Given my unfamiliarity with the bulk of US outline O scale, see the previous post. I decided that I should spend some time digging deeper in the fit of things. Prof. Klyzlr got everything to fit in his Chicago Fork, but I’d made some subtle changes and was fitting everything to an existing baseboard that I’d already added to. I needed to check it would all fit in the allotted area.
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| Testing clearances between sidings |
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| The front warehouse will have to be no more than 2” (50mm) deep |
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| At the rear the low relief structure will be no more than 1” (25mm) in depth |
I was happy when I found everything would fit in the space without any problems. Sure, I’d like a bit more depth to the building at the rear to fit the external exit stair in. But it will still make a good backdrop.
Talking of the big structure/backdrop. I decided to mock it up. I have many different packs of embossed styrene sheet in many different scales. I was curious to see if I actually had materials in stock to build it.
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| The prototype structure. (Actually a warehouse for the US office supply store chain, Office Depot and IT supply company World Data Products). The lower photo is a test using my supply of styrene sheet. |
With a head on photo like this one it’s simplicity itself to measure everything up to get an idea of the model. I could have made a drawing if wanted. But this photo serves the same purpose.
A door is a door. It’s a defined size. If x amount of stone courses fit in the height of the door, then that will give you the height of a course on the cladding. I measured that against my sheets of Plastruct concrete block. A perfect match size wise. Then it’s just a matter of counting off blocks on the styrene sheet.
Next was the corrugated siding section. There are many different styles of corrugated siding. I have just as many different styles and scales of corrugated sheet in my stock. Some of which have been used for purposes other than corrugated siding (below). So you’d think it would be pretty easy to find something in my collection to match.
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| Corrugated siding used as sleepers for panel track in 16mm scale |
But not so. Plastruct corrugated sheet appears to have undergone a transformation recently. A retooling perhaps. You can tell the difference easily. The old type was in an orange labelled bag. The new is a bag with a white label. Originally, the sheet was a squarer corrugation. Now it's a more rounded one. The square one is what I want for this task. The sheet you see in the track photo might have been perfect. But I cut all that up into sleepers for my 16mm scale project. So I'm out of luck. That was originally sheet ref 91520. I looked through my other sheets and plumped for sheet 91522. A bit over scale but it think it looks fine. Scale fidelity isn't important for a backscene structure. It creates the right effect. However, I only have enough for a 28" long model building.
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| Measuring up the locations for the doors. |
This meant measuring up to see if 28" was a good enough length for this structure. The jury is out on that one right now, and I may add a lower height office extension to the right hand side, much like the real thing does on its front aspect.
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| The front of the Office Depot section of the building. Two floors of offices. |
I’ll see how the building progresses, before I make that decision. I think that means I’d better start construction.
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