Justice City Layout Build

[rubbergauge]

Hi Marty,

I saw a pen with the digital logo in one of your videos. It brought back memories from my old PDP11 days!

regards,
Joe

[deemery]

"PDP-11, that's a name I haven't heard in a very long time...."   


dave

[tooStupid]

Wow, there are DECies here!

I work for them for 20 years running the infrastructure in Canada for 10 years and Professional Services for another 20 years.

[Rail and Tie]

PDP-11! That was the first computer I ever touched!  I was a kid and my father was using it to analyze flights on the Jaycopter at the Navy base in Pensacola FL.  I still remember the smell of the electronics and the enclosures. It was what hooked me on computers back then.


BTW, love the interior.

[tooStupid]

The first computer I touched is a tie between the PDP-12 (a PDP-8 plus LINC subsystem) and an Intel 8008. I was destined to be a computer nerd. 😆

[rubbergauge]

I still have the technical bible I used when I was one of the on site Dec crew at Citibank 399 Park Avenue in New York City. I really enjoyed going to work fixing my favorite equipment which were 1170 systems, RP04 disc drives, TU16 tape drives and DH11 multiplexors. Hard to believe the disc drive was about the size of a washing machine, weighed about 600 pounds, held 100mb and each system had a bank of them. The monthly "Decservice" maintenance charge for one RPO4 was about 400.00 a month if I remember correctly and that 400.00 was worth a lot more back then!

I moved on to management later on in my 18 years with them but the days as a tech were the best.

Joe

[tooStupid]

Now that the house renovations are complete it is time to start collecting supplies for the backdrop. I had decided to to do a simple spray painted one mostly because I was lazy. My test backdrop I did a few years ago looked ok for the layout so I decided to expand it to the whole diorama.

I went to Homedepot to get a bunch of Rust-oleum colours, in particular the ones I used on the test panel, Aqua and Oasis Blue. Would you know both are out of stock in all the HD, Lowes, Ace, Canadian Tire and Home Hardware stores in the Greater Toronto Area. Even the art stores do not have them! I saw them on eBay for $32 CDN per can and that is insane and Amazon.ca does not have them, yet they are still listed as being manufactured by Rust-oleum.

There must be a black market for them?

So I have to spend the next year thinking how to do the backdrop over 

Oh well.

[tooStupid]

Hi there,

If you have not realized I have exited the world of creating videos for YouTube and have delete the couple channels that I managed. This was mostly because I was spreading myself too thin and not having the motivation, time or resources to do the channels justice (yes, a pun this early in the post.)

So for the next few posts I will be catching you up what I have been doing in this year of isolation. In this post I will show you where I got in building the FSM Sand House.

Here is what the kit box looks like,



It looks great and a snap to build, but will it fit into the diorama? It looks like will since I have the Shay to fuel up.



The question remains can I actually build it and tune it to look natural in the diorama? The marketing says I should be able to. Taking a look at the blueprints it should be done in a few sessions (not)!



Given the instructions that came with this $20 kit it is going to be longer than I think.



So I started the build,





then I gave up! After giving myself a stern talking to I buckled down and finished building the main bone os the structures. This I what I ended up with.

The actual Sand House,



Coal bins,



and some sort of shed that I have no idea what it is for?



So that is where I stand with the FSM Sand House... sitting on the diorama looking lost and forgotten. It just does not fit into the diorama in terms of space and functionality. I need to build the Engine Shed first to see how the engine yard will look like.

Meanwhile, I got onto working on the last of the background build, ITLA Industrial Build "D". In the next post I will show what I have done to that kit to spark my creative juices.

Until later.

[tooStupid]

Before I get into the ITLA build, here are a few snaps of the Lighthouse Garage build I worked on last year, ut never actually posted any pictures of.

This build started with a "free" kit from the last FineScale show. It was a gasoline station kit that just did not fit into the diorama. See a trend here and why the motivation wavered over the past year. Anyways, it turned out great and will fit into the lighthouse scene very well.

The mandatory set of the different views of the garage, notice there is an interior detail, but the garage doors are not built yet (some day soon...sing along ... some day soon ... )



The other side,



Can't forget this side. Notice the paint peeling effect. I used "WhiteOut" tape from Staples and pressed it onto a grey painted background and burnished it until it looked absolutely perfect.



A quick drone shot gives an view of the interior details. Like all my builds they are never done.



And they all have "light-it" controlled LED lighting to add that sense of realism.



Ok, the next post will "really" be the ITLA Industrial Build "D" build done Marty' way ... through trial and error.

[PRR Modeler]

Great looking build.

[ACL1504]

Marty,

Good to see you back working on the layout. There are so many aspects of this hobby that it is very easy to get side tracked.

Tom

[tooStupid]

Marty,

Good to see you back working on the layout. There are so many aspects of this hobby that it is very easy to get side tracked.

Tom

Tom, You are so right...

[tooStupid]

Great looking build.

Thanks.

[tooStupid]

Hi,

As indicated in earlier posts, I am working on the ITLA Industrial Build "D" kit that I purchased a couple years ago. I saw the kit at FineScale show and was impressed on how it looked and how easy it was to put together. I snapped one up and it has been sitting on the shelf until I had the time and guts to build it.

The kit I a "background" kit made of hardboard/Masonite/compressed paper that are laser cut so that they use finger joins to align and make the kit build easy. (so you would think so.)

I am not going to show you what the kit is "supposed" to look like because it might taint your view on how successful my version of the build will go.

Here are all the parts that come with the kit of which I will use only a couple of them.



As you can see the depth of the side walls are about 1.5" which is about 1" too thick for where I plan to put the structure. It will go behind Warden Woodworking kit where the track clearances are really small. So I cut the edge wall on the right to be about 0.5" wide.



The left wall was also split to match the right side.



There is cornice that goes along the top of the structure to add some interest to the façade. It is made of 4 strips of plywood that are glued on top of each other to build up the cornice.



Getting the cornice to line up with the top edge proved to be quite a challenge. More on this in a later photograph.



I jumped ahead and glued the side walls to the front panel to see how it would look. The instructions say to first lightly spray paint each piece before assembly, but I thought that was weird as the colour blending around the walls need to have some consistency. Plus, I was not too sure which panels I was going to use in the build.



I then stared at the glued structure and notice that something was not looking quite right. I then got out the rule and measured the left and right spacing from the window edge to the finished wall edge and they were not the same. A standalone building would have not been built that way as symmetry is one of the keystone of an architects mantra. So I got out the drill and a diamond cutoff wheel and trimmed the right side tabs off to create that balance I so need to have in this building.



After doing this I came to the conclusion I "hate" building kits that use hardboard for wall panels. The dust is so fine and light I had to have the vacuum cleaner hose tucked under my chin to suck all that dust. As I still had to change my shirt as it smelled of paper dust.

ITLA tried very hard to incorporate way of hiding joint lines between each wall panel. The sides have brick strips that are intended to do that. It the structure was way in the background for my diorama it would have been ok, but it is ~24" from two edges of the diorama, all joints stick out like a sore thumb.

Also, notice I cut the foundation to match the slope of land where the structure will be placed.



I always try to add interiors and lighting to all the buildings in the diorama and this one is no different. The roof and floors are added to help differentiate the each floor and reduce light leaks.



Ok, this is where the build gets very messy!  I tried to use the spray paint technique but the paint cans were against me. The rust paint can sprayer got clogged after the first couple lite sprays then globs of paint flew everywhere. My hands were covered in rust paint not to mention the walls. I tried various other colours, but it just got worse and worser(sp). I gave up spraying and got out the lacquer thinners and wiped all the spray paint off the panels until I got something I so of liked.



I then tested on the diorama to see how it looked. This is when reality kicked in. There is very little space for the loading dock and those joints stood out even worse than I thought they would. I will have to decide later whether or not the loading docks should be there at all.



Now let's get dirty!  The colour still sucks, the gaps are big enough to fly a jet though them. The side wall did NOT have any bricks cut into them, so had glued plastic card bricks to the sides before spray painting. Also, the upper cornice corner looks terrible, well below standard. This had to be fixed!



I got right to it. I am not going to have a chimney on the roof so I could use those brick panels to build out the cornice corners to correctly wrap around the to the side wall. Yes, they were small little pieces that I glued in sections to create the same cornice as in the front. They some modellers puddy was used to fill the gaps and the brick line patterns were cut into the panels to continue the brick pattern from front to the side. It looks much better and will be touched up later when final detailing is done. (there I still a lot of work to be done.)



Speaking of gaps and not looking right, the foundation had the same issue as the cornices. I found some scrap plywood and carved blocks into it to wrap the foundation around the sides also.

Oh! Those foundations. They are terrible, so two dimensional and too uniform for a older building. So out came the Excel knife and I carved the block joints to add some depth to the foundation. I have decided that the foundation will not be limestone, but sandstone. This means the blocks are quite regular in size and shape, but the mortar joints have worn down. I will add colour variations after I decide on the loading dock situation.



The decision to call this an "older" building would mean the bricks would have begun to fail and spall. Again, the Excel blade to the rescue.



This is where I am with the build so far. The colour of the brick is closer to what the scene needs, the side views are now more acceptable and is ready to have window and electrical work done to add spice to the building.



I wonder what name I need to paint on the building? Lawyers Machinery?

That's is all for now,

[PRR Modeler]

Marty WOW your fixes sure make the building look good. Nice job.