Starting the drawing process for two more buildings

No sooner have I made progress with one actual construction project, was I back at it with the drawing work on the next two buildings for the layout. Progress breeds progress, it certainly didn’t hurt last weekend to have the Daytona 24 Hour car race to watch and keep me motivated and at home.

First up, the last part of Toronto Carpet, the southern end of Building 7. Only a few bays make it on my layout, but it is hopefully going to be a signature building on the west end of the layout. Lots of windows, a lot of different styles (I think my count was 15 distinct sizes/shapes), and some great architectural detail. I have drawn a couple of the windows for 3D printing masters to make resin castings from. I need to get onto the work of finishing them and ordering a print for making molds, but that’s a motivation and time issue more than a skill one.

CAD Work, my working sketch, and a picture of the south elevation today.

The second building, will anchor the western corner of the layout, and again sadly is only a very small part of the building. While it is much less fancy than the Toronto Carpet, it has its own unique elements in the details, and the large hexagonal chimney will stand out. The portion of the Canadian General Electric plant has posed its fair share of challenges. Doing this without drawings is a fun challenge. Counting bricks to get heights and widths. As you can see below, it took me a long time to get the roof line to feel right. I realized the issue is the end parapet wall is higher than the side walls, once I adjusted for this, the height I needed with the right pitch appeared. For this building, in looking through my parts bins, I have either previously decided or have just got damn lucky, and have windows that are right or close enough to right to do this building with a selection of Grandt Line and Tichy windows. I needed a couple more sets of one type, but those are ordered and on their way.

Working hard to get the roofline of the eastern elevation of the Canadian General Electric plant, checking scale with the cast hydrocal chimney, and the building today.

I also did some very rough sketching of the other two buildings which are not yet started on the peninsula of the layout. Both are large, one, the Gillett Company Factory is the largest structure on the layout, at 38″ long, but only 2-6″ deep! The second, the Gillett Mill, elevator and power house, is actually the only complete structure with no compression on my layout, everything else has 3 sides and is against the backdrop or the layout edge. The only other structure with four walls is compressed to fit in the Brunswick Balke Collender powerhouse! The Mill will be its full real world footprint. The sketching has allowed me to get an estimate of how much styrene I need for the buildings, the answer, more than I have, but less than I thought. I will buy some more big sheets in the next week or two so I can at least start cutting cores for these buildings while I work on windows for them both.