Tom Flagg’s New York Harbor books are a virtual goldmine of ideas. It seems every time I go through them I notice something else. Helping the cause is the outstanding print quality Morning Sun Books brings to the effort. The images are so razor sharp they can be scanned and used for modeling.

A few weeks ago I was browsing through Volume 2 and noticed a great full page shot of Bay Ridge tower looking shotgun style down the yard towards the float bridges. I have a similar scene on the layout so a proto freelance version of the tower would be a nice feature. Here’s how I pulled it together.

Here’s the picture I started with from page 97 of the book. At a full page and with such high resolution there was a lot to work with. The first step was scanning the image.

After many hours of photo shop work I converted the book image to what you see above. The door is from my “wooden door library”. Note the Bush Terminal logo. above the door which was photo shopped in.

I printed out two copies of the images. One was left glossy, the other was dulled and the windows cut out. I then placed and adhered the dulled image on top of the glossy one so you could see the windows. The wallpaper was then glued to a styrene cube of the appropriate size.

The final step is adding 3D stand off details. At only an inch in length, the bay window was tricky and took a full afternoon to build. It’s one of those projects where you put on the coffee, turn off your phone, and concentrate. The windows are from Tichy, the rest is scribed styrene. Glazing was added and then the window blinds.

Final details included the door awning, electrical conduit, and window sills made from .020″ x .040″ styrene.