Bus Shelter!

Possibly the worst shelter to use in the event of a Zombie Apocalypse, or any other for that matter, but I was determined to have a go at making one, especially since I have two bus lanes on my layout.  And having no common sense whatsoever, I completely failed to see the cop out choice of a bus stop.  You know, a simple vertical pole.  That would have been a lot easier!

 As it's me, you know I'm doing this with minimal expenditure.  So I've got some of my left over balsa strip 3/32 by 3/32, a sheet of card, and what's left of the plastic packing for our wrapping paper from Christmas past. Considering how hard it is to see the last of those items in the above picture, this ain't going to be easy to show you.
 Here's the four pieces of plastic cut from the packing.  The two ends measure 4cm x 2.5cm, the back is 4cm x 10cm and the top is 4cm x 11cm.  I'm sticking the balsa strip to the acetate with my trusty UHU glue.  I can't use superglue as the heat it generates tends to cloud the surface of the plastic, which looks even worse than any wisps of UHU.  These wisps actually make the glass look cracked, so I won't be too bothered if I have the odd one here or there.

Of course it's about this time that I start wishing I'd given in and bought something ready made from plasticville...  Never mind, you can see the model coming together in the next photo.
 It was at this point that I realised I needed to paint the structure before gluing the roof on, or there was simply no way they were going to get done afterwards.
To finish off, the plastic sheet had to be painted where the balsa strip was visible.  Fiddly, but necessary.  Framing both sides of the plastic would have made the structure way too bulky and would have looked wrong.  Make no bones about it, this is a fiddly thing to make, and it isn't exactly robust.
 But as you can see in these shots, the end result is rather satisfying, and will look great on the city boards.
 Btw, the seats are 6mm x 2cm strips of black card, sitting on a 6.5cm balsa strip.
One down, one to go!

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