trouble finding buildings that resemble those in the North Pole. I thought about making some out of cardstock but I don't know if I am talented enough. I thought of buying some old Dept 56 or Lemax buildings and painting them to match the buildings in the movies. The buildings that I found don''t look "square" enough to match the ones in the movie. Any thoughts or suggestions?

[Penny Trains]

An exact match would be difficult.  If you want to go the cardstock route, Scalescenes.com has some good texture sheets for scratch building.  I've built several of their models and they come out great.  I've also modified their kits with no problem.

Becky

[chad tm5000/trainstation]

ive always made my buildings out of card board and you mite want to think of doing just the out line of the buildings, there is a guy in the ctt that has a polar express layout,i for get the issue he was in but he got it as card stock and he painted them blue and red,im still trying to figure out the helix end of the almost the same project,im using fastrac and its crazy what im doing. i wish you luck in finding the building pieces,im just going to make the out line of the buildings and put them in the background... good luck

[seabilliau]

I went to cgtextures.com and was able to download high res photos of buildings that resembled those in the movies and book.  I then had them printed on card stock, and the pasted to foam board. Instead of reporting a thread, here is the link to how I did it.  The layout you will see in the pics has been pulled up as I have since moved it to a 4x4 table using strictly O-27 and find it actually much more manageable to have a themed layout on a smaller table. I will post pictures of the new table onc I'm complete. 

 

http://www.modeltrainforum.com/showthread.php?t=11556