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Chapter 14 - 20/08/2007
So it is about time to start getting some buildings on the layout.
Along the back wall of the layout, I am intending on having a sprawling city that phases from urban to industrial over a twenty foot section. Whilst this may sound fairly large, it is in fact only six inches deep. So most of the larger buildings will be “flats” i.e. no more than an inch or so deep.
First building on the agenda was a fairly plain structure that would become “Summiton Distribution Co.
I got the idea for this building from the cover of Motive Power Magazine. It shows a simple warehouse with corrugated iron used along the upper half of the building. This I found to be a very simple and straight forward little project.
I used a single sheet of 0.030” styrene sheet for the walls. Cutting the styrene lengthways allowed me to create a wall around 600mm in length. Next I fitted the vertical I beams. These were some Plastruct beams that I had sitting around the modeling room.
The doorway was made by simply cutting a small hole in the wall around seven foot high and eight foot wide into the wall. I made the doors by using a scrap piece of styrene and scribing a line down the centre of the sheet to represent two doors.
I made the top section of the building out of 0.010” styrene sheet and laminated it with corrugated iron siding from AR Kits. I use the stuff from AR as I find it is cheaper and easier to get in quantity.

The next step was to paint the building in some traditionally disgusting colours.
I used a dark grey for the straight panels and vertical I beams (actually the same grey as on the roof of Corporate locos). And I had a rather ordinary looking green that I picked up during one of my colourblind paint shopping expeditions.
The next step was to make a small frame for the balcony beneath the door. I used some scrap 0.080” x 0.030” styrene strip to make this up and placed some of our fine stainless steel mesh over it to represent the deck. A couple of Plastruct stair sections and handrails and it was just about finished.
The last step was to letter the building. This was done very quickly using DecaDry letter sets. I sprayed the entire building with Dullcoat after this to seal in the lettering as I have had them peel in the past.
The fence around this building was made straight from a Sentinal kit. These are a pain in the neck to install but are well worth the effort when finished.

So after adding a few more details and bits of junk, we had a completed building on the layout.

So that’s one down and only another 100 or so to go…

We shall see how we go.


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