Scratchbuilding American Structures / Discussion

[dave1905]

Regarding scratchbuilding or kitbuilding/kitbashing. The more modern the building is the easier it tends to be to scratchbuild since they are mostly flat surfaces with minimal detail. I have scratchbuilt numerous steel mill buildings from sheet styrene and covered the core with Evergreen corrugated material. I have also scratchbuilt wood frame structures by using scribed or milled siding or buy using thin card to make lap siding.

 

The structures that are tough to scratchbuild are brick and stone buildings. For those I much prefer to kitbash. Less work getting all the brick detail work in. Since I model the East coast of the US, brick and stone buildings are rampant. Right now I am strucggling to find a two story brick passenger station.

 

I am not as interested in the "craftsman" kits because most of them are large multi-story wood frame buildings which are more typical of the west coast and possibly the south than the eastern areas I model. They are also relatively expensive and I would rather cut up a $20 building to fit my space than a $200 building.

 

As a counter point, Downtown Deco kits have never done anything for me. They mostly look like a box with lots of signs on them. Of course I'm prejudiced since I like brick buildings and spend lots of time photographing them.They don't really look architecturally accurate or typical. For example the Mission building shown above is just a box. The walls are too thick (that thick of walls should be supporting a 4 or 5 story building at least) and have no details at the top. There is no foundation detail. There is no roof detail. I have no idea what the 3 big white things are or what the big white thing is over the door. It can't be a lintel because it isn't wider than the door. If it was really an "art deco" building it would have rectangular or geometric patterns in the brickwork. Compare RIX Smalltown USA kits with DPM kits. The DPM kits are generally buildings from WW1 or earlier and the Smalltown USA buildings are 1920's to 1930's era buildings. DPM buildings have patterns in layers of bricks and pronounced cornices. The windows and doors have stone lintels or brick arches above them. The Smalltown buildings have geometric brick detail in the facade, minimal cornices and bricks straight across the tops of windows and doors (indicating a steel beam buried in the brickwork as a lintel. Smalltown USA buildings are more Art Deco than Downtown Deco.

 

If you are building a town you could put DPM buildings in the center and then Smalltown USA buildings toward the edges to show the "downtown" was built in the late 1800's and it expanded through the 1920's.

[JWB]

The Magnuson Colfax Street Station (a somewhat crude 1970s urethane kit, long out of production) is one possibility; it can be found at resellers and on eBay:(There are a couple of areas where my layout dodges heating ducts.) It's a condensed version of the Jersey Central station in Bethlehem, PA. The Oregon Rail Supply plastic brick station has possibilities -- the prototype is at Disneyland of all places, but Tony Koester did a convincing job of turning it into a C&O style station with Federal detailing. (I wish he'd document more of those worthwhile projects and not spend all his time with chatter.)

[shortliner]

One that seems to be missing is http://cityclassics.fwc-host.com/ The owner, Jim Sacco, was a friend of Carl Arendt

[JWB]

The West Printing building is a City Classics iron front.(Per Dave's comment, pretty much all model buildings need extra roof detail, and you can see some added here.) It's worth pointing out that after about 1970, American buildings -- especially older ones that were restored -- became pretty colorful. The West Printing was inspired by a color scheme on a similar building in Watsonville, CA (but it came down in the 1987 earthquake). The one to the right is a Magnuson whose paint scheme was inspired by the Katy Building in Dallas, TX.

[dave1905]

I kitbashed City Classics wharehouse into a large steel mill building based on one at Lukens Steel in Coatesville, PA:

 

Here is the structure without the roof which is sheet styrene covered with Evergreen corrugated sheet:

 

Here is the interior showing the bracing and splices:

 

I also kitbashed a metal mill building using sheet styrene covered with Evergreen corrugated sheet. I used Walthers Electric Furnance interior roof trusses and wall columns with small bridge girders for an overhead crane.

 

Here is the inside of the building:

 

Lastly, here is a third mill building that is just sheet styrene covered with Evergreen and the interior:

 

[JWB]

I was organizing some old photos and found some ideas for what to do with DPM, Walthers Cornerstone, and Magnuson buildings:

And one of my pet peeves, there just aren't enough good churches like these:

On the other hand, you could kitbash something like this pretty easily from what's out there: