On the third day of the Trains.com seasonal mini-series, David Popp resuscitates a shed that has been roofless for two years. Using self-adhesive diamond-tab shingles, David demonstrates how to transform cardstock structures with ease.
Follow along as David shares expert shortcuts, including using a spacing guide for perfect rows and splicing leftover scraps for seamless coverage. He concludes with a “short and sweet” ridge cap and dry-brush weathering to highlight individual shingle textures. Visit the Trains.com video library for more expert tips…and keep your modeling projects on track!
I used Bollinger Edgerly Scale Trains (BEST) diamond shingles for the roof of my scratchbuilt HO scale Seaboard Air Line station. Because this structure has hip roofs and a dormer, I just took my time by taking it a course at a time, which prevented me from feeling overwhelmed by the complexity. The end result turned out great. The shingles were very easy to work with. I didn’t use the course spacing guide, because it was easy to line the points of one course up with the sawtooth profile of the course below. I was worried that the adhesive back might release over time, but, a few years later, and all is still well.
You can see this station in the first and second photos in my Trains.com article from a few years ago: https://www.trains.com/mrr/how-to/model-train-layouts/built-by-others-dave-foxxs-ho-scale-carolina-sandhills-lines-layout/
For paper shingles that don’t have the adhesive backing, double sticky tape works well.