Faller 2293 Project: Part 1

I usually post about my scratch-build's or kit-bashes after I complete them, but as I seem to have a lot of unfinished or half-complete projects, I thought I would at least share one or two posts on projects that I haven't finished, but are pretty interesting to me nonetheless.

The Faller 2293 has been one of my favorite structures ever since I first came across it on eBay over a year ago.  I picked up an already built version and, having 'discovered' this for the first time, really liked its clean '1960's modern' lines and generic, corporate architecture look.   Actually, this building opened my eyes to a lot of the modern structures that Faller produced between the 1960's and 1990's (they don't seem to produce these as much anymore).

This structure is far from perfect.  Most obvious to my eyes is that its obviously under-sized for N Scale.  The below photo compares this building to a couple of Kato structures (yes, they're allegedly 1:150 so they should be expected to be larger, but the floor heights of these Kato buildings are identical to my Atlas and Hilltowne Hotel buildings) and the 2293 seems like it has 5 foot floors relative to the two Kato structures!  The 4-story structure on the right has the equivalent of 6 of the Faller 2293!

Additionally, the ground floor of this building is pretty underwhelming.  I haven't exactly worked out what I'm going to do, but it feels like something needs to change there.

I've thought about several solutions for the height issue...the simplest and most direct method seems to be to replace the existing 'blue plastic' structures that separate the windows on each floor with something between and an eighth to a quarter inch larger.  This would make the distance between the floors (that is, the windows) roughly equivalent to the Kato and other structures.

This does mean that I'll be losing a lot of the supplied pieces (all the cast blue sections) and will have to replace this with new strip styrene....sounds like fun!

I also wanted this to be a bigger, and potentially wider building than the as-provided 7 story structure (surprised by that? :-) )  so I would need several kits.  So over the past year I've been fishing for Faller 2293's on eBay.  If I found one, I tried to grab it.  I'm a little afraid to add up the total cost, I think the average cost was usually between 15 and 20 Euro's or 20 and 25 USD.  This hobby can get a little out of control at times. Below is my stash, I think I ended up with 8 or 9 of these total:

I finally decided I had enough and wanted to get to work.  The process of separating the window sections from the 'blue' pieces on the already built buildings proved to be more aggravating than I expected....the plastic on these kits is pretty brittle and doesn't like any sort of tension!

But I discovered a 'weak spot' in the design on a lip on the back of the windows where the plastic is very thin and can easily be sliced with a hobby blade:

At this point I have a box full of disassembled window sections from the 5 or so 'already built' structures that I found on eBay and still need to 'cut up' the un-built kits.  I already have the styrene strips I want to use, a decent tool (finally) to make precise cuts, and I just need to make up my mind about what colors to use before I start attaching everything.

The main challenge now is to keep focused on taking this project to completion and avoid the distraction of my new Kato buildings that really want my attention, and my layout expansion plans which have been in the works forever (and have prevented me from talking about trains!).