The view through the door into my office/layout room. What is that taped to the wall?
Doing some cleanup today in the layout room, I came across some print outs of things I had pulled together while initially researching the prototype for the layout and looking for information on Liberty Village. One of them, was an HO Scale Printout of the Brunswick Balke Collender factory building. This will be a prominent structure when you walk into the layout room as it will be right in front of you. I am going to be able to accommodate the full south wall of the building to scale, though it will be more or less a flat against the wall (as most buildings on the layout will be).
A structure for the layout (I know, a stretch), but it’s to scale, and even more or less at the right height without the foam on the benchwork!
Another baby step forward in building the layout, and one that helps me immensely in figuring out how high the backdrop needs to be to work having a sense of building heights in place.
Musings on my Model Railroading Addiction 
I love how fast this is progressing.
Will you be building or using photographs for your buildings?
I’m currently trying a Dave Warren approach by making mock-up with gator board (a post on Achievable Layouts introduced me to his philosophy) but eventually I want to replace that with layered photos of buildings in the area. I’m hoping for a nice overcast day with a full charged camera to capture the essentials (Mowatt Avenue being the most iconic) and then translating all that with photo editing software.
I will be building everything out of wood/plastic/3d printed parts as three dimensional structures. That’s one of the parts I am most looking forward to beyond just the ability to run trains again. Once the trackwork is in place, and scenery has started, I intend to do what you are describing and create foam core/modellers board temporary structures. They will serve a couple of purposes, make it look OK for early operating sessions, but also let me work on visualizing and adjusting the fit of the buildings and any selective compression prior to actually starting construction.
I look forward to seeing what you do with the buildings in the area as well.
Stephen