In the last decade we have seen many beautiful layout with amazing city scene like the Franklin and South Manchester and more recently the Three Rivers City of Mister Stewart.
It’s always a pleasure to see the slides of these cities in magazines and I am sure that some of us are ready to build a big city scene on their layout.
I started a huge project a few months ago for my own N scale Maclau River. The city of Maclau will cover an area of 6x4 feet and with two or three rows of skyscraper and downtow buildings; a big station is included and a few industries. I immediately admit the FSM influence. The city will serve as a divider between the two big parts of the layout.
BUT be aware when starting this kind of project, because it would be very expensive.
To make one skyscraper with an average of 25 floors, six or even eight small structures are needed which made the price of one building on the expensive side. Remember that to make the feeling of a big city you want to see at the end more than one skyscraprer.
A lot of figures too and a lot of cars made a populate city and as far I am concerned these kind of models are expensive too.
SO I have made a big research to build my city and to reduce the cost of it.
First I can scratchbuild some buildings and use the leftover parts of past projects. I own an old engraving machine which can cut a lot of windows in a small time in plate likes the one made by Plastruct or Evergreen. You can contact this type of factory to make the works for you at affordable price. Bar Mills make plate of wood with laser cut windowns for scrathbuilding projects.
Secondly I am going to use some molding parts of existing models so I buy only one model as a master to repeat the parts. Plaster can substitute resin to lower the cost. I will use the same idea for the cars. I can buy unpainted figures and paint them.
I agree on the expense of building buildings appropriet for a big city. The HO Scale Spectriam Cityscenes series I remember each of the sky scrapers listing in at about $125.00 each. So for each of the four big sky scrapers you were looking at a $500.00 in vestment.
WOW!!! I bought a bunch of them( Spectrum City Scenes) for $17.00 apiece maybe 4 or 5 years ago on Ebay. Haven’t got around to building them yet, still NIB with the cellophane not broken open yet.
I didn’t realize they are that valuable now!
Guess I’ll look into it a bit more.
Kind of like my other hobby, model airplanes, I have several of the old kits I never got around to building, still setting on a shelf awaiting their turn on the building board someday. Paid $36.95 for one about 33 years ago, have been offered several hundred dollars for it!
Recently watched one just like it top just over $500 on Ebay.
I also bought an all original kit that dates back to 1946, along with a personally written and signed letter from the kit manufacturer to the original owner of the kit.Any of you old timers like me remember Carl Goldberg?
I have one of his 'original “Sailplane” kits, original box, plans, wood, hardware, along with the personally typed and signed letter by Carl himself.
Bought it on Ebay for $46.00 plus shipping.Was recently offered over $1,000 for it!
Some guy selling stuff from an estate had it on Ebay and no one was bidding on it.I put in a bid and won.
Two years ago I won an original and built by the kit manufacturer himself, and flown by him, — A Jim walker Fireball with engine and all the controls and line.paid $25 for it.
Sometimes you just get lucky, so Ebay isn’t all bad!
I also recently bought a (NIB) BLI GG1 and when I got it, it wouldn’t move, but the sound system worked fine.The seller didn’t want it back, and refunded my money, and I kept it.
Funny you should post this now. I just pulled my buildings out of storage and started laying my city out last night. I’m not that worried about the cost since I’m using mostly DPM style kits. What surprised me is the amount of room it’s gonna take up! You start figuring a 2 lane road with parking on each side. Plus sidewalks, side streets, alleys, rear parking lots! The foot print really starts to add up. I hoped to do 30+ buildings but I don’t think I have the room.
I would love to have working street lights, traffic lights and lighted buildings, that would about double my cost.
loathar
I hear you! Actually those Spectrum City Scenes skyscapers take up some real estate!I probably have more buildings and kits than I’ll need , I have bought them at train shows, swap meets, Ebay, never thought I had so many.I have 4 shelves in my basent two feet wide, 8 feet long, and full of kit boxes, and a lot of them are double stacked. I guess if I lve 300 more years, I might get them all built! LOL!
I’m also in the model airplane kit investment-collector market, and proably have at least 120 collector kits I have purchased, swapped, etc. on my storage room shelves right now.
Went to bankruptcy auction for a LHS in Chicago several years ago, and came home with over 300 old Revell and Monogram amd Hawk kits.Paid $250 for them, sold them for about 6 times that amount at a local swap meet.
If you plan your city layout right, you can put all the fancy stuff – street lights, traffic signals, etc – in the foreground and use just a few strategically placed lights in the background. The net result will imply that the whole city is lit – and save you some dough in the process!
You can save a lot of money by building some of your background buildings or building flats from scratch. I buy 4’x8’ sheets of .060" styrene to make large buildings, cementing everything together using lacquer thinner. For bigger projects like this, a utility knife is better than an X-Acto. In the first photo, a foeground scene, there are a couple of Walthers kits bashed into this complex, but a lot of it, including the unseen sides of the kit parts, is built-up from .060" sheet styrene.
The station in the background is scratchbuilt from .060" sheet styrene, including most of the interior bracing. The modified windows were left-overs from a Walthers warehouse kit. Total cost was about $6.00. [swg]
You can say that again! The city in the image below has run me far in excess of $1,000 to date…in spite of a lot of kitbashing and scratchbuilding…and it’s still far from completed.
Even so, this is down right cheap compared to say a far more modest town constructed of FSM buildings…several examples of which I’ve personally seen where the modeler admitted an expeniture of $10,000+ for the town. Then again, odds are that George’s F&SM cities probably could not be replicated for less that $50,000 to $100,000 worth of his kits!
I go to second-hand stores to look for old electronics and other items made with outer plastic casings. I particularly am on the lookout for shapes that lend themselves to a large downtown building. I cut sheet styrene to fit, and make all the window openings in the sheet. Then I position the sheet on the “building” to mark window locations onto it. Then I carefully drill holes large enough for the windows of the sheet. Attach clear plastic “glazing” to the sheet back, then attach to main structure.
I check out coffee table books with city scenes in them. Tons of different architectual styles can be found. My city is going to be a mix of both modern and older style.
I’ve also purchased some of the least expensive plexiglass I could find. I will use it to construct a modern style “glossy” office building. I am always on the lookout for new ideas and techniques. I started my downtown project only about a year ago and quickly realized it was going to be costly,unless other ways could be found. So scratchbuilding seems to be best for me.
I also realized what Loather said: space gets eaten quickly in such an endeavor !!
To cut down on the number of vehicles I will have to use,I am going to construct an elevated four-lane highway through at least a portion of the city. That way, attention will be diverted to it and away from the “concrete canyons” streets. Besides, I too am in N scale, and I find it difficult to get all the modern vehicles I need. Of course, I am building an American city scene.
Two thoughts. The Art Curren book on kitbashing structures might provide some ideas for how to use cheap-o swap meet structures, such as the ubiquitous Mount Vernon Manufacturing kit, into something really large and impressive.
Also, remember the article by Jonathan Jones (a New York architect) in the May 2002 MR “Building Sweeney Manufacturing”? He used fairly low cost materials to create a really detailed and accurate looking large building. The secret to an impressively large building tends to be repetitiveness.
His urban layout had earlier been featured in the May 2001 MR – you might recall a dramatic backlit photo of a man walking through an underpass and looking like he was being buffeted by high winds. He has lots of interesting structures on his layout. It is time for MR to feature more of that layout, I think.
Some years ago on a layout tour I admired a huge modern looking highrise office building on the guy’s layout. He used those panels for flourescent lights in a suspended ceiling, sometimes called egg crate panels. You know, these things:
I remember a guy at a club I used to frequent was building a good-sized skyscraper by attaching strips of plastic brick sheet and styrene to a sheet of plexiglas.
Check the series on how to make high rise buildings by Lorrel Joiner in an early 80’s MR. he was builidng in O gauge and his techniques were fairly simple, looked good and were dramatic.
Not North American but check out this model of the Stuttgart (Germany) main station and environs. It’s n-scale and all scratchbuilt. There was also a great article in a special issue of a German model railroading magazine that gave insights into the construction. Most of it, especially the more modern buildings are flat sheets of plexi with different kinds of contact sheets, some custom made, and profiles applied to the surface with windows… cut out. For more depth, layers were built up. This may well be too modern but the technique has given me lots of ideas. He also made delicate construction cranes by printing the latticework onto clear (non-reflective) film. Really amazing stuff. Just click on the links at the top of the left column and enjoy the images…
