On my trip yesterday to my hobby place, i went looking for kits with very tall strutures. after browsing the store and the walthers catalog I come to realize most structure are built with only 3-4 stories. Since i’ve been planning for a large city block with 6-9 stories buildings i was wondering about to go about.
The design of the DPM building panel are interesting but has anyone used them for high structures? ( usually i see them used to fill long area ) could i possibly kitbash structure ( say the ole IHC “Endoline funeral home” or “lawyers office”) . Rarity and cost make the entire line of Bachmann cityscene buildings impossible to get so im looking for other alternatives
Tall buildings are easily created simply by “stacking” the walls of shorter buildings, or multiple structure kits. Many of the larger Walthers Cornerstone buildings lend themselves to this particular approach, as does DPM’s hotel. The buildings in the attached image show a number of tall (6-8 stories) structures created through this kitbashing method.
i don’t know what era or geographical region you are modeling but here is something to think about. years ago the railroad “sentenced” me to 3 week in Pittsburgh, Pa. (i never did see a pawnshop) while sightseeing in the older part of downtown near the station i noticed many of the older buildings were of two different types of construction. the lower 3 or 4 floors were of what appeared to be an earlier style while the upper floors were often of a different type of construction. why?? the lower floors were built before elevators were available. when electric elevators became prominent, most buildings were retrofitted with the new marvel and could be taller so they were expanded upward. usually just a couple more floors since the original construction was done before the structural steel skyscraper became the norm. i’m sure this is the case in many older cities and towns across the country so why not stack a different building on top of the original?
You have a number of options. Bachmann had a line of skyscrapers which have unfortunately been discontinued, but you might be able to still find them on e-bay. Rod Stewart used these to make his ultra tall buildings on his magnific layout. He would combine several kits into one building.
Custom Model Railroads has several tall building kits but they are pricey.
As a low cost option, there are several DPM and City Classic kits of 5 stories which could easily be converted to taller buildings by combining several kits. Unless you are building on a peninsula where all 4 sides will be visible, you can usually get away with just using 2 or 3 sides of a structure and substituting wood planks for the unseen walls. You can use the spare walls for other kit bashes. The back walls are good choices for shallow backdrop structures.
Lastly, you can go modular. Both DPM and Walthers offer their components as modulars so you aren’t stuck with just one style of building. Also, many older tall buildings had ornate lower floors while the upper floors were very plain so you could kit bash fancier 3 or 4 story buildings with modulars for the upper floors and create interesting and unique structures. I have even seen an example of ornate design on both the upper and lower floors and plain brick floors in between.
A typical architectural modeler’s trick would be to start with a sheet of plexiglas and layer styrene on it to form the structure beyond the glass line of the windows. This is primarily used for modern, “Mostly glass,” construction, but there’s no reason that the same technique couldn’t be used to model older-style masonry buildings - even the style that had ground-level walls six feet thick.
The best part is that the single plexiglas sheet would guarantee a strong, plane surface.
I’ve got just the opposite problem. Photos of the section of a town I’m modelling in the 1950’s show only single story retail buildings fronting a major street (six lanes). The majority of suitable kits for this era are two or three stories with only a handful of workable single story buildings. Aaargh!
I’d think that the Walthers modulars would be a place to start.
Several years ago, IHC had a series of buildings that used the same common walls. They made up into a townhouse, a firehouse, a funeral home, a restaurant, the Herald Star Building and maybe a couple of others. I took a couple of these and cut the bottom floor off of one set of walls then stacked them on top of the other set. It made a nifty five-story building. The firehouse had a Mansard roof which would give you another story as well.
The advantage to this approach is that all of the windows that come with the kits will still fit into the window openings, etc.
For those of you old enough to remember, I really liked Art Curren’s kitbashed buildings. I think I built about all of them. These particular buildings were “building material” for many of his kitbashes. We don’t see articles like his any more in any of the model magazines. : (
The trouble with the Walthers and DPM modulars is that they represent masonry structures. As Chuck pointed out, the weight of these walls prohibits them from going more than 5 or 6 stories. Now that’s not to say you won’t see brick facades reaching higher than that, but then you’re getting into what’s known as a “curtain wall” where the exterior wall isn’t really the bearing structure. Interior columns of steel or reinforced concrete are doing the main work. These will typically have larger banks of windows, requiring less masonry, and therefore a lighter structure attaced to the outside of the main frame.
But, you can make a slightly taller building using some basic kits…
I scratchbuilt a “poured concrete” first floor and mezzanine to extend the good old N scale “GE Building” to 6 stories. In the regular kit, the walls with the windows go front and back, and there are two blank walls for the sides. I used the two window walls to create a more massive looking corner building, then built the first two floors out of sheet styrene. The windows were scratchbuilt using strip styrene and clear acetate.
I dug some scraps out of the junk box to make vents to disguise what were originally the door openings (which are now on the 3rd floor) and then made a canopy out of Model Power iron fencing, adding some gold paint to fancy up the main entrance a bit.
I also built the first floor to accommodate a grade on the adjacent street. On the layout this was done for, it backed up against the backdrop, so I cheated the back…
A lot of those buildings in that part of the city, and by part of the city I mean within a few blocks, are the direct parents of a lot of the City Classics buildings.
Look for an article by Lorell Joiner in MR sometime in the 80’s. He built a huge O gauge railroad that started from a major city and he outlined how he made his sky scrapers which were twenty stories high in some cases. Basically he used the layer method and the walls were one piece.
If the Cornerstone Modulars are appropriate for your layout, this would be a good time to get some. They are on sale for a very good price - 60% off or more on some items. I’m not sure when these go off sale, but it may be this week. I think these modulars are more appropriate for modern-era buildings, while the DPM modulars would look better for pre-transition-era structures.
Go to Walthers and enter “Cornerstone Modulars” in the search box.
Making tall buildings is easy. You just make a long building and stand it on end.
Okay, I might have something useful to offer. Go over to railroad.union.rpi.edu and buy a 1 month subscription, then browse the heck out of the site. John Nehrich has lots of great info on structure design.
One very useful thing I remember from there is that most older skyscrapers are not just repeated units stacked. They actually expand the typical first story - second story - cornice design, as seen in typical DPM storefront kits. The lowest stories will have one design, then there will be a larger middle area of another, and a more ornate design for the topmost or last few stories, forming a large “cornice”. This helps avoid the blank-wall look.
Here you can see the tall first stories with their shop windows, a single story “band” above that, eleven stories of relatively plain design, and a two-story top section with lots of decoration.
