I was rummaging around the work shop last night and came across a forgotten tote and when I opened it was Christmas a few months early.60 odd DPM and other brand structures mostly unbuilt kits and some completed structures and some in dire need of repair. A few years back I purchased an entire HO layout from a guy locally. That consisted of 7 large tote fill with everything form rolling stock, locomotives (4 unopened Athearn Genesis F units) structures etc. you name it.all for $250 The guy told me and my friend he was switching from HO to N but we both concluded his "new wife" as he called her was not supportive of his hobby when she asked are you guys here to buy this train _____ my husband is selling
Well after separating the unbuilt kits form the built and the badly in need of urban renewal structures I recall many of you mentioning that you have individual floors and walls in your structures giving them a more realistic look and better separation of light sources. Anyone care to share your how to knowledge.
Thanks
At a minimum, you'll need viewblocks (since you mentioned DPM, I'm assuming none of the building kits are moderne/brutalist/neo-classic styles with see-thru atria).
Anyway, for non-detailed interior viewblocks I prefer .040 styrene painted flat black (any sheet type or cardstock would work as well, as long as it won't warp over the long term), glue some .030 or so strip to the walls of the building horizontally oriented to support 2nd/3rd story floors, and channels along the walls vertically so you can slip & support the walls - the basic idea is you cannot see straight thru the building, however maybe at the corners you can see thru the windows at an angle (since this would be 1 room, that's reasonable). And add shades, curtains, blinds etc (all paper or cardstock, although there might be metal ones available nowadays I don't use them) to help obscure the view thru those windows...
Over the past few years on the boards (and in magazines) I have seen various implementations of a small "showcase" box positioned behind open garage doors and other wide openings - basically you build a small shelf w/ 3 sides and a floor, maybe add a photo or backdrop on the far wall, add details such as storage racks, shelves, cartons etc, and position it inside of the open door. I have not done this yet, but it is a good idea.
I'll leave the detailed interior advice to others on this board, many of who do better work detailing than I do...
If it is a foreground structure that has some nice open windows to look for, you can really go to town with details and lighting.
For this structure I created an insert out of sheet styrene and then decorated the walls with printed wall papers and paneling. The paintings on the walls are just printed and reduced images from pictures around the house including some of the wife's needle work..
For more distant structures you can just get away with strategically glued and placed images from magazines or the web.
There are several more photos of the above structure in the this album http://www.picturetrail.com/sfx/album/view/16755888
Simon Modelling CB&Q and Wabash See my slowly evolving layout on my picturetrail site http://www.picturetrail.com/simontrains and our videos at http://www.youtube.com/user/MrCrispybake?feature=mhum
Simon.
Tthat is one incredible piece of modeling I bow to the master...... Your attention to detail is incredible WAY! beyond the scope of my ability I feel but I'll give it a try the only way I'll ever learn how to I guess. I was just looking to separation between stories and store fronts but your work is inspiring.
Thanks for posting
I built this interior from foamboard. I downloaded images (largely from http://www.cgtextures.com/) and printed them on my computer.
Big windows are important. This is the Walthers YMCA building, which I'm using as a railroad station:
Again, downloaded images. I just printed these on cardstock and glued them to the floors and walls. I arranged some images to make "fold-up" grocery store shelves.
Figures do a lot for these little scenes. Try to arrange your interior lighting so it's overhead. If not that, then put in a block so the bulbs can't be seen through the windows.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
Here are some details that you can print.
Allegheny2-6-6-6WAY! beyond the scope of my ability I feel but I'll give it a try the only way I'll ever learn how to
Thanks very much, but you are too kind. For doors and panelling use the images that Tomkat posted or simply go to homedepot.com or lowes.com and cut and paste images from the web site. You can re size and print in basic programs like MS Paint. Then stick the images to the walls. Same for the pictures and other things on the walls. Carpet and wooden floors were created in the same way. Checked floors are easy to create, just use the "table" function in MS Word and color the boxes. This can then be cut and pasted into MS paint for re-sizing and duplicating to create larger areas. Then just print out and glue into place.
The furniture all came from a cheap IHC furniture store kit. The hardest part of this project was placing a micro LED into the desk lamp. A bit insane really, but I think it produced a really nice effect.
Really, there is not much in the way of real modelling skill here, it is just a case of being creative with the computer and using existing graphics.
Modeling HO Freelance Logging Railroad.
Tomkat
thanks for the files I'm sure they will come in handy, Simon your too modest, just by your tutorial and seeing the end result I would say its some of the nicest modeling I've seen. I have pretty much resolved myself as a two kit builder.I typically will use the first kit to make my mistakes on and then the final build comes to pretty nice. I catch some flack from the guys at the club for knocking my own work because I call them inferiors instead of interiors. I did a bunch of O scale structures and with interiors and details but heck thats pretty close to real size so I didn't think it was all that hard. When your borne with ten thumbs like me you appreciate other peoples work.
Well I make no pretense about being a skilled modeler, but if your building won't be lit or lacks large windows then you really don't need much interior detail. Just showing something that hints that there's more there than a hollow building shell will do. I use window coverings made from a mishmash of stuff ranging from masking tape to business cards to curtain pictures found on the World Wide Interweb. Those in combination with viewblocks should address 90% of interior "detailing."
Here I've added a liitle interest by adding a figure looking through the window. It's simply a figure glued to a folded piece of cardstock which is in turn glued to the wall. (I used some creative license in placing him higher than he would normally be. As it is, the floor would be about even with the window sill. But he's more visible this way). The first floor interiors are pictures of business interiors, printed longer than the window width and installed with a curvature to give the illusion of greater depth. They look decent (when viewed straight on) and make an ok stopgap interior, though I like them less and less as I get better on other buildings.
For larger windowed areas, I could (and probably should) be much more sophisticated than I am currently. Thise isn't a great picture, but the first floor interiors are just folded cardstock and pictures printed on paper and glued in.
So the moral of my story is that a lot of interior detail is great, but even a little is still really good.
"I am lapidary but not eristic when I use big words." - William F. Buckley
I haven't been sleeping. I'm afraid I'll dream I'm in a coma and then wake up unconscious. -Stephen Wright
mononguy63...but if your building won't be lit or lacks large windows then you really don't need much interior detail.
That's a good point. I actually seek out structure kits with big windows, just so I can detail the interiors. I have a couple of buildings I did fairly elaborate interiors for, only to discover that, even though they were "foreground" buildings at the very front of the layout, the tiny windows made the insides almost impossible to see.
Another trick that someone showed me was using "canopy cement" as window glazing. This is a form of plastic cement, used for attaching cockpit canopies to model aircraft. It dries hard and clear, and won't "craze" the clear windows. It's also quite thick, so you can use it directly as "window glass" by just filling the gaps in small window frames. I've done this with HO-scale 6-over-6 double-hung windows, and slightly larger multi-pane factory windows. What I like about the finished product is that the windows are clear, and you can see light through them, but they are warped in shape so nothing behind them is in focus. That way, I can put windows in a building, light it up and nobody can see that there's nothing inside but a bare bulb.
I can see your point perfectly and completely agree. One of the club guys built a super detailed small roundhouse for the club layout, right down to the tools on the floor and grease stains and ol cans etc. only problem was that where it was located no one could see the details and even if it were close to the fascia without the roof of you couldn't appreciate the details.I guess that level of detail is better suited for contest models.
Thanks for the pics
Structure interiors are especially fun for me. I have built a few for contests, like the N scale model of Lionel O tinplate trains in a barn based on one outside Fort Worth where Lat Lattimore had an HO layout 35 years ago.
I show off the Nit-Picker’s Union Hall (affiliated with United Farm Workers), with everything a nit picked could ask for in a basic building.
The lighting conduits,switches, meter box, fuse box, etc are non-working, and I have this structure as something to carry around, removed the roof and show off.
But I do these mostly for me, cause it’s fun. If it’s hardly visible, that allows the viewer to imagine there is more there than there really is. The structures on the layout DON’T have removal roofs.
Mostly junk and leftovers for the shop interior of an implement dealer. I cut open the bay door on a DPM kit. And I finally had a use for ONE (count them, 1) of my leftover Rapido N scale couplers, bashed into a drill press.
Yeah, it’s hard to see. Mostly a vignette.
Only at night can you see any of the interior of Sue’s Seashells, on Seawall Boulevard where the Santa Fe enters the island seaport of Karankawa. Tables with shells, racks of T-shirts, posters on the walls...
I went to the beach where I proposed to my wife, and used nearly-microscopic “baby” shells to represent big N-scale shells, with some on the outside of the building, like the real place that was the ins-proto-piration.
Most the tables in the pier nightclub dining room were pedestal tables made with a bead as the pedestal, a square of styrene for the top, and a postage-stamp sized printed-out of bow-cooz of blue table mats with a round white circle to simulate plates, with different food...some clean empty plates, some plates with dinners, and some plates dirty after meal mostly completed.
Woodland Scenics couples meeting at the commuter station provided couples arm-in-arm as dancing couples.
For the nightclub’s commercial kitchen, I checked out library textbooks on commercial kitchen design, and visited a restaurant supply company.
I used HO-scale truck-trailer refrigeration unit parts for some of the kitchen equipment on my pier nightclub, others are junk-bashed.
I built the pier nightclub kitchen as a separate unit to drop in place. Bigger than justifiable prototype windows to allow a slight view in. I don’t plan to remove the roof regularly so this is not the regular view.
The rubber plug from the inside of a used insulin syringe is the coffee pot. I had a “casting call” (like a movie studio does) to find figures that could be bashed into chefs, with a millimeter and a half of fiber optic rod glued on top of the head, topped with a dollop of thick artist’s acrylic to make chef’s puffy-topped hats.
I still have a long way to go to make the mirror-ball disco lighting for this nightclub.
It's all pretty junky, "impressionistic" and fun.
tomkat-13Here are some details that you can print.
A question i had was when reducing either print or images such as these is there a formula or a short cut perhaps or is it more of a poke and hop until you get it right deal
Allegheny2-6-6-6 tomkat-13 Here are some details that you can print. A question i had was when reducing either print or images such as these is there a formula or a short cut perhaps or is it more of a poke and hop until you get it right deal
tomkat-13 Here are some details that you can print.
I use MS Publisher that has a size scale on the left side & top of window. I copy & paste then resize (in HO: 1 in = 7.25 ft or 87inches. 1/2 in = 3.625 ft or 43.5 in. 1/4 in = 1.81 ft or 21.75 in ect.) I look all over the WWW for signs, details, background building ect copy them then size them to the scale I want to use.
You can do anything you like. For me, just adding floors to multi story buildings so the view in the windows shows floor where it oughta be, rather than an open pit down to the basement, makes a big improvement for very little work.
David Starr www.newsnorthwoods.blogspot.com