Creating a skyscraper from scratch (Part 2)

In my last post, I talked about getting the basic materials to create my "Godzilla Corporation" global headquarters skyscraper. In this post, I'm going to add the sidewalls, work on the back wall, create floors and do something to decorate the interior....

The Sidewalls:

The photo at right shows the 15.5 inch long strip of "sintra" material that I will use for the side walls. This skyscraper will only have windows in the front and back, so 'blank' concrete walls work just fine for the sides. Sintra is a material I have used a lot of in my layout, and its a good material for buildings as well, although its too thick to work for walls on smaller buildings, as part of a large skyscraper structure (representing thick reinforced concrete walls), it works fine.

I made the sintra side walls about 1.5 in longer than the smoked acrylic to allow for the ground floor entrance, shops etc... I will use some traditional 'clear' acrylic for the ground floor, which I will cover in a later post.
After attaching the two sides, I then started work on the back of the skyscraper. Since this building will sit in a block with other, shorter, buildings, I painted the first 8 inches or so and left the top half clear. I then applied the 'scoring' to the exterior with the same measurements used for the front (16mm between 4mm floors).As you can see from the above photo...the building can stand (I'm like a proud father all over again! Let's just hope this 'baby' doesn't learn how to walk! Arg....bad joke. Sorry!)! However, one thing you'll notice is that its easy to see right through the smoked acrylic 'windows' through to the wood of the plywood behind it. Even with the 'back' wall attached, the building will look more like a semi-transparent block than a skyscraper if I don't do something to change this.

The Office Floors:

The solution to ensure it doesn't end up looking like a big chunk of empty plastic was to use traditional foam core. I cut 18 pieces of foam core to fit inside the skyscraper (also cutting out a rectangular area on the backside which will be an access area for where my wiring for the interior lighting will run).I then spray painted just the tops of the foam core with an appropriately neutral looking color, and added in scraps of foam core, office furniture, and other little details to give some dimension to the floors. I only added real detail to about 3 floors, as I expect that these 3 floors will be well-lit with LED's with the others being relatively 'dark'.
Its important that only the top of the foam core recieves the spray painting, as the black edges will go against the inside walls opposite of where the 4mm scoring is on the outside, and since the sides of the floor foam core pieces will show through, its important that they not attract attention. Hopefully, this way, it looks like there's a real floor there (the thickness of this acrylic, which you can see in an above photo quite clearly, does concern me a bit. It'll be interesting to see what the final product turns out to look like!)!

Interior Walls:

The other detail to address is the interior sides of the building. Having 'black' for interior walls (the unpainted color of the sintra I used) just wouldn't look right (unless this was an office building for vampires, but...no, no, let's not go there...). So I decided to create some 'fake' details on my computer. I used a basic drawing program to create 16mmx 32mm rectangles and filled them in with muted office colors, small images of office-like posters, and other stuff. I then separated this rectangle with another 4mm black rectangle (this is where the foam core will cover it up). After doing a lot of copy and paste to reproduce 19 floors of office walls on both sides of the building, I printed out on my color inkjet, cut to the right shape, sprayed the backs with adhesive spray, and applied to the inside walls! Viola! Instant detail!
That's it for this update! If you have a questions or comments (thanks Don!) please leave a comment! Next time...its lighting and ground floor detail! Whoohoo!

CLICK HERE for Part 3!
CLICK HERE for Part 1!

Creating a skyscraper from scratch (Part 1)

Or....How the "Godzilla Corporation" built their major downtown office complex!

I've been thinking a lot lately about attempting to build my own skyscraper. Given the relatively sparse offerings (although, not as bad as one would think) for modern N scale skyscrapers, I wondered if it was possible to build my own. I spent a lot of time researching and thinking about various materials, and I think I've found a relatively simple method to create a very cost effective, and hopefully very cool looking, modern skyscraper.

Actually, I have two different skyscraper scratch-building projects going on right now, but I am just talking now about the building that (I think) will become the "Godzilla Corporation" worldwide headquarters.

Materials - Use what you find:

Windows are the hard part. Obviously, I don't have the ability to cast scale window frames, etc... so the key is how to most effectively simulate it? As I started studying 'real' modern skyscrapers, what I notice is that the lack of detail - really just lines where the exterior glass plates come together - should make this kind of project much simpler. Additionally , most modern buildings seem to always use some sort of tinted glass. This can be achieved with automotive tinting film, or (and what I will use in this project) 'smoked' plastic/acrylic sheets.

In fact, I got lucky (which is one nice thing about not having too much of a pre-determined plan!). On a recent visit to the TAP Plastics shop near me (which is a shop which specializes in plastics, typically for signs and so forth) I was looking through their scrap bin and came across 2 pieces of 14 x 3.5 inch 'smoked' acrylic.

I also picked up some of their other 'scraps' which will be good material for testing and for the other skyscraper project I mentioned earlier. The best part? Cheap! $2.50 a pound was the rate, and I think I had a pound of scrap total!

Making Windows Out of Nothing at all:

There were 3 methods I was considering for transforming this boring plastic/acrylic material into something that looked like a skyscraper: Using strips of styrene (or plastic) glued on; Masking and painting, and finally, 'scoring' the plastic with a knife. I did some early tests with scoring and liked what I found! I scored lines across the surface at 16mm intervals, then added another score 4mm after that, and so on.What's cool is that just one score with the xacto knife was all it took to give a pretty good representation of the seams of a modern skyscraper. I fiddled around with rubbing some silver and white paint into the score marks, but found it was unnecessary (at least on this dark, 'smoked' acrylic).

Of course windows, even on modern skyscrapers, are not made of a single plane for each floor, so I needed something to run vertically. I could have added more scoring, but I wanted to try something different. I tested the look of adding some vertical 3mm styrene strips and I was very happy with the look!
Clearly, its a very '1970's' looking skyscraper, but I'll take it! I used some styrene 90 degree corners for the edges which fortunately look good with the vertical strips. I glued the corner styrene pieces (using a hot glue gun) with enough of a gap to fit my side sections (the flat piece to the right in the above photo) but that is for my next post!
On my next post, I'll talk about adding the side walls, ground floor details, office floors and other stuff! Please leave a comment if you find this interesting! Thanks for reading!

CLICK HERE for Part 2!
CLICK HERE for Part 3!

Plastic Surgery on a German Toy Store! ("Spielwaren")

A couple of posts back I mentioned the 'remodel' I was going to attempt on another of the old, built kits I had recently picked up. This building, with the prominent "Spielwaren" raised letter sign ("toys" in German I believe) has since 'gone under the knife' to come out as a slightly different type of toy store!

So here's the original building "before":
And here's the 'modified' version "after":
The difference? Repainted, added LED's, new (flat) roof, and laser-printed color decals.
Yes, eventually I will talk about trains again, instead of just buildings! :-) But as I am doing some additions and changes to the layout (all of which involve adding a new yard and expanding the downtown area) all of the trains are boxed up safely out of harm's way!