What Wholeman says is exactly true, but here’s a basic list (other than the obvious ones like cement):
A razor saw (and miter box) and hobby knife for cutting parts.
Files – both “micro” and “mill” varieties – for cleaning up edges.
A small metal square and straight edge.
Squadron putty (for filling gaps).
Useful, but not essential:
A Self-healing cutting mat with straight lines on it.
A variety of small clamps (including both straight and 90 degrees)
Pin vise and small drill bits
Rotary tool.
Most – if not all – of the tools that you need can be purchased from a full-line tool supplier like Micro-Mark (www.micromark.com). Just be careful – one look at their catalog and you’ll immediately find a couple of hundred things you just can’t live without! [:-)]
You will probably want to invest in a couple of packages of styrene sheets, rods, and bars for reinforcing corners and joining pieces together. The best thing to do here is to go to a hobby store and pick some off the rack. More specialized styrene pieces (corregated metal, brick face, I beam, tubes, etc.) as well as superdetailing parts are best purchased on an “as needed” basis. If you’re working in wood, basswood sheets and strips would replace styrene, and be aware that there are fewer “specialized” pieces (more emphasis on making your own).
I’m in my late 40’s and i too would like to see more modern structures produced in the 1990-present era.I tend to favor the modern railroad era,expecially the newer locomotives(sd70ace,sd70mac,Ac4400,etc),but unfortunately Walthers and other manufacturers tend to stay in the 50’s-70’s era.Which leads most of us modern railroaders to have to scratch build our structures and buildings.
So if i want a modern warehouse or transfer facilty,i have to build my own.Pike stuff has a nice selection of modern buildings,but i’d like to see them produce more larger complex buildings.I am also a railfan,so i am more related to what i can see in the here and now.
I’m quite impressed however with companys like Model power,River point station,Ricko,producing Ho scale vehicles for my era.That is another area in the hobby that i think more companys should be focusing on.
In Corpus Christi, about a mile off the expressway that has all the big box stores everyone is so familiar with these days, there was a secondary through street and a railroad line that served a number of warehouses for the mall stores. But that was more than 20 years ago. Twenty years ago this year, I snapped this picture of ties and ballast being removed. The rails went a few weeks earlier.
This is one of the photos I donated to Texas A&M University Corpus Christi Library. See about 100 of the pictures and a searchable guide to all 1500 phots at this link:
Some other perspectives- many urban areas have renovated older buildings and established storefronts for more modern retailers, such as Subways, Barnes and Noble, and other retailers.
This involves taking the old structure and placing the newer tenant’s signs at street level. MOre useful in an urban layout, perhaps.
Another view is that many 1950s-1960s buildings, built with steel and poured-in-place concrete curtain walls, still retain an “air” of “modernity” when their surface appearance is refreshed with more contemporary frontages and signage.
What DO you see that may be rail-served today? Large equipment warehouses, freight interchange facilities, such as a FEDEX terminal, equipment manufacturers- but they are not necessarily in the “public view”, and a spur is often their only tie to railroading. The footprints may be impressive, but diminished the importance visually of the rail aspect.
Do some personal reserach- take photos, then re-approach your modeling for modern effect based on the realities around you- and as mentioned above, let google be a friend- images are waiting to be viewed!
This is exactly what I was explaining to the OP. The process of joining two models together is called “kitbashing”. By combining the pieces of several kits, or taking one kit and using pieces of styrene or modular parts (DPM or Walthers) to expand some of the sides and the roof, you can create any building you choose. With some practice and experimentation, you will be able to create exactly what you want.
Again, the retail manufacturers probably don’t see a market here for two reasons: not a lot of people model the modern era, and the price point of the bigger structures is too high, so the don’t sell as well.
You can blame the “beancounters” for the lack of windows. They found that productivity went down in buildings with windows. Even in office buildings; they reserved the outer offices for management, instead of the support personnel, who were stuck in cubicles in the center of the floor.
I am an architect who was active for over 42 years and never had a client or client’s beancounter ask to eliminate windows to improve productivity (a questionable theory at best). I cannot say that it never happens, but not in my experience. There are other economic reasons for eliminating or limiting windows, however: please see my earlier post regarding that in this thread.
You are correct that typically, management gets the outside views; however, we did have some clients who appreciated the value of the folks in the cubicles and gave them the windows (that included my firm and most of the firms by which I was previously employed-including the US Navy).
Interestingly, I have seen productivity studies that indicated the principal trigger for increased productivity was periodic change of almost any kind in the work environment.
