buildings

[Nick Pasich]

I would like to build alot of my structures based on scale drawings. I am building a switching lay out with industries in the modern era. Im curious if any one knows of any place where I might find pictures or even better yet, drawings where I could convert the measurements to N-Scale dimentions so that I could build them from styrene or wood or other materials. I have several years of architectural drafting and I feel that I could use that to my benifit to turn drawings into real buildings

[Tom Bryant_MR]

Old copies of MR magazine have scale drawings of many buildings. You can purchase back copies from Kalmback at about $5 per copy I think. I got 8 years worth of these MR mags at a train show for ~ $8. The early 80's, and I am sure before, have these scale drawings. Kalmback's link is http://www.trains.com/Content/Dynamic/Articles/000/000/003/249vqvml.asp

Good luck.

[orsonroy]

Over the past couple of years, I've found that I really enjoy scratchbuilding structures, and have stopped buying structure kits altogether (well, except for Branchline's great line of houses, but my wife usually buys those for me!). I recently gave a local clinic on scratchbuilding depots, and found that older (pre-1990) issues of the NMRA Bulletin were a treasure trove of building plans. One year of 1974 Bulletins held more plans than all of the 1970-1979 issues of MR! If you know of any old NMRA members in your area, ask to do a quick dig through their Bulletin backissues; you'll quickly amass a huge file.

But if you're a draftsman, why bother with plans at all? Just take some photos of interesting buildings, preferably with something to scale them with, and start making your own plans. They only have to be basically detailed, so you should be able to whip up a complete building plan in an hour or two.

[jrbarney]

Nick,
Welcome to the MR Forums !
If you're going to take photos as Ray suggested, do yourself a favor and make a folding stadia rod. Basically it's a length of lumber painted with alternating
bands of black and white paint in increments of whatever measuring system with which you are most comfortable. Lean it against the building or have a companion of known height hold it. At the risk of stating the obvious, don't forget a tape measure and pad of graph paper.
Bob
NMRA Life 0543

[orsonroy]

QUOTE: Originally posted by jrbarney
If you're going to take photos as Ray suggested, do yourself a favor and make a folding stadia rod.

So THAT'S what those things are called! I made an eight footer for my field trips, but just called it my "measuring stick".

[Nick Pasich]

Thanks for the welcome. Actually Ive been reading these forums for a quite a while. Just havent had too much to say!! Also, I had thought about taking picutres. I do have a fairly large collection of MR that I continually go back to for tons of good information. I tend to have a lot of spare time while at work and drafting these buildings up before I contruct them probably is a good idea. I was just curious if anyone knew of some sites on the WWW that wold offer up some drawings or nice photos. One of these days Ill get good at modeling this stuff and throw some pics up!