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Self built: Very cheap and quick to build buildings out of card. A splash of paint and there you have it. There are however some tips of the trade so to speak.

Tip 1. when you fold card it tends to buckle at the corner. This is because the card is being squeezed on the inside of the fold. If you first remove some of the material on the inside of the fold by cutting a V-shape in the card with a craft knife this wont happen. The result is a shape corner on all your buildings.

Tip 2.    A square is not a ridged shape and so a square building can become deformed easily. To avoid this and give your building extra strength insert triangular tabs into each corner.

Tip 3.    Almost every building has a window. so too make this effect simply stick some clear plastic (acetate) on to the inside. One cheep supply of clear plastic is on the display boxes of some modelling products. Don't trough it away save it and use it. Windows look very good lit, so don't be afraid to put a light inside. See the electronics page for info on lighting.

Ready built: Hornby/Scalextric, as well as many others, supply ready built and ready painted buildings. These look good but the selection is limited and the cost is high.

Plastic kits: Sort of a halfway house between scratch build and ready built. They are very cheep and if you enjoy modelling you should get hours of fun building and painting them. For tips on plastic building plastic model building see the plastic kits page.