Got yet another one for my Forum friends. Does anyone know if anyone out there has ever come up with a kit or pieces to make an interior for a HO bank? Specifically I have a Walthers Bailey Savings & Loan building. (Looks like a building that used to be a bank in town. Now commercial space.) I would like to put an interior in it if possible. Thank you for anu assistance that can be provided.
Just some ideas:
Big-Bucks-Bank-insidejob by Edmund, on Flickr
I made some suspended lamp globes that aligned with the same centers as the windows:
Big-Bucks-Bank-LEDs by Edmund, on Flickr
And a variety of stone tinting techniques for the façade:
Big-Bucks-Bank-facade by Edmund, on Flickr
Street-Scene-wide by Edmund, on Flickr
Bank_Clock by Edmund, on Flickr
Good Luck, Ed
I will have to think about those interior ideas. I already have the exterior painted the way I want it. I’ve reached out to some local resources to see if there are any photos from the prototype building I can work from.
Wasn’t that the bank that Jimmy Stewart ran in the Christmas movie It’s a Wonderful Life.
Here is a modern shot of the building. https://www.google.com/maps/@46.4060045,-105.8507357,3a,75y,345.85h,103.92t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1spRWmfEHig3o9dev0ZiWPVg!2e0
You can swing around a little to get the full side and work around to see the front.
There can be no doubt that a finished interior to a structure can be a work of art in and of itself, and Ed’s work in that regard is among the best. But, I can’t help but feel that all the work that goes into finished interiors is lost on a model railroad layout. For the most part, you cannot see it, especially considering that you are mostly viewing your layout from a point above grade level and at some scale difference from the structures themselves. Just my [2c]
Rich
Totally agree Rich. And during day light hours, you can’t see into a building anyway.
Mike.
That depends a great deal on the structure. A printed interior will often suffice but if there is a lot of glass, especially on the ground floor, it is quite easy to see into the interior even during daylight and a lack of any interior will be make a structure look like an empty shell. The corner building of Walthers Merchant’s Row V is such a structure.
Walthers - Merchant’s Row V - Kit - 10-1/2 x 6-7/8 x 5-5/16" 26.6 x 17.4 x 13.4cm - 933-4041
I have it near an aisle. It needs an interior. A printed one just won’t do. I’m using it as a bank and Ed’s interior has given me some good ideas.
Those Merchant’s Row structures have paper window dressings, and they look somewhat fake. When I use Google Maps to travel down streets past store windows, including corner buildings with large windows, you cannot really see inside those windows except what might be right in front of windows. But, detailed interiors are
While it’s true that seeing interiors may be nearly impossible, that isn’t why I try to do some interior scenes.
I enjoy the work. I enjoy trying to make the interior as perfect as possible. I can see it.
It doesn’t matter to me who else sees it or doesn’t see it, I do it for myself.
That’s the “hobby within a hobby” that I mentioned earlier.
Rich
[quote user=“richhotrain”]
John-NYBW
mbinsewi
richhotrain
There can be no doubt that a finished interior to a structure can be a work of art in and of itself, and Ed’s work in that regard is among the best. But, I can’t help but feel that all the work that goes into finished interiors is lost on a model railroad layout. For the most part, you cannot see it, especially considering that you are mostly viewing your layout from a point above grade level and at some scale difference from the structures themselves. Just myTotally agree Rich. And during day light hours, you can’t see into a building anyway.
Mike.
That depends a great deal on the structure. A printed interior will often suffice but if there is a lot of glass, especially on the ground floor, it is quite easy to see into the interior even during daylight and a lack of any interior will be make a structure look like an empty shell. The corner building of Walthers Merchant’s Row V is such a structure.
Walthers - Merchant’s Row V - Kit - 10-1/2 x 6-7/8 x 5-5/16" 26.6 x 17.4 x 13.4cm - 933-4041
I have it near an aisle. It needs an interior. A printed one just won’t do. I’m using it as a bank and Ed’s interior has given me some good ideas.
Those Merchant’s Row structures have paper window dressings, and they look somewh
John, I totally agree with you. I have a long strip of DPM buildings on my layout that are totally bare inside. They look ridiculous as if the whole strip is abandoned although, that said, a lot of strip malls around our suburbs look like that because the stores are abandoned. So, I need to add window dressings.
My point, and the subject of this thread, is detailed interiors like tables and chairs, shelves of merchandise, etc. and whether or not that detail can be seen. My feeling is that it is lost on the viewer which is a shame because some modelers put so much time and effort into such a project.
Rich
I went a little nuts building an interior for my Santa Fe Santa Ana depot but the multipane windows are difficult to see through. On the layout, the only way to see the interior is to remove the roofs. On the other hand, I have several structures with large storefront windows that required interiors of some kind.
I decorated one building as a clothing store with mannequins in the windows and a photo interior.
A building in the same scene but against the backdrop used photo interiors.
The Mission Music store is close to the aisle and so required a full interior. I found the “wallpaper” on line and printed it at a scale so the figure would be life sized. The rest was just gluing the “wallpaper” to the interior of the building. Basic shelving units were built from styrene and “stocked” using more printed internet images. The hardest part was scratch building the drum set visible inside the front doors. The building interior is lit whenever the layout is powered up so the interior is visible.
My Balboa backdrop structures use “tinted” windows and/or printed images or draperies to hide the interiors. The (fictitious) joint Santa Ana & Newport and Pacific Electric depot in the center uses tinted windows. Window signage hides the Crab Cooker interior on the left, while interior draperies hide the interior of the building on the right.
Probably the most difficult, but also satisfying, interior was that of the liquor store in Costa Mesa. The triangular building has large storefront windows front and rear mea
My home town had a bank building that was nearly identical. All of the windows, and except for the large upper windows, had opaque white curtains. The large uppers on the side were sealed up by concrete plugs. The large upper windows on the front had the same white curtains.
The door was the only place you could see inside, but there was a second door inside, creating a glass enclosed vestibule. These two doors made it appear very dark inside and the vestibule was really the only thing that you could see into.
It hasn’t been a bank for a while. It was a PNC, but when they merged with National City, they retained the larger National City across the street and sold the building. The only thing that changed is the signage and the plug where the ATM was. Other than that, this building looks the same as it did 30 years ago. Can’t see it.
Sounds very much like this structure except for the concrete plugs.
It’s a CMR kit and my favorite structure on the layout. It doesn’t yet have an interior or lighting but that could happen down the road. The curtains make it unnecessary because it looks dark inside but a well lit and well executed interior could make it a real show stopper.
That was the Bailey Building and Loan.
On a trip up to visit family in Duluth, I passed through Ashland, WI. I got off the highway because the downtown looked kind of cool and ended up seeing a building that looked remarkably similar and made me think of this thread. It’s at Main and 4th. Building is flipped and it doesn’t have arched windows but gosh is it similar
And now I just stumbled across anther one on my 80 mile bicyle ride journey today - American Hardware - near the trail head 4832 grand ave, duluth
