what are ur builgings made of? i wish i had room, i would so buy it from u when ur done!. i need help. im making a 7 1/2 foot by 14 inch shelf layout, its all the room i have and i wanna make it something like urs. i have 7 boxcars that need to be spotted at warehouses, im doing modern era and i just need help. any ideas?
This one, Ness Street. designed and built several years ago in HO (following an N gauge trackplan by Mike Fischer) will fit your space without trouble, It has 6 industries and an interchange track (Lower Right) where your cars start at the begining of your shift, and finish at the end of it. The various boxes were used as building mockups. Everything is self contained with no extra fiddle yard needed
Although I always dream of some layouts the size of the monsters in MR or MRC, I've found my small around the wall layout has given me the time to really super detail almost every aspect of the layout. With a big layout, you get a lot more operations but also a lot more plywood (or foam) you're going to be looking at for a few years before even the basic scenery is done. Nothing wrong with either approach but I like detials and making mini-scenes all over the layout and you just can't accomplish that on large layout except over a period of many years.
they do look good indeed. i wouldn't say "little work", i imagine it still took you number of hours to do theseThey're certainly not permanent structures by any stretch, but I think they look pretty darn good for the little bit of work it took.
Well, my son's football season is over, so I've got some time to start working on the railroad again.
I decided the next step was to start building up some more elaborate mockup buildings to get a better sense of the dimensions, style, overall look, etc.
To make the mockups, I started browsing around my faviorite (FREE) texture website, http://www.cgtextures.com/ and downloaded a bunch of images of rollup doors, concrete, plaster walls, etc. I also did some sightseeing in Miami via Google Street View and grabbed a few screen shots of signs, container stacks, etc. I took some measurements to determine the building footprints and dimensions and started putting it all together in Microsoft Visio with the drawing scale set to 1ft = 87ft. A little cropping and resizing, and it comes together pretty easily. Printed the results out on a color printer on plain old cheap paper, used spray adhesive to stick it to 3/16" foam board, cut out all the pieces with a razor blade, and assembled everything using Elmers white glue.
They're certainly not permanent structures by any stretch, but I think they look pretty darn good for the little bit of work it took. I've got one full building and two 2" building flats done - took maybe 4 evenings or so. I also put together a simple flat of some pictures of container stacks taken directly off of Google Street View. Not sure what I want to do with the skinny spot under the thermostat, but this will do for now.
The next project will be the buildings to hide the holes in the backdrop in the corner where the track ducks into the 'staging' area. I'll then just keep working my way around the room.
Super job on the mockups. That is an interesting website for textures. Where did you find your Antillean container print work? They look good. Lance Mindheim sent me some external printing of the Antillean Logo that can be printed off and placed on wood block material.
Larry