A question about bricks

[Bob]

I seek the collective wisdom of TRW members.  I am about to start assembling buildings for Harpers Ferry, and given the different styles of brick in the town (many quite old), I think the best approach is to use printed sheets and overlay these on styrene.  I can print some from Textures.com, and I have bought some good looking brick sheets.  The question is this: N scale bricks are miniscule and from a 2-3 foot viewing distance I think you can see that  a wall is brick and the color, but the detail is not so obvious.  I have some nice printed sheets in which the bricks are somewhere between 1.5 to 2 times larger than they should be.  Sometimes, it makes sense to over-size things as your eye expects to see something, like bricks.  If I use somewhat oversized bricks, how would this look?  Have any of you tried this, or do you stick to brick patterns that are the correct size for N scale?  Should I be consistent between buildings, i.e. if I use oversized bricks, then I should use them throughout?  I guess I can just make some walls with bricks at scale size and somewhat larger, and see what looks best, but I'ld love to hear from others about the approaches that they have taken.  Many thanks!
Bob

[wm3798]

My weapon of choice is Plastruct 1:200 brick sheet styrene.  I've used it on a number of projects.
The pattern is actually Flemish Bond, where there are periodic rows of brick that are laid perpendicular to the usual running bond.

I like the look of some of the printed sheet, but to me what gives brick it's character is the texture.

I still have scraps of Holgate and Reynolds brick sheet that I've had since the 80s (why didn't I buy more back then!) but the Plastruct is a pretty good substitute.

It's thin enough that you can cut it accurately with a regular blade, but it's stiff enough that you can laminate it to another layer of .010 styrene and still have a reasonably sturdy wall.  I used it in layers to build my Cumberland Station


While I didn't do the extra work of laying out brick arches and lintels at the window openings, I think from the usual viewing angle of a layout, it worked out quite well.



Plastruct brick is also available in other "scale" sizes, since they have also been a supplier to the architectural model industry over the years... so you can find others and mix and match.

For the various cut stone structures (most of the foundations in Harpers Ferry, for instance) you can get some very good embossed styrene sheet goods from The N Scale Architect.

I hope this is useful.
Lee

[wazzou]

Well, here are my thoughts on the matter.
Even though DPM or Woodland Scenics structures have a brick that is slightly oversized, they’re not alone in this.
So, with this in mind, I tend to lean toward making everything relatively close in size to what is typically commercially available, provided of course you are using some of those commercially available structures as well.
At some distance from the edge of the layout, appropriately sized printed brick tends to get washed out.
I do have a few 24” sheets of Holgate & Reynolds that I used sparingly if nearer the front edge

[peteski]

Yes, oversized bricks are often used in commercially-made N scale structure kits.  If not overly large, the texture and color, rather than their size seems to fool the human brain into accepting that they look "right".

Those H0 scale Holgate & Reynolds bricks were some of the best bricks I have used (in N scale).  Too bad those will never bee made (molds were destroyed). Here is a closeup of a scratchbuilt N scale power plant.

[SkipGear]

Vollmer is the best looking, injection molded, but a pain to work with, very thick and not very large pieces.

https://www.walthers.com/red-brick-sheet-c3d5b3

N Scale Architect is very nice but is vacu-formed and a little soft on detail. It is also very thin, only used as an overlay.

https://www.walthers.com/model-builder-s-supply-line-styrene-sheets-pkg-2-020-x-11-x-14-quot-american-bond-brick

JTT does some very similar vacu-formed sheets that they sell under 1:100 scale that do very well.

The best is to make your own......just kidding, won't ever do this again, too much time and effort involved.

[nkalanaga]

1800s and earlier brick often wasn't "standard" sized to start with, so you might find that adjacent buildings, especially in old Eastern towns, have different sized brick.  Some buildings even have different sizes, and types, on the front, sides, and rear.  I wouldn't worry too much about brick size, unless you want to model a specific building, and know the size, color, and pattern.

[ednadolski]

The pattern is actually Flemish Bond, where there are periodic rows of brick that are laid perpendicular to the usual running bond.

Would you know, what is the size/style/etc of this kind of brick (on the MRL's Paradise Depot):

[Maletrain]

I think that consistency is more important than actual scale size, at least for most of us and up to a point.

A lot of the old Walthers buildings (many of which started as Heljan) have grossly oversized bricks, compared to the more recent DPM models.  Putting those close together makes the difference obvious.  But, grouping them by themselves doesn't tend to attract attention to the difference.

Another issue is that the mortar lines between bricks are usually oversized, especially with oversized bricks, but often even with close-to-scale bricks.  To some degree, that can be minimized by not completely filling those grooves with light colored paint, so that the lines look thinner.

All of these things are relatively minor for layouts where the main priority is to landscape an operating train system, where people typically recognize what is a stock kit place on a layout, anyway.

But, these things can become critical when building dioramas for close-up photography or museum display.

For the OP, my memories of walking around Harper's Ferry and similar towns do not include noticing particularly different brick sizes.  I have measured bricks before, and realize that they were not all built to the same standards (there is even more than one standard for modern bricks).  But, it isn't really eye-catching.

The thing that really makes oversized bricks look oversized to me is when I take a close look at a human figure standing in front of a brick wall, and see that those bricks look more like cinderblocks in scale size.

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Vollmer is the best looking, injection molded, but a pain to work with, very thick and not very large pieces.

Damn, putting @Dave V on BLAST!

[Dave V]

Vollmer is the best looking, injection molded, but a pain to work with, very thick and not very large pieces.

You're goddamn right I am.

[mrhedley]

Ratio Scale Models (British company) makes brick panels that are fairly close to accurate scale.  They are an odd size (about 4" x 4" square) and very thick.  Too thick to cut with a hobby knife, they are so thick that scoring and snapping doesn't always make a clean joint.  You'll probably need a saw to cut them.  Here's how they look on a building I made. [ Guests cannot view attachments ]

[dougnelson]

Bob:  Here is a photo of my scratch-built Hunt tower.  The ground floor is printed brick sheet (Paper Creek - now gone) glued on styrene sheet.  If you are downloading and printing your own brick sheets, you should be able to scale your prints to whatever looks best.

[Bob]

I would like to thank everyone for their comments thus far - I have read them all with interest, and photos from some really impressive structures were posted.  This is really providing me with useful guidance.  TRW at its best!  THanks all - Bob

[thomasjmdavis]

I haven't built anything with it yet, but for my "station" project I've bought several sheets of N Scale Architect brick and stone. This is a thin styrene (I think) sheet, with 3D brick. They make it in several different "bonds" styles, as well as plain, modern brick, plus some larger dressed and rough stone/concrete block. My caliper tells me that it may be closer to 1/200 v 1/160 (that is, smaller than N scale), but that may be just my bifocals or bad calculation. Still, to my eye, it looks much closer to scale than the average brick walled kit.  It may seem pricey, but you get 2 10"x14" for $25.

https://thenarch.com/catalog/building-sheets/n-scale-sheets

I think that paper/cardstock brick sheet can also read well.  The one negative I've noted is that several of the makers of printed brick appear to use the same basic pattern, which is a small sample that is printed multiple times- resulting in a "checkerboard" effect when used on a larger wall surface- so OK for a small building, but the pattern stands out (at least to me) on larger surfaces.

[peteski]

I haven't built anything with it yet, but for my "station" project I've bought several sheets of N Scale Architect brick and stone. This is a thin styrene (I think) sheet, with 3D brick. They make it in several different "bonds" styles, as well as plain, modern brick, plus some larger dressed and rough stone/concrete block. My caliper tells me that it may be closer to 1/200 v 1/160 (that is, smaller than N scale), but that may be just my bifocals or bad calculation. Still, to my eye, it looks much closer to scale than the average brick walled kit.  It may seem pricey, but you get 2 10"x14" for $25.

Those are dimensionally pretty good, but the bricks look more like little domes or bubbles than bricks.