Devastated industrial bldg

[Anonymous]

I am about to scratchbuild an industrial building that has been destroyed by fire and implosion. Have any ideas on how I can create broken, jagged brick walls that have tumbled down and left piles of masonry strewn on the site? I thought of buying hydrocal kits and breaking them up but that seems wastefully expensive.Casting my own walls is too time-consuming. Styrene walls are too thin to look good for HO scale. Hope you can help. Tks. LenGee

[thirdrail1]

First, there are kits available for buildings under demolition. I definitely think you should consider one of these as a starting point. Failing that, suggest you find some magazines on building military dioramas, as something like what you contemplate would be far more common on one of them than on a model railroad. You may find it's exponentially harder to build a destroyed structure than a complete undamaged one!

[BRAKIE]

Len:while greg made a excellant point,I must disagree.If you want a burned out building there is no harm in doing so.There are kits out there to do this.I have seen pictures of buildings on fire in Model RailRoader.This is your hobby,you model what pleases you.As what was stated in Model Railroader there is no right or wrong way to pursue this hobby everybody is free to pursue it in his/her own way. Happy Railroading

[Anonymous]

Hi Len,
Here's something that I did once on one of my orevious HO layouts -
I had made a stone bridge out of plaster tunnel portal castings. I had to trim the castings to fit, so I was left with all these scraps of cut-stone castings. I was about to throw them away, when an idea hit me. I lined up the "stone walls" roughly in the shape of a building's foundation. Then I went to my scrap box, & found lots of little pieces of scrap styrene - railings, pipes, courugated siding, pieces of brick wall, metal, etc. - I painted everything aither dirt, or rust color, piled it in, & around the foundation, added some dirt, rock, & weeds, & voila - the ruins of a demolished building!
This turned out to be a great addition to a front edge area of my layout. It didn't obstruct the view, or access, & added interest to what otherwise would have been a flat, uninteresting space.

[Anonymous]

Thanx for your reply. I will probably do something similar to what you said. I have taken several prototype photos in Newark, NJ of sites that would look well on my layout. It is an industrial switching layout based on the mfg.district of Newark which is known as "The Ironbound" my railroad is the IRONBOUND TERMINAL & TRANSFER RR. We deliver freight from Conrail and CSX/NS yards to local industries.Others who suggested that I buy "Burning Bldg." kits did not have the rightidea.Downtown Deco Model Co. has offered to sell me hydrocal castings of brick walls which I can break up. I'll probably do that.

[BRAKIE]

Len:Cool,sounds good to me!That name you have for your railroad sounds like a real railroad name.Good job!

[thirdrail1]

WAIT A MINUTE! There seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding here, or someone cannot read! I most certainly did NOT imply that there was anything wrong with modeling a devastated building and see absolutely NO WAY anyone could interpret what I wrote that way. As a matter of fact, I was offering suggestions as to where he could find the most information. And, it is far more difficult to realistically model a damaged anything that a whole one, as more than the outer surface only must be realistic, what is left of the interior detail must be exactly to scale as well. Please read more carefully before making accusations, Brakie.

[Anonymous]

Brakie: Tks for your comments. The IRONBOUND district got its name many years ago because it was once an area surrounded by many "fallen flag" rrs. including the Penn, NYC, Erie, Lackawanna, Central RR of NJ and Lehigh Valley.It was totally "iron bound". Now only Conrail/CSX/NS exist in the area. I started my HO RR many years ago on a 5'x9' ping pong table because we had no basement. Now we have a new houise with a huge bsmt. so I have started a 15'x9' layout with a separate 4'x8' staging yard.Nice talking to you.
Len Gee

[Anonymous]

Ive seen this done only once before but you could make the building out of wood and just take a lighter to it! It makes a realy convincing burnt out look because that is what it is!