I have found that most simple kits are just four walls and a roof. They can be assembled per the instructions, but I prefer to think of kits as only a starting point. That's why one of those simple kits takes me a month. I want interior detailing, including walls and floors, plus lighting. The exterior will likely be painted to fit in with its surroundings. I print my own decals, which makes it easy to customize the names of businesses and add period appropriate advertising.
It's this customization that brings a structure to life and draws the viewer into the scene. I look for kits with loading dock doors I can cut open and build a small scene inside, perhaps just with boxes or perhaps with figures and a hand cart.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
Fantastic pictures!
Making structures look realistic is a challenge. What I found is looking at pictures of real ones helps or models of built areas online. You can try to connect with the builder(s) should you find anything to replicate.
PennsyLou
Simon
Something to keep in mind is that, even in the worst point in the Great Depression, 75% of people were still working. In some cases, one spouse lost their job but the other kept theirs, so the family did still have some income.
Plus, it was a depression (i.e., not a recession) because it had double-digit unemployment and deflation - prices dropping.Not sure of the exact prices, but I suspect the average homeowner could buy enough paint to paint their entire house for a couple of dollars. People had pride in their homes, they wanted the lawn mowed and the fence painted etc.
For railroads, you'd put the old equipment on a sidetrack and use your newest engines and cars because they were still being paid for - the equipment had to earn revenue to pay off the trust / mortgage arrangement they were purchased with. Plus newer engines and newer, larger freight cars were more economical - ran better, larger capacity. Passengers preferred to ride in the newer passenger cars, not old falling-apart ones.
Depends on where you live. In the 1930's along the rail tracks the houses were grimy in areas, burning coal is dirty. Coal dust is dirty, pulled down enough ceilings back east to attest to that and burning oil is no better people tend to forget that as few now have lived though it. I used to walk the rails a lot and even in the diesel era things close to the tracks are really grimy.
FSM, South River, and FOScale (at least) are/were all New England based, and tend to reflect the architecture of the area - I've lived here for the last 30 years and can attest that there are a lot of quirky/cutsie and visually interesting structures (old mills, etc.) in these parts. Since many structures have been around a long time, they have been added onto and modified over the years.
I have built a number of FSM kits, and there is no reason one has to weather these to the extent that they look completely dilapidated. There is a range here - the South River structures I believe are all modeled on prototypical structures, while FOScale says explicitely that the models come from their imagination, and FSM maybe somewhere in the middle ...
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so you have to decide what looks right to you.
That "everything is run down and falling apart" look, made famous by George Sellios on His Franklin and South Manchester layout, and with his line of Fine Scale Minature craftsman kits is a "caricature" style that does not reflect real life, during the Great Depression , or at any other time in U.S. history.
There were brand new or well maintained buildings the day the market crashed, they did not become neglected or run down over night, or neceesarily ever, during that time period.
As suggested by Mike, realistic scenes are created by a balanced mix of apparent ages and conditions.
In Fact, WWII produced more "deferred maintenance" then the depression, and the 50's was a period of rapid repair, replacement, expansion and upgrading in the U.S.
Since the 20's had been a period of great prosperity and growth, lots of stuff was still realitively "brand new" in the 30's.
Sheldon
"One difference between pessimists and optimists is that while pessimists are more often right, optimists have far more fun."
Real world structures are all of differing ages and states of upkeep. For the utmost realism, your layout should reflect that. For your personal enjoyment, do what you like and/or have time for.
Mike
Hi - I've been busy scratchbuilding or kit-bashing structures for my freelance railroad (set in 1930's-ish Maine) for a few years now, and try to make them believable (even to the point of designing the whole interior for a hotel in Sketchup just to ensure that windows would be in sensible positions for the room layout! - well, that's just me!).
But my buildings do tend to end up looking like they have just been built, in contrast to the rather tatty, run-down and, dare I say it, rather caricatured look structures and "craftsman kits" that appear on many layouts.
I'm not saying I don't like those - they are clearly visually interesting and have a lot of photographic appeal, but I wonder how representative they really are of real-world structures.
I am UK based, so have no first-hand experience to guide me. I would welcome comments on this - any of you building similar era stuff, what approach do you take to authenticity?
Thanks, Bob