illinois Central Chicago District - Monee Rebuild

[ACL1504]

Vince,

Ditto to all the other comments on the structures. Top notch modeling, love it all. Thanks for sharing the photos. I'll try Jason's corrugated siding method net time I have one to do.

Tom

[GPdemayo]

It's going to shape up into a great scene Vince.....

[tom.boyd.125]

Vince,
You are so creative - like your perspective of placing things on your railroad.
Thanks for sharing all the new structure photos too. Great progress !
Tommy

[Mark Dalrymple]

Beautiful work, Vince!

Really appreciated your overall report, too.  When are you going to have a go at scratchbuilding?

Cheers, Mark.

[vinceg]

Thanks to Janbouli, Tom L, Greg, and Tom B for the nice comments. I have been working with foam now to build up the terrain. Jeff's observation is now coming to the forefront. When/if I site the buildings as FOS does in their demo diorama, much of the nice detail and character of some of the buildings is lost. Guess that's a problem in general when you build craftsman kits and like that really dense, urban look that the FSM is famous for -- you can't help but hide a lot of the work you do. In this case, it's made worse by the fact that this scene is back in a corner. I can look at spacing buildings out and/or rearranging or separating them, but that starts to detract from the "look."

I am thinking about it more now but I think that in the end I will just need to get over it. The alternative is to have uninteresting buildings and/or lots of other scenic details (hills, rock faces, trees, etc). But, that's not what I like. I reckon a compromise might be that I need to be sure to take a lot of pictures when I'm building things so I can at least see the detail "off-line" if I want to.

I'll post a few pics in a while.

[vinceg]

Beautiful work, Vince!

Really appreciated your overall report, too.  When are you going to have a go at scratchbuilding?

Cheers, Mark.

Thanks, Mark. Funny you should mention that. There are still some (tho not many!) kits out there that I really like from FSM, SRMW, and others that I thought I would try to pick up on eBay sometime when the right price hit. As of a few months ago, I am not thinking that anymore. I can see that the time will come that I want to build some unique things from scratch. Not sure what that means, but you see in my signature that I am "protolancing" the IC. From the beginning I assumed that meant there would be a few scenes that would somewhat closely match reality. I think scratch building some actual buildings will be part of that.

I think I'm at least a year or two away from that for the moment. I would like to work through my kit collection for a while and continue to learn and build new skills while creating a little more interest for my track-only setup right now. It is interesting, tho, that this kit (Bandit) pushed me a little further in that direction. Having to deal with wrong-sized parts and missing material, one starts to realize that one is getting a little (very little, but some) closer to a scratch building environment.

[vinceg]

Some updates - progress is slow because I want to [over]think the scene plan. Here's the starting point - I added 2" of foam to the base to the east (far) side of the tracks to make the background more visible.



The frame you see close to you (west side) is where Ware Knitters goes. More in a moment. Next, I set up Bandit in roughly the layout that FOS did in their promos:



As with the FOS layout, I have the back higher than the front. This will require exposing some foundation for the Harrison and Callahan buildings (just showing open air at the moment). I am only showing a 1" rise here. I think the FOS prototype uses something more like 1.5". Their Curtis gas station exposes more of the Callahan (green building) front wall than mine does. I do like the idea of reducing the extreme grade in the road from the gas station up and to the left.

More in a moment.

[vinceg]

Here's a view from the aisle. At least, it's my view. Actual adult-sized people will have a somewhat higher perspective



I set the Ware diorama in the scene just to see how it looks. I think I am liking the vertical separation from from to back. Ware doesn't block Bandit.

The plan is to have a road go along the track on the Bandit side of the tracks until it gets closer to the backdrop. At that point, I want to have the road go behind one or more buildings so that the interface between the road and the backdrop is hidden. I think it also provides a little more interest by breaking the pattern of having the road parallel the track for the entire curve. That paper mockup you see on the right is a building from FSM Dexter's Dead End that I placed just to help visualize the view block.

More in a bit.

[vinceg]

Because I really like the Harrison building, I wanted to try a little harder to make it a little more prominent in the scene. So, here is a pic with only the Harrison building being raised another inch:



Of course, this means that the foundation in the front of the building will need to be that much taller. You can't see it in this picture because the gas station hides the overhang. I will need to make sure that doesn't look odd.

The only other consideration now is behind the entire Bandit complex. My current thinking is that I will have a Tee intersection in the road before it disappears into the backdrop (on the right side of this picture) and the road from that intersection will continue upgrade into the 90 degree corner to serve a couple of relatively low complexity businesses -- thinking a couple of the smaller Bar Mills kits, for example. I guess the other option would be to do something more with terrain - trees, hills, etc.

Exciting time - about to see a lot of new challenges:
  - How to do asphalt roads
  - How to use my static grass applicator
  - How paint (or avoid painting) some horizon content on the backdrop
  - Finding out if 20-year old bags of Sculptamold are still good
  - How I want to treat my track (painting, ballast coloring and weathering)
  - Others I don't know about yet.

[ACL1504]

Vince,

The Harrison building does look much better raised the little you have it. My vote for the higher elevation.

Tom

[jerryrbeach]

Vince,

The Harrison building does look much better raised the little you have it. My vote for the higher elevation.

Tom

Vince,


I agree with Tom, but I'd go one step further.  I would remove the billboard from the gas station roof thus opening up the view to the Harrison building.  That not only exposes more of the interesting narrow end of that structure, it helps draw the viewer's eye further into the scene.  I'd use a chimney and maybe a roof hatch on the gas station to add interest to that roof while not restricting the ling of sight to the Harrison building.

[Mark Dalrymple]

Hi Vince.

My advice would be to cut a whole bunch of different sized and thicknessed pieces of polystyrene, hide the Foscale picture of the setup, and go crazy.  Try all sorts of different configurations.  Massively accentuate the gradient - both front to back and side to side.  Photograph anything that you even partially like and later you can analize and try to work out why you like it.  The photographs also give you a record of what you did so you can recreate it.  I feel the Fos setup is a bit claustrophobic for your further away viewing, but more than this - it is the one opportunity you have to easily put your own stamp on this kit and make it unique.

Re the scratch-building - maybe you should put a Master Creations kit on your list?  If you can build one of those scratch-building will be a breeze!

On that note, I have scratch-built several structures based on SRM kits.  The main structure from Blackstones I built using the Walthers sugar refinery.  There was a bit of cutting and splicing and scratch-building additions, but otherwise pretty straight forwards.  I think I still have photos of how I cut up the refinery - if you're interested.

Cheers, Mark.

[vinceg]

Vince,

The Harrison building does look much better raised the little you have it. My vote for the higher elevation.

Tom

Vince,


I agree with Tom, but I'd go one step further.  I would remove the billboard from the gas station roof thus opening up the view to the Harrison building.  That not only exposes more of the interesting narrow end of that structure, it helps draw the viewer's eye further into the scene.  I'd use a chimney and maybe a roof hatch on the gas station to add interest to that roof while not restricting the ling of sight to the Harrison building.

Thanks, Jerry. Not only is that a good idea, but you triggered the thought that I should just move the gas station altogether. That would also give me a little more horizontal run to lessen the grade on the road as it wraps around the Callahan building since I wouldn't need to be at "street level" at the end of the building. Plus, visibility would be even better, yet.

Mark, to your point, I have been trying what you said and for some reason am just having a creative/mental block.....just don't like any of the other arrangements I have been coming up with. Maybe because I was knee-deep in building the kit for almost three months -- can't see anything else, yet. Maybe I need to go back and do some more wiring to refresh my motivation :-)

[postalkarl]

Hey Vince:

Both structure kits are very well done. Keep up the great work and keep the layout photos coming.

Karl

[Mark Dalrymple]

You could try something like making a set of cards with the names of the structures written on them, shuffling them, and then throwing them on the kitchen table.  Then emulate their positions with the actual structures and changes in height.  Not saying it will definitely  work, but it might break you out of the forest and throw up a few different ideas.  You can then build on these new ideas and perhaps find a new direction.  Also - don't be afraid to 'remove' a structure.  You can always place it somewhere else.

Cheers, Mark.