Cathedral Kit Snap

This kit has kept me busy since I took it out of the box. My wife and I took on the cathedral as a project together. We spray painted the interior walls of the cathedral light Blue. We needed a floor so we made a floor from popcicle sticks which we stained dark Walnut. When they dried we coated them with two coats of gloss, clear enamel. We decided to name it St. Anthony's Church. We took an upholstery tack, pulled the pin from it and cut it in half with a Dremel tool to make a holy water font for each side of the interior door way coming into the church. I made an altar from scrap plastic. The candles are insulation stripped from 14/2 wire with ground. I took a toothpick with pointed ends, scorched them with a candle lighter and made the burnt wicks for the top of the candles. I used the bare 14/2 wire to make handrails for the church steps. Next we took pill capsules, spilled the meds from them, painted them White and made ceiling lights for the church. A Cross lapel pin with the pin cut off is on the wall behind the altar. The church sign I made from scratch, computer printed St. Anthony's Church and a picture cut from a religious catalog. We covered the inside of the church windows with shiny Scotch tape and colored them with markers. We're just about done. It has been a great project. We have also built the Plasticville Post Office and Fire Station. All these kits are excellent. We still have the school house and two cottages to build. Thank You Plasticville and Hobbylinc. OH, we also gave the exterior of the Cathedral a wash using equal parts of Flat Grey and thinner, it filled in the grout lines of the stones and gave the Cathedral a neat appearance

I had this same model, but in HO scale, back in the 70's. I was thrilled to see it available in O scale. While it is a simple snap-together model, a few drops of glue turn it into a very stable structure. The white walls and gray steeple and roof made me feel like I was viewing a photo-negative of the cathedral, so I painted the roof, steeple and window frames black, the door red, and the foundation bricks gray. The building really stands out on the green lawn I landscaped around it. The only real complaint I have is that the kit did not contain stained glass window stickers. I made my own out of plastic sheeting and permanent marker.

The fit was fair but the texturing of the walls was quite good. Add a little aging and paint this makes a pretty good project for your O-gauge setup or for a Christmas village display. However it does not come with stained glass, so as far as I could find out making your own is the only option. I used stained glass paint that you can obtain at an Arts and Craft shop and clear plastic sheets.