kitbashing for city modeling!!

[Bill Nelson]

over in the logging mining and industrial section of Zealot, I am documenting the massive rebuilding of my RR. In the past, my modeling has been decidedly ruaral, with the exception of Harlow TN, where my RR interchanges with the Southern Rwy. I have reorented my center peninsula, doing so allows me to put a helix in previously unused space, greatly increase the length of my main line run, while reducing the maximum grade from 8.5% (this is a logging RR) down to 3.3%, and increase my minimum radius from 18 inches to 21 inches in the valey division and 19 inches in the mountain division.


This rebuild also had a huge efect on Harlow Tn. which more than trippled is size. Before the rebuild the tallest model building (with the exception of the massive Imperial Desk and Chair Co. ; built from DPM modular building parts to hide the end of the stud wall divider between old Harlows front and back side, and fufilling the same purpose in new Harlwo) was two stories. Harlow is a bigger place now, so I need taller buildings. On the left side of the Gorre County courthouse (chopped up from a European model company's (Kirbi?) villa) I cut up a City Clasics Ohio St. building, and a DPM MT Arms Hotel. I reversed the side walls on the hotel building, and used the top half of the back wall to make the side wall for the adjacent Ohio st building, whcih is a partial flat, with no back wall. The back wall of the MT arms building is greatly narrowed.


On the right side of the court house I used the two side walls from the Ohio street building put together and modified (I will do the same modification on the grant street buildings later, so I will decribe it then) and the back wall to make another partial flat.

I am getting ready to conjoin two City Classics Grant street Iron fronts to make a building with twice the footprint, Joining two front walls, two back walls, and two pairs of side walls.

These city clasic kits are nice. They are similar to DPM kits, except the level of detail is considerably better. Except for the modular stuff DPM's tallest building is the MT arms hotel, which is four stories, but the stories on the these City Classics five story buildings are considerably taller than the MT arms hotel. It has been fun playing with this stuff . While I have been a logging modeler for close to 40 years I uased to admire the traction modeler's work in Cinncinnati OH, where I lived in the late 1960's. the new larger Harlow Tn. ( now the third argest city in Eastern Tn., behind Knoxville, and Chatanooga ,) gives me a chance to scratch an old itch itch , and I'm having a lot of fun with it.

 

[Bill Nelson]

[ the other building in the previous post is a DPM kit, that I used as a flat in the old Harlow. I really liked it, but had no use for a two story flat (the other wals had long ago disapeared into other projects) Hunting through materials, I realized thet DPM modular sections with arched windows had windows of similar size and spacing so I cut some up to add another story, as I did have need of a three story flat to help fill in some of Main street were there is room for main street, sidewalks , and a flat. A length of main behind the Harlow Union Station ( DG CC & W RR, and the Southern) has no room on the layout, and so portions of the street, and the buildings will exist only on the backdrop.



I got the four walls of the doubled City Classics Grant Street Iron front assembled, and am attempting to spray paint them flat black on the interior, and flat black on the outside ( to kill any transpearancy) followed by grey as a base for drybrushing the biricks. still not sure of the color I will use on the fancy front of the building I like green, but many of my buildings have green trim, and I may go with grey, I'll see how the initioal coat of gray looks. spray painting today is very challenging, as we have a lot of strong wind gusts, so I have to wait till the wind hits a lull, or I can spray six inches from the model's walls, and get no paint on them.


The picuture with the whole court house square, with the modified DPM Hotel, and the ohio st. building behind it is old, the Walther's Derry's pub ( three story building to the right of the courthouse square, has gone to the back side of Harlow, and the expanded Grantstreet iorn fornt will go in that location next to the Walther's fire station.


for more info on the whole scene go to the logging, minning and industrial section, and the DG CC & W RR thread will be near the top.


Bill Nelson

 

[Bill Nelson]

Having lots of fun, work and the pursuit of firewood has slaowed me down, but I got the Ciry Classics Grant street Iornfront shell put together . using the parts from two kits to make a building with four times the footprint. This building dominates the scene currently , I plan to build a tower on the court house, and put some truely massive trees in the courthouse lawn, and it shouldn't be quite as overwelming. I need to add some floors, at least near the front of the building, and it needs a roof , with chinineys, a lottle structure where the stairs come up. One crazy part of my brain thinks it would be cool to put a roof top garden up there, the view would be awesome, as it is in the middle of the bend of the river. I have two sets of Walther's vintage fire escapes on back order, and I have one in hand. am going to pit fire escapes on the back side of this building, and the flat behind it, which will make the scene in the alley at the foot of main street more interesting.

I have just a few more buildings to do on the back side of harlow, and I will have everything plotted. Have a lot of work to do with streets, sidewalks and scenery, but am trying ti shift gears toward wiring the Downtown Harlow block, and adding the gaps and controlls needed to make downtown Harlow operable. I have all of the road bed in on the back side of harlow, and am getting track down. I need to fire up my sawmill and cut stringers and ties for the steamboat dock, the coal trestle for the Water works, and the big coal trestle for the coal dealer a Harlow Electric.

 

[silveroxide]

Great work on those buildings. I love architecture but in my case, I like them for table top wargaming instead of railroading. I have seen some work of art in the railroad displays but when I look at them, I am thinking battlefield damage, flanking movements, line of sight. BUT I still love the work and care that goes into the construction and yours is no exception. Thanks for sharing, see you around the forum.

 

[Bill Nelson]

Thanks, have never done much wargamming with miniatures, but back in the dark ages was a big fan of the Avalon Hill games. especially Squad Leader, those Stalangrad senarios were very intense, you could be rolling over the oposition right and left, and then get wiped out trying to cross a street.


Here I have assembled some of the smaller flats that were on the old main street, and am using them along the curved backdrop leading to the helix

 

[Bill Nelson]

More work done on these, with some side walls and some floors. note the view from the back side. if you were doing this for miniature wargaming, you could have a narrow roof, with each floor down being a little wider. you could use some of the Arafix Ho scale military figures as troop markers. you could do a square, and keep track of unit placemnet on roofs and varrious floors. It could make up smome nasty challenges. I make the roofs and some of the sidewalls from black styrafoam meat trays from the supermarket, which I wash thourly and save for stuff like this. the dense foam carves nicely , like the stuff I got from Hobby lobby that I ysed for the sidewalks. I am going to do some more paint work on the buildings with white backrounds.

 

[Rhaven Blaack]

These buildings are REALLY LOOKING GOOD!!!
The layout as a whole looks like it is coming together nicely as well.

KEEP UP THE GREAT WORK!!!

 

[zathros]

Awesome. If you get tired of it, you can get a big Godzilla rubber suit and rampage through it! It has that level of detailing. I imagine the set builders used to cry when those magnificent sets got destroyed.

 

[Bill Nelson]

have been having fun with flats for the club layout

 

[Bill Nelson]

at the far left of the front of Harlow, I have the helix. In my earlier layout, the whole center aisle was taken up with steep mountain grades and scenery. it looked fine (see the logging minning and industrial railroads section, logging in east TN in 1928 on the DG, CC, & W RR ) . The helix , which you can see the bottom of in this photo, is functional; but as ugly as homemade sin; and it is the feature that gets the vertical climb needed to get to the upper deck, freeing um the middle deck for the large city sceane.

I want to be able to see trains on the helix, for operational reasons; so I don't want to make a compleate view block, but neither do I want my city scenery to end in a haphazard pile of plywood and two by twos, so I'm going to try to split the difference. in the above photo, the two and three story flats did not do the job, so I tried some other flats I had around.


Im this photo I have the beginnings of streets and side walks in place. these flats are made from some DPM modular sections and some wall section scraps from the parts hoard. they fit better, but it is not Ideal. As the anchor for the next try is three City Classics East Ohio Street building kits. I used one of these up near the courthouse, and liked it.

An interesting feature of this kit is that when they designed it they planned for kitbashing multiple sections together. they left the left baulistrade (Not sure that's the right word) off the main front wall casting, so that two front wall sections can be added together without doubling up the baulistrade, or laboriously removing one of them with a razor saw. by casting this part seperately, I can patch three wall sections together, leaving two baulistrades out, putting one in place on the left side. (Is it scratchbuilding if the manufaturor plans for you to do it). Like DPM kits the molds are not square edged, to allow better relase of the finished walls, so I squared up the wall sections by placing a piece of sandpaper on a sheet of plywood and rubbing the edge of the wall on the sandpaper while holding it at a right angler to the sandpaper.

This flat will become the anchor to the helix disguising fronts along what will become Mississippi Avenue. the road to the right will be Main Street, a some of the flats currently on Mississippi Avenue, will get moved over to the far side of Main Street . The track entering the helix is my mainline heading South East. the tracks to either side of the tower , which is the Southern Railway's South tower, are Southern Mainlines closing the return loop, and the track down the helix to the Southern Staging.

Bill Nelson

 

[Bill Nelson]

I have the three City Classics Ohio St fronts glued together. the unique design of this kit lets you gang front sections without surgery, or having the center butresses doubled up, very nice. The space in front of the helix was a little longer than the three fronts so I'm adding one back wall section. to raise the height, I added a section of brick from a DPM modular wall sections loading dock base, and then added a fancy cornice section on top. these will be painted flat black, and get the gray primer on top of it. later I will dry brush the brick surfaces of both buildings with brick red acrylics, trying to leave the mortar cracks gray.

I will put glazing behind these fronts, but nothing else. the helix will be partially visible behind the flats. I want operators to be able to track a train's progress through the helix. these front's will just soften the abrupt tnd od scenery at the helix.


Bill Nelson

 

[Bill Nelson]

I have ddone some modification to the E Ohio Street fronts, in order to fit them on Mississippi Avenue in front of the helix . I'll add more wall sections, and dry brush in the brick color. My goal here is not to completely block the view of the Helix; I still want to be able to see trains go up and down, I just don't want the helix to be too distracting from the city scenery in front of it.

Bill Nelson

 

[Bill Nelson]

I posted a photo of the helix without the E Ohio Street buildings, have been working on painting the brinks, a multiple step process. some of the pannels are not done, so I haven't taken the time to get them straight, as they will be going back to the work bench.

 

[silveroxide]

While I do not have the room for a layout of your caliber, those buildings make great diorama backdrops. Looking good and keep up the great work.

 

[toptrain1]

View attachment 127448 View attachment 127449 View attachment 127450 View attachment 127451 View attachment 127451 View attachment 127450 View attachment 127449 View attachment 127448 over in the logging mining and industrial section of Zealot, I am documenting the massive rebuilding of my RR. In the past, my modeling has been decidedly ruaral, with the exception of Harlow TN, where my RR interchanges with the Southern Rwy. I have reorented my center peninsula, doing so allows me to put a helix in previously unused space, greatly increase the length of my main line run, while reducing the maximum grade from 8.5% (this is a logging RR) down to 3.3%, and increase my minimum radius from 18 inches to 21 inches in the valey division and 19 inches in the mountain division.


This rebuild also had a huge efect on Harlow Tn. which more than trippled is size. Before the rebuild the tallest model building (with the exception of the massive Imperial Desk and Chair Co. ; built from DPM modular building parts to hide the end of the stud wall divider between old Harlows front and back side, and fufilling the same purpose in new Harlwo) was two stories. Harlow is a bigger place now, so I need taller buildings. On the left side of the Gorre County courthouse (chopped up from a European model company's (Kirbi?) villa) I cut up a City Clasics Ohio St. building, and a DPM MT Arms Hotel. I reversed the side walls on the hotel building, and used the top half of the back wall to make the side wall for the adjacent Ohio st building, whcih is a partial flat, with no back wall. The back wall of the MT arms building is greatly narrowed.


On the right side of the court house I used the two side walls from the Ohio street building put together and modified (I will do the same modification on the grant street buildings later, so I will decribe it then) and the back wall to make another partial flat.

I am getting ready to conjoin two City Classics Grant street Iron fronts to make a building with twice the footprint, Joining two front walls, two back walls, and two pairs of side walls.

These city clasic kits are nice. They are similar to DPM kits, except the level of detail is considerably better. Except for the modular stuff DPM's tallest building is the MT arms hotel, which is four stories, but the stories on the these City Classics five story buildings are considerably taller than the MT arms hotel. It has been fun playing with this stuff . While I have been a logging modeler for close to 40 years I uased to admire the traction modeler's work in Cinncinnati OH, where I lived in the late 1960's. the new larger Harlow Tn. ( now the third argest city in Eastern Tn., behind Knoxville, and Chatanooga ,) gives me a chance to scratch an old itch itch , and I'm having a lot of fun with it.

 

[toptrain1]

View attachment 144270 View attachment 144271
I posted a photo of the helix without the E Ohio Street buildings, have been working on painting the brinks, a multiple step process. some of the pannels are not done, so I haven't taken the time to get them straight, as they will be going back to the work bench.

An excelent choice to cover over the large open area of the spiraling tracks.. Abig well done to you Nemson. frank