I’ve touched on this subject before… but… does anyone else model the demoltion of structures on or around the tracks of their MRR… I guess that this is sort of taking the abandoned tracks a bit further…
Any pics (model or real world) please?
TIA
[8D]
Dave, this probably isn’t the answer you want…but John Pryke’s book Building City Scenery for Your Model Railroad, has a chapter on modeling both demolitions and new construction.
Unfortunately, I have no pictures, but I’ve found convincingly modeling buildings being demolished is more difficult, then model complete ones.
Nick
Hi, Dave,
IMHO, the reason most modelers don’t model structures in the process of being demolished is that the particular ‘look’ only occupies a very brief slot of time. An active demolition site changes appearance from shabby but usable building to pile of debris to bare ground to new foundation… in a matter of days. If my favorite blonde gets involved, the transition from ‘gutted but still standing’ to a pancake of wreckage takes, literally, seconds - and not very many of them.
Even when implosion is not the method of choice, the equipment used by modern building disassemblers can make short work of almost anything, what with gadgets like the boom-mounted power shear that can bite through a steel roof truss like a crocodile chomping a loaf of French bread. Of course, if the building to be removed is a single-story duplex or similar, the weapon of choice is a front end loader and the transition from boarded-up house to bare ground takes less than a morning, with plenty of time for coffee breaks.
Speaking of Stacey; since the last time you brought this subject up she and her father came here to Sin City - and the old Flamingo hotel/casino went boom and imploded.
Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
IIRC the guy did the Utah Belt layout had a pretty cool pic of a building being torn down the last time MR featured his layout. (maybe within the last 1.5 years?)
Point taken about the time frame.
I’m not to bothered about it as we almost always combine a distortion of time - if that even begins to be the right word - in our layouts.
I don’t know about the US but here the ealry 80s saw so much change to /wrecking of our established industrial (economic) base that whole factory sites were queueing up waiting to be flattened.
Even then it was scarey… at the time I was teacher training around Nottingham and not just factories but whole industrial blocks could vanish between one trip to college and the next.
(Incidentally - the one thing I really recall from that year - if you visit the pub with “Robin Hood’s cave” out back… DO NOT put your glass down uncovered on the table in the cave. We never figured out what lived in the high roof but it was fun watching - from a distance…)
Meanwhile, back at the demolition…
I tend to try to model corners of buildings so that each building gets much less space on the layout - and you get more buildings/interest/different businesses - and there is less to do if one is being demolished… or I guess you could have one with the roof being ripped off and progress through stages to cleared rubble… maybe even new foundations being dig by a backhoe…
Just to elaborate on modelling building corners… If I have a long straight back wall I sometimes avoid swinging the track parralel and break things up visually by making the structures into a saw-tooth pattern rather than a line of flats. The “pitch” of the saw can be varied… even in the same long back wall.
Even when the track doesn’t actually go through into the building it can be a lot easier to line up a track (apparently) going into a building where it doesn’t have to make the complete curve to get at 90 degrees or parralel. I’ve not done it yet but I reckon that it should even be easier to squeeze one car at a time behind the scenery in this way.
Talk
I have a demonlition scene on my layout.
Well, in the early 1980s (starting late 1970s in some sectors, such as steel) the US underwent a severe industrial recession leading to many large industrial facilities being abandoned. This has actually continued over the succeeding decades in the US, and occurs to some extent today.
That aside, these sites were not necessarily demolished when abandoned, mostly because there was no need for reuse of the land (also, some sites had contaminated grounds - the infamous “Brownfields”, which would cost a lot to cleanup for reuse).
As time progressed, these former industrial facilities were then redeveloped as the time and market was right, often to commercial and residental usage. Of course, as each ‘boom’ progressed the ‘irrationality of the market’ was demostrated time and again, developers leaped into each ‘me-too’ boom, usually too late, and for example now we have a huge glut of unsold housing in most US markets (were everyone made money in residental housing over the past 6 years…oops, rather few netted profit, lots of others have funky mortgages which will bury them in foreclosure, and maybe bankrupt a few custom home building companies in the process…)
Oh, back to the OP - if you are not interested in the construction equipment part (many modelers are, and so use the demolition scene as a display for their model equipment), and don’t like the transient nature of building being demolished (a mentioned above), do this - model a half or partialy torn down building (although nothing percariously per
An abandoned demolition site? isn’t that extreme modelling? Or would that accolade go to the re-start with the plant and machinery moving back in?
Now there’s a thought… bits of walls, Scrap metal (girders) too heavy to filch, junk/latter, small(ish) trees, brambles and nettles, a fox earth, maybe a kids’ camp but also some nice low boys delivering backhoes while a dozer ploughs in a new access through the chainlink fence…
Horrible scene in some respects but you could squeeze an awful lot into a small space.
[8D]