If you remember a few weeks ago I was moaning about the Slaters pantile embossed plasticard and it's lack of relief. I wanted something that had more relief and I could get the 3D effect on the ends of the roof showing overlapping tiles as well...

Well the answer I came up with was perhaps a little different from the norm but before I tell you how I did it, here is a photo which shows the end result. I'm really pleased, it looks just right to me and hopefully the idea will help other modellers with a similar quandry - as it uses a similar idea to overlapping paper tiles used on all sorts of great buildings I've read about in Model Railway Journal over the years...

So I looked at Slaters other embossed plasticard - and came across a sheet of the 4mm corrugated steel and I thought, hmm, this looks A LOT like pantiles, would it work if I cut it into 5.5mm strips and then layed them upside down? A small demo piece looked fantastic, so I moved onto the real thing...

First up I cut a base piece of plasticard. To complete the effect I added a few strips of plasti-strip along the front edge to raise the first row of tiles and then layered them up the roof, 4.5mm showing of each row. The chimney is just single sheet thickness Slaters embossed brickwork with a plastic cap and I let this into the roof.

The roof is simply strips of corrugated iron embossed plasticard layed up which gives a great appearance and accurate end on view as well

However as you can see, the back of the building is still not complete! At least this shot shows how the building is built up of laminated plasticard - glued together using superglue where possible to reduce the risk of warping. I will be adding the rear and second half of the roof now I'm happy with the finish of the first half over Christmas.

Meanwhile work on the Pacer has really slowed down a little - though this one is ready for priming. I'll crack on with the second car over the festive season as well!

The detailed Pacer car posing with the half finished building.