Saginaw Yard Tower

[Denver Road Doug]

OK, so a little more progress.  Once all the parts were primered I was trying to decide on how to paint everything and did a quick mockup of the pieces to see how everything went together.

It was then that it occurred to me...there's no first level FLOOR.      At first I thought maybe I just was missing a part and that's why it was 99 cents.  But after carefully reviewing the parts diagram...NOPE.   No floor.   It's like they initially decided to do an interior and then got halfway and decided, nah who cares.  (which, might be a smart decision I suppose)   They did go "all out" on the tower control area though and I think that was their plan.  But in the process they had a pretty odd arrangement...a false wall behind, blocking the windows....a hole for where stairs probably should be, but no stairs...plenty of downstairs windows, but no interior at all...."one sided doors" that have an odd texture and about a scale 18" long keyhole. (no jokes there...)  And here is the control panel desk, which looks more like it belongs in a model railroad room. (in fairness, it *IS* a European prototype signal tower--not  yard tower--that may have been equipped with a similar setup for all I know)   Anyway, I plan to build some more traditional office desks to place in the room.



So anyway, as I said before I have decided to do an interior (and lighted...stay tuned....) so I've build a floor which also has an inset piece that allows it to press fit down into the concrete base included with the kit.   I also made spacers and a wall to cover up the door on the bottom level. (the top level door backs into the "stairwell" which won't really be seen)  Not shown are some walls for a "bathroom" on the lower level that will hide/house some LED's for lighting purposes and I've also made some mods to a few of the kit pieces to make them more "interior friendly".   I have found textures for floor tile, ceiling tile, interior wood paneling, and interior doors as well.  I think this actually may work!   



What are the pieces to the right with the green tape?   Guess!  One bit of info...after his pic was taken I did shorten the green squares part a bit to improve their, ahem....aspect ratio.   

[SSW7771]

You got me stumped, I do not know what the green squares are. 

[Chris333]

computer screens?

[Denver Road Doug]

computer screens?

Yes!   So I took one of the leftover "1 Foot Thick" pieces of window plastic from the kit, and I whittled it down to the shape and approximate size of a computer screen. 

I have since cut them down much more, maybe close to half that size in the photo...if you compare to the door facing  you can see they were very oversized, and it became really apparent after I bought some seated figures to put in the yard tower.   Probably the equivalent of a 47" TV or so at that point, and now they may still be in the 27" range but it looks reasonable.   In the early 2000's the larger screens like that would be unheard of in a yard tower most likely, but anyway that's missing the point.

So the idea is to use the light pipe--painted, of course--coming out of the bottom of the monitors as part of the structure of the underlying desk, then through the floor and into the bathroom area below where the LED's will be.  The goal is to cast the "monitor glow" onto the tower operators, not to have a superdetailed monitor with something on the screen.   My initial testing seemed to work pretty well, but I have to admit I'm not sure I'm gonna be able to get enough paint on it to block the light.   I slathered silver paint all over a test piece and it lit up like there was nothing on it at all.   So I have some more work to do.