This is fantastic, Paul. And it's so valuable watching the process step-by-step and reading your comments. I've never sprayed anything except a primer with a spray can, but seeing what you have done gives me courage to try something.
I've had good luck with rustoleum primers, except when I accidentally picked up a can of glossy black--glue doesn't like glossy.
Looking forward to future comments.

"Cheating" on the windows and curtains: Usually I cut and glue in real lucite windows, but I'm running out of time. So I have printed curtain patterns with a color laser printer on overhead projector film. I'll be taping them in place with the printed side facing in so they'll be shiny but the curtain pattern will obscure the unfinished interiors. Hopefully the interior lighting won't overpower them.

The page with these curtain patterns is:

http://familygardentrains.com/resource/ ... rtains.htm

They're mostly set for "Large Scale" (roughly 1:24), but you can resize them in your print preview for smaller scales.

The other pair of Playskool buildings. I changed up things on the storefront by leaving the "brick" around the window arch gray and painting it a darker brown. The townhouse, unfortunately wound up JUST the same color as the other one, though I had bought what I thought was a different shade. Again, I'll paint the doors a different color. I'll also have more touchup to do on this storefront than I will on the other one - the red primer I used on it penetrated better, which is a good thing on rusty cars, a bad thing on models, where penetrating the masking tape is not all that useful.

Priming all the doors. Two will be "brick red," one will be green, and one will be the same brown color as the darker storefront. I'm out of gray primer, but "rust" primer makes more sense in this case anyway.

How wonderful!

I have the doors in place and they look great, but it was dark by the time I got them in place, so the photos wil have to wait. I also decided to soak the pair of buildings that I started with 15 years ago, so I can scrape the paper off the interior - it has gotten moldy and weird - I didn't remove it way back when because I didn't realize how bad it would get. It's not a problem on the railroad, but when kids want to help me set things up, or unsupervised children start messing with things, it's not healthy for them (or me, really) to handle them. Now that I have two pairs in such great condition, I wound up realizing that I had no excuse for not cleaning up the first pair to be as nice as the other two pairs inside and out.

More than you wanted to know. Paper inside outside buildings - BAD!
If I have time I may mask and repaint the old ones as well.

Added the Doors.

Closeup of townhouses w/ doors

Closeup of storefronts w/ doors

How utterly marvelous!