Aladdin General Store by Ragg's to Riches (HO scale)

Once serving as a depot and freight station, the Aladdin General Store is now listed on America's Register of Historic Places and still serves the community of Aladdin, Wyoming. This kit is my all-time choice for best design and execution of any laser kit I've ever built! It went together virtually flawlessly, especially considering the multiple additions that had to be accounted for on the prototype.

However, just because I really liked the kit doesn't mean that I didn't want to make some changes. You'll notice that I changed the name of the store - this sign was printed on a laser printer. The font used was created to make the text look worn, but I also applied some A/I to make the paper look older. I added the Coke machine, a small rack to hold auto-related products, and the oil Highboy (the gas pump was in the kit).

The kit gave me a chance to experiment with several different types of roof coverings. Notice the small shed attached to the right side with its own front entry under the overhang... This became a barber shop, but it also allowed me to try "Truewood Shingles" by Builders in Scale, which were a real treat to work with, and look very real, with limited amounts of weathering needed.

Prior to this attempt to use "real" wood, I had only tried Genuine Cedar Shingles by Evergreen Hill Design, which I found difficult to install because they were very fragile, and full strips rarely hung together long enough to get them on the roof. Evergreen has since upgraded their shingles, and the last time I installed a roof with them, I decided to go with the shingles that had no adhesive pre-applied. This made a big difference, since my fingers didn't stick to adhesive and pull the shingles apart trying to extricate them. They also seemed to have been cut from a better (albeit slightly thicker) stock of wood.

Back to Aladdin... The main roof has also been changed. It called for the use of paper shingles included in the kit, but I have to this day never been able to feel really comfortable trying to make a paper shingle look like wood. It just takes more creativity than I have, to get them to look good and realistically random. I decided to try some Kraft paper rolled roofing that was left over from a South River kit. The paper is very thin - hold it up to a bright light and it's translucent - I actually thought I could see chunks of wood fibers randomly interspersed within the material! Why is this important to me? Because it seems to help take paint more randomly than a high quality paper, which usually turns out looking exactly the same once it's painted.

I sprayed the Kraft paper with a rattle can of red paint, and then before the paint was completely dry, I oversprayed with black, remembering to try to keep it random. After the paint was completely cured, it was easy to cut into PC (prototypically correct) 3 scale feet wide strips because of the lines printed on the side that is not painted. Then, the strips were installed on the roof, using my all-time favorite wood glue (Se-Cur-It by Ambroid). The glue was applied slightly above the previous row and also right along the edge. This allows the front edge of each strip the ability to "curl" with age.

Since Aladdin is a limited run kit, you had better buy one before they're all sold... because "limited run" means they'll NEVER be run again!

Frank Eva