Ready for the Bindery's Interior

Framed out the interior, walls up, floors sanded and sealed but wanted to retain the essence of the original  bindery.

Interior walls up. Used Scalescenes' clapboard for floors and walls, but in n-scale to make it finer,
less like the exterior of a structure.

Doors are from Gleimo, a Germany card modeling vendor/site. Sadly no longer around and I lost
all my original downloads when my drive crashed...

Looking in from the street. This is one of the very few structures I have with interiors.
As the sun never sets, and it's always summery, no real point fiddling with interiors.

Looking in to get a sense of the space.

Overhead view of the space. There is a toilet and wet room on the other side of that diagonal wall,
Also stairs to the 2nd level where the binder Gertrud Jannowitz will live.

Now comes the hard work of detailing the interior with shelves, benches, storage, a desk, stools, a board shear, presses... We'll see how I make it work. 

Construction on the Bookbindery Begins

 A week or so ago, I shared my initial ideation for adding a bookbindery to my Papphausen layout. Well, today my "journeyman" Fritz Otto began taking measurements onsite and figuring out how best to fit the structure on the oddly shaped site.

The site. The pigeon shack will move, as will some of a tenant's BMW 2002 collection.

Measuring with a printout of the facade scaled to 1:87.
The woman in the yellow dress will be working  in the bindery when completed.

An overhead view with the Rhein-Ruhr S-Bahn passing above.

The bindery where I apprenticed in Gelsenkirchen will serve as a model for the interior if I can
pull off scaling them down to some form of viable 1:87.
Otherwise, flat printouts cut to the contours will be glued in place at various depths
to give the illusion like a "peep show" or "tunnel book".

Facade elements isolated in Photoshop.

Elements pasted onto a scaled pattern sheet from Scalescenes. Once the primary image is mounted,
windows, doors, and other details get cut out, new images get mounted,
and all is layered to build depth.

Mounting the door, so it can be set behind the facade.

Rubbing down the threshold after putting the door in place.

Rubbing down the window sills.

Gluing the clear lower window in place. The upper will be opaque.

Just taking a look to see how it's coming. Ok?

VERY loosely positioned on the building site.
The binder is standing in front and having her picture taken... For the local paper?

The same from a different angle.

Made a lot of progress on a lazy day. Still need to figure out the roof and interior. The latter can be added later if the roof is made removable.

Foreground Flats

Wolfgang Krolow

Facade without a building, Berlin Kreuzberg, late 1970s/ early 1980s

From the Betonbabe tumblr.

New (Re)Construction 3

Well, almost a year to the day and I've finally gotten back to working on this corner of the layout. Didn't touch it since last January in terms of building, scenery, ... Below several shots from today with more. As always, still more detailing to do and then off to other areas... Also swapped out my DR stock for DB stock late last summer... Not much else happening here as I seem to have been focusing on my binding/book arts work for the past year and a half or so. Still, use lots of cardboard/paper in both.

Street front view

Detail with view of the Bude (kiosk) where we used to get the beer for my Opa and Haribo for ourselves...

Here the real thing on the Kölnerstr. in Duisburg...

Heading 'round the corner...

Hinterhof. Still some vegetable beds and other details to put in.

And pulling back a bit more to show the speeding BR94 borrrowed back from the G.B.A.G. by the DB...

New (Re)Construction 2

Spent more time this weekend working and got the roofs and numerous other details done. Next steps are weathering, then re-doing the sidewalks as well as the hinterhöfe (back yards). The space is tighter than I want it to be so the trick will be not overloading the scene.

That said, I'm really liking the way these are looking and how everything is falling in place.

More when everything is done.

New (Re)Construction

Making good use of time at home over Christmas, I decided to start my own reko program by beginning to reconstruct and update parts of the main layout and the switching puzzle. First area of focus was the harbor area where the Schreiber card models I built almost 10 years ago were slated for demolition to be replaced with more milieu appropriate and to scale scale structures. Below a view of the area as it existed until 1 hour ago...


And here the test placement of the new structures, also build of card. The one on the right is a heavily modified Stipp/Auhagen background model, the one on the left is entirely scratchbuilt using various sources for the facade, windows, kiosk... The kiosk (Bude) exists on the Kölner Strasse in Duisburg and is where we used to go for sweets and my Opa's Bier - König Pilsner of course, never-mind the Diebels sign above.

Here a view of the backside... The structure on the right will receive basic balconies, the one on the left still needs the windows... After that detailing the back yard (Hinterhof) with vegetable garden, rabbit stalls, and detritus... All will be walled/fenced in. After that, everything gets a good coat of grime...



Also built an air raid shelter that has been de-militarized with windows blasted through the walls. This will become a disco or some such thing, one of the current uses for the structures - VERY soundproof. Lots of grime still to be added, as well as roof details...


Concurrently, I am replacing the background models on the switching puzzle. These were damaged over the years as a result of taking to shows and loading in and out of the car. The background will also be replaced. Below a before and in progress shot...

Back to work...

The corner...

Also been working on this desolate corner that has been in need of attention for a l o n g time now. The "fachwerk" style firehouse in the corner will stay but low relief models of a more (post) industrial nature will flank it, also extending down the left side parallel to the track. Built a few facades out of card from scratch using patterned papers from Scalescenes as well as modified images from Jowi background image CD. The seams on the backdrop are individual panels that can be removed for easy access to the layout from the back. A must!

Above, the corner as it was...

The corner with low relief and flat structures added. A gasometer will be added off the left edge of the image once I do more with the scenery, i.e. trees and shrubs...

This old industrial structure is in the process of being transformed into an arts center, a sign of the ongoing "strukturwandel" in the region that sees heavy industries being replaced by service industries and other alternatives. Though made of card from a photographic image, there are about four layers to the structure giving a good deal of relief to it.

There will still be more tweaks over time...