My 2nd Skyscraper Scratchbuild - DONE!

I've been waiting to close the book on this building for a long time.  I started working on this building last summer.  Initial progress was good, but after I got the LED's wired up, something about the building didn't look right, so it sat in the form below for about 6 months.  Background on my basic approach for this building was covered in an earlier post here if you're interested.

I looked at real high-rise office buildings where I live for inspiration.  What finally occurred to me, and the piece of the puzzle that I could not figure out, was the 'top' of the building...what to do?  I finally decided that I needed a relatively large 'top' for this building, and that some sort of corporate logo would be necessary.  I fiddled around with trying to cut some letters into the sintra I used for the top, but it never looked right.  I ended up cutting a rectangular hole and filling it with a piece of clear acrylic with 3 laser-printed logo's on clear transparency paper.  Tah-dah!  The "Sony" building is born!

The ground floor has always been basically the same....a fast food 'taco' joint, a pharmacy, and the building lobby, but the actual entrance went through about 4 different changes....the first version had doors that were over-sized for N Scale (I measured...but not very carefully!), decals that didn't stick right or look good, etc...  Its still not perfect, but it is N Scale, so I'm about 160x away from worrying about that!

The final piece for the ground floor, and a somewhat common feature on office buildings around here, was the 'glass' covering over the front of the building for pedestrians, etc.... 

Overall, I'm satisfied...I think mostly because its finally done!  What's neat is that my 'tall' buildings are really starting to accumulate and I'm finally getting to the point where this is going to feel like a real city!

A New Station - Combining Kato with Vollmer

The main railway station on Quinntopia has, since any of the 'little plastic people' can remember, been the Kato Overhead Station.  Its an ideal station of course, as it takes up little room in the crowded downtown area of the city but yet still provides access to the two lines that serve the inner city.

However, the little plastic people of Quinntopia had some issues.  For one, they didn't like climbing all those steps to get to the station, and then have to go down a bunch of steps to get to the train.  Is it too much to ask for an escalator-or an elevator?  My response has always been that if its good enough for Kato (and, presumably, Japan), then it should be good enough for Quinntopia.

Another complaint the LPP ("Little Plastic People" from now on) have about the station was that they think that a modern, well-lit, central-city station should have something more of a grand entrance?  My response has always been that art deco rail palaces are so 20th Century. And what's wrong with that really long stairway anyway?

Ultimately, I had to agree that the LPP had a point (which is one of the reasons its so hard to glue them down, another topic....), and that I really needed to do something about the downtown station.  Then I came across this:

It's a Vollmer 7510.  A modern train station (which is an oxymoron in the United States) from Germany that is now out of production.   I really liked the glass walls, the modern architecture, and in my own imagination, I could visualize the incorporation of this building with its large, welcoming entry/lobby, second-story offices, with the Kato Overhead Station. 

So that's what I did.  I had to completely disassemble the 7510, and gave just about everything a new coat of paint.  This meant that the Kato station needed a similar paint job; so they both went under the brush (or spray can to be more accurate). 

From the street side, a new entrance with lots of light, and large lobby and (in my pretend world) and elevator to wisk the weary travelers to the overhead concourse:

Of course, with all this renovation, the 'old' overhead station needed some improvements.  The most visible is the stairway down to the platform got an upgrade with new glass walls providing a view of the trains as you descend to the platform anticipating your journey.

And of course, the 'main entrance' now attempts to be a bit more inviting to our LPP travelers' with a large glass facade:

 Hopefully, this will keep the LPP happy for a while.  However, I have a feeling that they have more demands that I must meet.

Aoshima Apartments: 20 Stories of Fine Living!

Allright...so the Aoshima Apartments are done!  Now all the office workers I've been creating workspace for have a place to rest their heads!

This was a tough build though...a lot harder than I thought.  It was actually complicated by the fact that Aoshima did a great job with this kit.  There are plastic 'insert's for each floor of the building, which makes it very convenient to add lighting and details.  This sort of convenience works well if you go with the standard 5 story building, but I ordered 2 of these kits (each box contains two buildings) resulting in a 20 story monster!

So the inserts, which are somewhat important for stability, I think, ended up getting in the way quite a bit.  I got a lot of use out of my Dremel cutting blade with this kit.

I basically followed the instructions, and attempted to think a few steps ahead of the instruction's sequence to accommodate the fact that I was adding 4 buildings together.  The stairway is first, and its something I felt needed a few lights.  Hey, if someone's going to climb 20 floors of stairs to get to their apartment, the least I can do is give the an occasional light!  These are simple SMD LED's that went into a few somewhat random areas of the stairwell.

Once I had my stairwells wired, with extra bracing on the backside to hold them together, it was clear I needed to modify the 'inserts' to allow enough room for the extra wires and bracing as they tend to sit fairly snug against the stairwell's and exterior walls.  This was a lot of messy work...but thank goodness for the Dremel cutting blade.  This is not a job you want to attempt with a hobby knife.  The below photo shows the tortured inserts (additionally modified for another hole for the SMD light strips I decided to use for interior lighting, which also required some cutting down of the interior 'walls' on the inserts to allow more light to pass through):

The next photo skips about 5 tedious hours of attempting (not altogether successfully) to get all the exterior wall seams to stay tightly glued together.  Where I ended up with gaps, I used a bit of caulk to fill in the gaps, and then covered the caulk with Model Master's Camouflage Grey, which was a decent match for the stock color of the building.

As I mentioned at the top, this was a very time-consuming and somewhat tedious build, but in the end I think its worth it.  There aren't many modern apartment buildings with this look available, so I'm glad I spent the time on it.  The real time suck on this building were the dozens of sprues that needed cutting, filing, and sanding to fit.  And there are LOT of pieces....100 balconies alone, and 160 of the smaller 'fence' gates over the windows.  A lot of work.  My only complaint with this kit is that the plastic seemed very 'brittle'.  A lot of the detail pieces, especially the small 'fence' pieces, cracked when being removed the spru.

The lighting turned out how I wanted it to, however, just enough light to give the indication that some folks are at home, and others are dark, just like reality.

I sprayed a random group of the window scenes with black, white, and grey paint, to give different levels of opacity (sprayed the inside of the windows, of course!).  This was really an attempt to avoid even thinking attempting to add interior detail to this monster!

I wish I could have added a lot more of the SMD LED's to the stairwell, but I got some of the effect I was looking for. A flashing red LED on the roof (hey, its 20 stories, you bet we want a flashing light on this building) rounds out the project!