Auhagen Building Kitbash & Installation; Part 2

Well, I don't have much in the way of step by step photos to accompany this post, but as you can tell from the photos the Auhagen kit bash (started in this post) is not only completed, but installed!

I needed a corner building for the backdrops, so the overly 'thin' Auhagen kit was a good candidate for some rather generic-looking city apartments over shops/retail.  I dispensed with the original ground floor provided with the kit for my own more appropriate city-style ground floor.

Its hard to tell but I attempted to create the appearance of illuminated letters over the cafe by having the 'CAFE' sign be backlit by LED's from the cafe interior.  Its not terribly succesful, except that if I had done nothing the letters and Amstel logos would be dark!

The technique is to use laser-printable transparency sheets made for overhead projectors (Note: some of you younger folks might want to look up what an 'overhead projector' is as they seem to have been replaced by much fancier computer / LED projectors! :-) ).  Anyway, the trick is to layer several strips of the design (designed in a drawing program on my computer) with the letter areas left 'white': which will show up clear when you print and allow light through.  A final layer with colored letters (and the Amstel logos) goes over the top.  Its a fair amount of work, printing, and trial and error for a result that is only just okay.  I need to work out the kinks on this approach.

The interiors were created with scraps of paper that were originally created for the interior walls of other buildings, but could be used on the ground floors for the 'retail' sections of this building without a problem.  The shop/cafe windows are clear acrylic with more transparency sheet print-outs - this time with window pains and door details.  The rest of the ground floor is just scratch-built with styrene.

In total, this project used the following LED's:

• One SMD LED on the rooftop to illuminate the advertising sign on the roof.
• One 6 SMD LED section of LED strip on the ceiling interior to illuminate the apartments.
• 3 'clear white' 3mm LED's for the Cafe sign back-lighting and the cafe interior.
• 2 ' sunny white' 3mm LED"s for the Auhagen shop next to the Cafe.

I think this building works really well in the backdrop; it helps to break up the overly uniform appearance of my two earlier facade scratchbuilds in this area, and its height helps to transition from the shorter buildings near the station to these taller buildings behind the terminal tracks.

How about those cool (and cheap!) LED lit cars from China?  More on that in the future!