Good evening all, I am wanting to build a series of shops along main street and am not sure about the roofs. What I am wanting to do is have all the shops, about 5 of them, in a row with the fronts all in a straight line with each other. I am sure you have all seen them along the main streets in almost all small older towns where the shops are in a row with no space between them. How would the roofes be? All slopped to the rear? all hip roofes with a valley between each building?
I am modeling in HO in the mid to late '70’s Thanks. Mike
Well, if the building(s) are in reality are all one building (with different storefront), then usually (if standard 1-2 story buildings) these will have flat roofs, slightly sloped, with guttering at the rear, tar-papered (with noticible tar seams), and a single wall between each store extending above the roof. If different buildings built at different times, then they will have independant walls since they are independant buildings - I am attaching two Live Local links, one for a small ‘suburban’ downtown about a mile or two from me (Valley Stream, NY)
http://local.live.com/default.aspx?v=2&cp=qs9bdn8vrk0t&style=o&lvl=2&tilt=-90&dir=0&alt=-1000&scene=8665055
And downtown Jamaica Queens, which is a good representation of a busy older downtown shopping district
http://local.live.com/default.aspx?v=2&cp=qshrb88vh8pp&style=o&lvl=1&tilt=-90&dir=0&alt=-1000&scene=1836375
As you can readily see, flat (well slightly sloped) roofs with tar-paper or gravel coverings are far & away the most common roof styles for older store buildings (and newer strip-mall stores too - these are built as a unit). And yes, we get enough snow up here in NY, and the flat roofs still have no problem.
Do NOT forget the vents for air and bathrooms, the chimneys, and also (since you are modeling the 1970s) the big metal HVAC units, which are supported on girders run between load bearing pads (they would just crash through the roof if not securely supported).
Chutton01 - Those are really good examples. I’ve got a number of DPM buildings that fit those patterns, but I now realize that my roofs look really empty, and too dark. By the way, I grew up in your neighborhood, Rockville Centre, but I’ve been a Red Sox fan up here in New England for a long time now.
Walthers “Merchant’s Row” kits may be just the thing for you. In this picture, there are two. One has five shops with blue trimmed shop in its center. The other is perpendicular to it across Main Street and you can see its end building with white trim. I assembled according to directions AFTER painting the parts. Roof tops are painted differing shades of dull roof colors.
In the shops, remeber you can see through the windows. I uses black construction paper to block view. Eventually, I may put interiors inside.
Thanks for the pic Heartland, I can use that info, although I scratch build., and Chutton, I would like another crack at your pics. When I click on one it sends me somewhere elece. Thanks a lot, I may try to get some work done this weekend. Mike
Garry, I was under the impression that the OP (mikemower) had the shops fronts already in hand, and just needed to know how to detail the roofs.
One thing to add is you can’t go wrong with vents, stacks, and chimneys, just make sure they are weathered and placed in kinda logical locations on the roof (like a chimney goes straight down to the furnace in the cellar, so you want to keep that back and ensure the path of the ‘virtual chimney’ would not cross in front of windows/doors etc. - if you build an interior you may even want to add a square piece as the chimney in the building) Same with vents from air ducts/HVAC and bathroom plumbing, weatherheads (the conduit and metal covering of power cables coming to the building from a pole mounted power line - this looks great going down the side or back of a building, into a electrical meter or a conduit junction box into the wall), HVAC units, etc - make sure the placement is logical and the (virtual) utility path down the building doesn’t obstruct anything (i.e. a bathroom vent placed right above an window is silly looking - but a bit to the side of a smaller, frosted bathroom window is logical).
If the building is 1 or even two stories you don’t need a dedicated accessway to the roof (although plenty of buildings do have one) as standard ladders can be used to access the roof, but over 2 stories you’ll see accessways and hatchways on the roof.
Flat (well, again mildly sloped) roofs need drainage - the basic two styles I see have the roof end at the rear wall (or whatever wall the roof slopes down towards), and a gutter right in front and below the end of the roof) feeding the gutter pipes, or else the rear wall extends up, and (usually 2) opening in this rear wall feed into the downspouts - there are variations, but these are most common. Sometimes if the roof is large, small drains are placed at various intervals, these are either brass or aluminum (at least they look it). I am not touching upon
Hmm, I agree the links look stupid (repeated twice each time), but they work OK for me (at least the second link in each url does).
Anyway, you can go to livelocal.com, and enter “rockaway ave, valley stream, ny” for the first location, and “jamaica, new york” for the second location, and just use the hand in the aerial image (‘Bird’s eye view’) to move around and zoom in/zoom out till you see the roofs you are interested in (actually, most any area of NYC/Northern Jersey/Long Island will do, except maybe manhattan could be an outlier, although you can view that too)
It’s actually local.live.com, as in the original links. I played around with it last night, looking up my current house and the house I grew up in. When I put in the old family town of Rockville Centre, NY, the scene popped up right to the Long Island Railroad station and the elevated tracks running through town.
The images of my house in Massachusetts are a few years old, which I can tell because we added to our deck a few years back, and that addition doesn’t show up. Still, they’re newer than the old Terraserver pictures I was used to seeing. It was curious to note that they seem to be blanking out the imaging around some airports.