I've finally completed my modifications to the TomyTec
Showa Office building. The modifications were fairly straight forward: Doubling the height, adding lights and interior details.
As you can see from the above photo, the building actually doesn't have windows (i.e. see-through, clear plastic!), so I had to mill out sections of the black painted plastic that passes for windows and hope to come up with a method to reasonably replace these sections with something that would be clear!
Ultimately I was able to fit some nice thin sheets of plastic into the areas where the solid plastic used to be, and used strips of very tiny styrene to make the window frames.
I added a small restaurant on the ground floor of the building. This is actually based on a prototype I ate at in Paris. Nothing spectacular, but the garish sign (difficult to make out in the photo unfortunately) looked right for the sort of 'greasy spoon' I was looking for!
The restaurant booths and tables are from
Luetke Modellbahn.
The slim, narrow shape of the building fits perfectly on the 'southern' end of Downtown. While I only knocked out the solid plastic to create a couple of floors with lit windows, I think its enough to be convincing!
All I can say is summer is coming to a close...and model train season is almost here again! Whoohoo!
Fits in great with the rest of the layout, and the modification looks very natural. Excellent idea for the windows too - I almost expected that you were going to mill out all of them at first, but this way you preserve the strength of the walls and give it a realistic nighttime look.
ReplyDeleteJerry, love these high-rise modifications of yours. Great inspiration. Want to several as background/low relief structures for my h0 layout. Will probably use card for mine... Cheers, Peter
ReplyDeleteThat's a great-looking building, and your modifications look perfect. Just enough lit windows to suggest a late evening with a few offices still open.
ReplyDeleteI really need to start kitbashing / scratchbuilding some structures for the urban part of my layout. And I'll definitely be looking at your site for inspiration when I do.
Hi Jerry,
ReplyDeleteGreat results. Lighting is just enough to look realistic...
What about a small red flashing spot on top of your buildings? ;)
As you said, autumn is coming. Plenty of time to work on layouts!
Patrick
Fantastic work, as usual.
ReplyDeleteI can't wait to get into lighting. Once I get an actual layout, that's going to be one of my main areas to focus on. Your work with lighting is inspirational!
hello Jerry ,
ReplyDeleteBeautifull work " comme d'habitude"...
The end of summer was here
on Paris this week-end and i had to spend my time on my layout :-)))
Pascal