I was hoping to use the Christmas holiday to work on my layout. I finally realized why so many of my fellow modelers elect to use prefabricated structures instead of building them from scratch. The amount of detail required for each structure would take several lifetimes to finish manually.
I had some ideas for the station structure and thought creating mock-ups using cardboard would help visualize how it would look before starting on the final plastic version. Cardboard is far easier to work with than styrene. It took an hour to create the first prototype. I didn't spend effort adding architectural detail knowing it would be replaced by a styrene version if it turned out to be acceptable. I conceded defeat after seeing the first prototype. There was no way I could add sufficient detail that would meet my unrealistic architectural expectations. So I went online and ordered the Baden-Baden station made by Vollmer. Unfortunately it won't arrive in the post until next week when I'm back at work. I may decide to build my own station sometime in the future, but only when 3D printing becomes more affordable.
However, I did like the use of cardboard mock-ups to quickly visualize things. I think I'll continue to use this technique when designing new layout plans in the future. Here's to a new year of modeling. Happy New Year!
I had some ideas for the station structure and thought creating mock-ups using cardboard would help visualize how it would look before starting on the final plastic version. Cardboard is far easier to work with than styrene. It took an hour to create the first prototype. I didn't spend effort adding architectural detail knowing it would be replaced by a styrene version if it turned out to be acceptable. I conceded defeat after seeing the first prototype. There was no way I could add sufficient detail that would meet my unrealistic architectural expectations. So I went online and ordered the Baden-Baden station made by Vollmer. Unfortunately it won't arrive in the post until next week when I'm back at work. I may decide to build my own station sometime in the future, but only when 3D printing becomes more affordable.However, I did like the use of cardboard mock-ups to quickly visualize things. I think I'll continue to use this technique when designing new layout plans in the future. Here's to a new year of modeling. Happy New Year!
