High guy’s and thanks for looking in …
I would like to build a model of my basement before I start construction on my new layout. This is so I can look at fitment. I was thinking of using foam board and styrene. I have looked around and can’t seem to find any resources, does any one have a link or two they could send my way??? Thanks in advance…
Keith
Foam board and styrene are not really cheap materials to build a mock-up of your basement. Why waste money on it that could be better spend on your layout. You can also use thicker cardboard - easy to work with and readily available - usually for free.
Thanks For your repley Sir Madog.
I think I should have made myself a little clearer I’m looking for resorces into making the model it’s self not the material …Any old articles posted on here or in some Mag’s…
Hey,
This is not something that you need to over complicate. It is a very good idea to make a mockup of your room, its a bad idea to cause yourself a lot of unnecessary stress. Trust me on this…BTDT.
I recommend either a 1/12 th (1 inch to the foot) mock up if you measure in inches, or 1 cm to the foot if you are more comfortable in metrics.
buy a couple of sheets of foam core poster board, a set of colored pencils is nice but not necessary.
1 measure the length and with of your room, draw it on the foam core board, make sure it’s square, use a square or ruler, do neat work.
2 lay out 1 inch grid squares within the outline of your room
3 locate any fixed objects on your room on the drawing by measuring thier distance from the closest walls. This is a scale drawing, MEASUE THE DISTANCE FROM BOTH WALLS, and sketch in the furnace or support column, or water heater’s scale size.
4 mark of stair cases in the same way, but remember- to measure back from the front of an open stair case to a point under which you can comfortably stand. This will save you trouble later in benchwork planning.
5 To take your model 3D, measure and cut wall sections from the foam core or poster board or whatever, glue them in place. create and set in place all of the fixed objects
when you mock up your benchwork remember to account for reach- no more than 30 inches. or 2.5 inches at 1/12 scale
I think it was the Dream-Plan-Build series that had someone doing a mock up. Have also seen it in print somewhere. Did you do a magazine search up in the Resources section at the top of this page?
As I recall, you want to start with a piece of cardboard or foamboard (in a scale you are comfortable with) of your basement or layout area. They then put walls up, side walls as well as any interrior walls. If you have appliances, furnace or such, make a scale size one, put them in place. Don’t forget the stairs, doors, etc. If you have a water meter or other place that needs to be easily accessed, be sure to mark it clearly. You can now start to take pieces to simulate your benchwork area. (Make some 4x8 sheets and cut them up, then you will have a good idea as to how much material you are going to need.) Place the pieces around in your space until you have something that you think you will like. As I think of it, they did theirs in O scale so that they could use O scale figures to check their walkway spaces. Most scale rulers have both O and HO on the same ruler, so you shouldn’t have to buy a seperate one.
After you have a benchwork design you like, transfer it to standard graph paper and work on your track design from there, whether you do it all on paper or transfer it to a drawing program. If you use “squares” mentioned in Armstrong’s book, you should be able to see how your ideas will fit into your space.
Hope this helps.
Good luck,
The design pack that came with 102 Realistic Layouts included an article on building a model of the room and layout. There is also a section in Dave Frary’s How To Build Realistic Scenery regarding layout models.
Nick
IIRC, Dave Popp covered the subject for MR. He modeled his layout space in 1/24 scale so he could use available plastic figures to check the adequacy of ‘people’ space.
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
Within the last year RMC had an article about doing it. The author used strip wood and a scale that allowed existing strip wood sizes to match lumber sizes
If he’s more comfortable in metrics, doncha think he’d be using meters instead of feet???
[:-^]
John
An excellent idea, I have seen it done by more then one modeler and I wish I had done it as well nothing better then a 3D visual to see what will work and what won’t.
Foam core board can be easily had at any AC Moore or Micheal’s crafts as they sell it for mounting pictures etc. Every once in a while they have sales on the stuff for a dollar or two per sheet or you can log on to their website and sign up for discount coupons. If you go into either store or log on to their site they have a section with all the tools sued for cutting gluing etc. for foam core. by a company called Foam Werks.they also have a page on how to build an architectural model or house plan if you have any questions on how to do it. Foam Core is manufactured by Alcan Composites check their site out for a product called Gator Board. Similar to Foam Core but much much stronger it can and is readily used to build structures generally large ones for model railroading.
http://www.foamwerks.com/projects/housemodel.pdf
Thanks John, pass me the N scale dunce cap.
I’ll need your hat size…
Feel free to specify in either metric or imperial…
[(-D] [swg] [:D]
Thanks for the info guy’s…Volume 3 of dream plan build is what got this started…lol…I new I had read about doing this some where before …nbrodar hit the nail on the head for me. I pulled out my old cope of Realistic Scenery and Chapter 1 starts the book off with Designing scenery with plans and models.
Thanks to all that responded…
I’ll post some pic. when I get the model made…