Luetke Office City Tower Build Step # 9

STEP 9

While I would like to continue to follow the sequence of the official Luetke Modellbahn instructions, at Step 9 they've jumped ahead to some relatively minor details surround installing the poles that go into the lounge/gallery area at the top, and I've still got to try and figure out how to get these two large sections together.

When I complete this series, I'll post the entire German and Google-translated English version, but for now, I'm free-lancing.

In Step 8, we finally got to add the exterior walls (and some other stuff) so that we now have something resembles a building finally! I love this part! Up until now, its hard to tell what it is!

The Rooftop Lounge:

One of the cool features of this structure is the rooftop lounge and that somewhat iconic roof.  Unfortunately, you also need to get the glass walls to curve into a small groove on the floor section to make it all work. 

For adhesive, I used something different this time.  Its a glue from Faller called "Super Expert" and its really quite nice.  Its a slightly thick liquid that seems to adhere plastic articles really fast.  A lot easier and cleaner than other plastic cements, and doesn't get stuck to everything or cause fogging the way CA does.  I also like the needle point applicator the container comes with to get the glue exactly into the small grooves (note: the small diameter of the applicator will clog with dried glue, but I just use some thin 30 gauge wire to clear it out and its good as new).  Photo from Faller website.


The below photo illustrates this quick step (note the pre-drilled holes in these pieces for the brass rods that carry the electricity up through the structure):

This section is then applied onto the top of the floor sections (either the 11 story extension, or onto the 15 story base building, your call.  I placed the shorter 11 story section on top).  I painted the floor to create some contrast between the roof exterior and the interior area.  You can also see the brass rods now partially hidden behind the interior wall sections that form the elevator shafts, etc...

Connecting:

Now it comes down to 'connecting' the 15 story and 11 story structures to form our 'skyscraper'.  There are some interesting pieces remaining in this kit that haven't been used, and some confusing Anglo-Deutsch-Google-eese that I can't understand related to this pieces, so I just sort of played around with different configurations that seemed similar to photos in the instructions and what seemed to work from a structural perspective.

This could be wrong, but it seemed to work for me.

Included with the 11 story extension is a solid, cylindrical piece referred to as the "Technikfassade" that goes somewhere between the two sections.  I think mine is upside down, but it actually fit a lot better this way for me.  There's also a white rung (called the "Technikring") that I glued into this as well.  This "Technikfassde" piece was then attached to the bottom section (which is the 15 story section in my build).

 

You'll notice the holes in the below photo with wire leads coming from one of the brass rods poking through from the bottom.  This is the place to connect / solder the brass rods from the upper section to the below section.  I found it helpful to mark the brass rods with a red sharpie to ensure I kept the polarity correct while I attached everything.

One more thing, if you look at the above photo, at about the 3 o'clock position, you'll notice a small gap in the exterior wall.  Yes, it turns out something didn't work out correctly and the walls on this structure were a bit short.  I glued a flat black strip of styrene into the gap so that the very noticeable building underneath didn't show through.

Okay, next is putting it together and lighting it up! We're almost done!

For reference...

Here is Step 0 (Preparations)

Here is Step 1

Here is Step 2 

Here is Step 3

Here is Steps 4 through 7

Here is Step 8