A Downtown made of wood structure kits -- possible?

[OldEastRR]

We've got a lot of N buildings and kits, but not many of them are suitable for a downtown retail block. Mines, stations, houses, mills -- there are some retail stores and gas stations, but they don't look "clusterable", like the DPM store kits are. Blair Line has a couple and Bar Mills a tavern that could be repurposed (I'd love the Cundy Hotel in N!), and that's the kind of buildings I'm looking for. Any ideas?

[randgust]

If you are after generic city block stuff.... there's probably 30 or 40 answers, none of them wood kits.   All the DPM stuff, current issues.. etc.

The only series of 'wood', old-time downtown block building I remember is from Railhead, mostly during tine 80's-90's, wood kits with etched brass doors and windows.

Certainly not up to current standards.   Yellow boxes, photocopied picture on the top, box of basswood and etched parts.

It's not impossible to scratch currently standing buildings, if you've ever used Google Earth, their measuring tools, Streetview photos, etc.    I used photos for years for general guidance and got good results, but being able to actually measure stuff from the air as produced pretty accurate buildings of entire town blocks made mostly from Strathmore, wood and styrene products.   Printing photos for various components instead of component-building also works well.   There's also a ton of etched brass detail out there (GMM) for some stuff that is otherwise impossible to reproduce.

When you're looking at city-block stuff, you really only have to focus on one real visible wall, usually a significant part is signage that can be done from photography, and sometimes the entire front of the building can simply be a printed photograph with detail added on.  The rest tends to be a square box to hold up the front   The difficult part in N is precisely-sized commercial windows like you see in most buildings.   

After I realized it was a whole lot easier to simply make the windows I wanted from styrene strip stock rather than search the entire planet for the right-sized plastic windows from somebody else, things started to more along quickly!

[Specter3]

I have used some wood buildings intermixed with brick to represent about 1920.

[sirenwerks]

OldEast, where and when are you modeling?  You mention a gas station, which means you're m,odeling internal combustion era, but where will determine the type of architecture.  For instance, by the time of the auto many logging towns in the west, like Eureka, had sizable downtowns developed with some pretty impressively sized wooden city blocks of Victorian-style structures.  We're talking four and five-story structures, 1/2 of a real block length on all sides.

Here's one, the Vance Hotel, which stands today:

[wm3798]

Time and place is an important bit of information.  An eastern or midwestern local in the transition era would have an eclectic mix of styles and structures, a preponderance of DPM style brick stacks, as well as "false front" wood frame buildings.

As for kits for wood buildings, why bother?  Get some Evergreen N scale clapboard siding stock, some window castings, and "roll your own".  This is especially easy in a block of commercial buildings, where you really only need to model a front and back wall and a roof.  About $10 worth of materials can net you a whole lot of real estate.

[randgust]

My 'standard approach' to scratchbuilding small-town city structures has evolved into this.....

1)  Find something you like, investigate with photos on Google Earth and Bing mapping
2)  Check out streetview, capture some images.    Get basic structure dimensions from the front using Google Earth.
3)  Get some posterboard and cut it to approximate size.    Using Photoshop, 'square up' the images with the de-keystoning tool.
4)  Print and resize the JPG of the image until it fits on the posterboard.  Tape or lightly glue for now
5)  Put it on the layout and see what it looks like.    Photograph it in place.
6)  Use the photo as your guide and "drawing" to measure out suitable surface material, and glue it  right to the posterboard.   Make a wood-strip reinforced box out of posterboard.   Locate usable roof material from other kits, Vollmer/Kibri, or other sources.
7)  Build the windows to fit the openings out of strip Evergreen materials.  Or, find suitable etched or cast plastic windows.
  Signs and decorations can be made by reprinting that resized photo on photographic paper stock (matte) and using directly as part of the finished model

The funniest part about this is when people see my layout and ask to see the building drawings I made.  I pick up the building, and there they are, still visible on the inside of the structure.   Using the mock-up in posterboard as the basis for real construction is a real timesaver.   I've also built structures from Evergreen styrene (particularly with siding, tiles, other textured surfaces) just as well, but always made a mock-up with posterboard first so I could get the final size and fit on the layout the way I wanted.

This is really practical in N, more so that other scales.

One of the most stunningly realistic trackside buildings I've ever seen on a layout was Mike Winicki's - and it literally was a "picture"  on the backdrop with a loading dock built onto it 3D.  Stuff like that rapidly changes your perception about what is possible and how to do it.   Another mind-blowing event happened to me the first time I visited the huge N scale museum diorama of Pithole, PA (the oil boom town), and realized that out of the hundred or so wood buildings scratchbuilt from photos, the windows were all just black-printed negatives on the surface.   And it looked fantastic, extremely realistic.

Ebay has just a ton of historic postcards out there to research what buildings and towns 'used' to look like; I have to backdate to 1972 myself. Sometimes things like signage are a real challenge.   That's my go-to resource now for modeling.

[casmmr]

Go to the local library or historical society and see if they have any photos from whatever era you are modeling.  Also, some cities (villages) have a local museum display in the old city hall, bank building, etc.  The photos are very interesting to look at as they can show the progression from 1920-1930 1940-1950 and so on up until the present day.  Have fun.

[OldEastRR]

I ask these questions and always forget to put in the parameters:
I'm looking at mid-sized New England town city centers. The main "new" part of downtown would be all brick structures, built after 1900, during the boom of the '20s, etc. As happened to some NE towns, part of the city burned down (wooden structures) so they rebuilt with brick and fire codes. Then there's thye "old" part of town, that didn't burn down but it's gotten shabby. An area that used to be the retail center now eclipsed by the "new" downtown. These are mostly wooden buildings repurposed from their retail days. Then there's the "down by the tracks" area with less-than-classy buildings, including homes  that look like company houses. Then there's the transition area between downtown and the residential area, houses and some ma&pa stores mixed in, going to all houses. I don't have to sweat the houses because Walthers is making the Cape Cods and Woodland Scenics has a small Victorian one. I made a stab at turning the old Bachmann farmhouse into a NE version by adding a steep roof to the addition and the porch:



This is the mock-up; I've got to add the extra walls under the new raised roof. With the steep roofs (for the snow) I'm hoping it looks New Englandy -- does it?

[randgust]

Here's a nice pocket guide:

http://www.historicnewengland.org/preservation/your-older-or-historic-home/architectural-style-guide

We have an historic district around here that is heavily Queen Anne, and the houses older than that period (going back to the 1820's) have a distinct federalist feel.   When I say Federalist for residential homes, the 'giveaway' at least in my mind is the roof eave returns.

http://www.thisiscarpentry.com/2013/12/13/eave-returns-interpreting-gyhr-details/

Nothing is better than modeling real houses though.  Before, it was really hard, now with Streetview and online resources, it's not all that difficult.  I was surprised to find an online catalog of architecture of every structure in Old Sturbridge Village.

[arbomambo]

Branchline trains...

http://www.branchline-trains.com/laserart-structures/commercial/commercial-n.html

have you forgotten about them?....on a par with Blair Line and Bar Mills...maybe even a little better...
they feature a number of buildings suitable for 'small town 'downtown'.
Bruce

[wazzou]

Branchline trains...

http://www.branchline-trains.com/laserart-structures/commercial/commercial-n.html

have you forgotten about them?....on a par with Blair Line and Bar Mills...maybe even a little better...
they feature a number of buildings suitable for 'small town 'downtown'.
Bruce

Really?  YMMV, but I have found the complete opposite to be true, in every case.

[arbomambo]

YMMV?...I don't know what that stands for...

I've built a number of Branchline Trains kits...very, very nice.
Loren Perry featured his Majestic theatre in a recent N scale magazine.






~Bruce

[Kisatchie]

YMMV?...I don't know what that stands for...

Your Mileage May Vary.


Hmm... I woulda never
guessed...

[arbomambo]

ahhhh....ok

[wazzou]

I've built a couple as well and the fit and finish in both were terrible.  Laser cut slots had to be re-positioned to allow for construction. 
The roofing material and 18" wide corner trim is awful, as depicted on your yellow house as well as the barn.