Hiding - Walthers Cornerstone Modular seams...

For awhile now I have been trying to think of way to hide the joins/seams that are left when using Walthers - Cornerstone Modular kits.  I like the flexibility that the modular kits offer, and the fact that the design and layout of each building is only limited by your own imagination and requirements.

But one down side of the modular kits is the fit and the pesky gaps that are left when joining the sections together.

This is actually a fairly good example of the gap that is left behind when joining the sections, after a couple of coats of undercoat and two or three layers of final colour these gaps sometimes are hard to pick.  But more often that not they can be seen, one option would be to fill the gaps with putty but this would be time consuming and could easily allow the mortar lines to be lost.

So the solution that I thought of was to add a facade detail that would eliminate or hide the seams/gaps.  So I sourced a styrene strip that would suit the structure as a ledge or structural member exposed to the facade.  I tried a piece of Evergreen Styrene that was 4x6 in HO Scale and it was perfect.

I cut the sections to fit in between the modular sections and to cover the vertical columns, the column pieces extend over the centre sections by a 1mm either side.  These are then glued in place using CA, and are aligned so the top of the styrene piece is underneath the seam/gap.

And the finished result once the entire structure has been fitted...

The ledge will be painted a weathered concrete colour when finished and will also help break up the single colour of the brickwork on larger facades.  In all this building took around an hour to add all the ledge detail, and proven to be a winner in hiding the gaps.  Although the real proof will be when the structure is painted and weathered.

I also completed a smaller structure with a angle in the middle using the same method.  I like it that much that I will be using this method on the remaining structures on the L&T Branch & the JL&T RR.

I'll post more photos once these two structures have been painted and weathered.

Jas...