Building flats serve a useful operational role when it comes to representing an industry. However, they tend to break down visually when you can’t see most of the structure side. On occasion I’ll get around this by installing small shelf on the fascia so you can add more depth to the structure while still maintaining aisle widths for the most part. Make sure you extend the shelf a little beyond the length of the building for photographic purposes.
With photo laminates, having a solid core is crucial. I’ve learned the hard way that styrene can get “wiggly” over time. For General Ship Repair I built the core using aluminum bar stock. Spacers were placed inside out of 1 x 2 pvc wood. The ends and roof crown were made of .060″ styrene. Roofs have a tendency to sag. Aluminum yardsticks only cost a few dollars, are solid, and easy to cut so I used those.
Here’s the finished core with the rules in place on the roof.
….and here’s a view from beneath. Traditional CA was used for the adhesive. All done. Solid as a rock!
General Ship Repair in Baltimore is a perfect fit for the pier opposite the car float. It’s taken me the better part of the weekend to do the photo shopping of the wallpaper but that part is almost done.
This weekend’s work completes the car float, pontoon float bridge, and vegetation on the pier yard. The car float is an un-modified Sylvan kit. The float bridge is a simple scratch build using styrene, an Atlas girder bridge, and assorted scraps and details from the scrap bin.
Here’s an overhead view of the finished area.
Last weekend the focus was on assembling the Sylvan car float and pontoon style float bridge. Volume 2 of the Flagg books really came in handy. One of the advantages of modeling a NY harbor theme is that there is so much information out there and so many selfless people willing to share it.