I will start 2014 with a positive attitude and remodel the slum into an area inspired be the north side of S. Blue Island Ave between S. Leavitt St and S. Paulina St. in Chicago.

First steps completed are
- Remove all six 6 level buildings
- Remove all window covers representing abounded buildings from remaining six 2-level and one 3-level story building
- Remove covers from KFC windows (A CPD patrol car has an eye on it )
- Remove car wrecks from the street
- Populate streets with nicer cars

The free lots will be populated with small one level industries found everywhere in the US and also along S. Blue Island Ave in Chicago.
https://maps.google.de/maps?q=chicago+il...e&t=h&z=20
I modeled similars from prototypes in the warehouse district of LA some time ago.

It's fun to watch how you create such an awesome scene and then destroy it for another!!!!!

Looking forward to watching the neighborhood get revitalized.....

scubadude Wrote:It's fun to ....

Richard, that is exactly what I am doing/having!

That little CIRY engine had a bad xmas. I made a new wash and put it in the cabinet. Later that night the 1208 should get a black wash. I got the bottle, a brush and made the first stroke. Nothing happened... may be I made the wash to light? Ok, another deeper dip in the bottle and another stroke on the hood. The hood turned solid black
The bottle was fresh unused black paint with all the solvent (like water) on top covering the black paint.... I interchanged the bottles
Don't ask me why I did not label the new wash immediately....

The engine got disassembled and a nice bath in solvent. I toke the chance and got a new rattle can when the shops opened after xmas with a darker blue better matching the standard blue of CIRY (the ditch lights are still the old light blue).

That's a sharp looking switcher!

scubadude Wrote:It's fun to watch how you create such an awesome scene and then destroy it for another!!!!!

Looking forward to watching the neighborhood get revitalized.....

I like the urban decay..Reminds me of some areas of the cities I been in while railfaning.I was in/out like a ghost.

Well the cahnges are bit suprising but I like the move, as it is nice to have the streets back to life. Perhaps you could arrnage the old high six story buildings as a scene near by, like some old upper class district where the business have moved to more lucrative areas. A bit of worn out street and perhaps signs of trollley track, you would be dead on. As allways, wheter it is Cjigago, east coasr, farming lands and the busy L.A, you have the great Eye for the scenes and all combined it is nice to see how well your track plan works in these various enviroments! Love to follow these threads and the modelling too! Happy New Year wishes from Sweden!

I have long term plans for the Texas & Atlantic to let the buildings and scenery to age and evolve as they would in the real world...smaller trees grow into larger ones, brick red Main St buildings from the early 1900s get fresh coats of paint as they turn into small shops in the "arts district", a block of shops are bought and a modern era Multi story office building takes its place, etc...

This is the kind of simple buildings found in the Cermak Rd vicinity that are candidates for my layout. Screen captures from Streetview may be a nice base for the fronts. Looks like it is an Hispanic dominated area. Most shops have Spanish advertising.




ps. The litter and the weed is glued with a not water solvable general purpose glue (UHU) on painted blue foam. I am afraid the litter and weed has to stay on the layout or the soft blue foam sidewalks and streets will suffer badly.

The fun bit of that last picture Reinhard is almost as if it's taken out of a car window, I know it's the plexiglass on your layout fascia :-)

Ah yes UHU glue, i used to use that for everything when I was a child and in my teens, before I discovered the water soluble methods like white glue with water etc (a friend of mine at the time pointed me to the scenery book by Dave Frary, which opened up a whole new world of techniques to me :-) ).

Koos

I am giving it a serious try to do fronts from Street View captures. This one is made of three layers printout and card board.
Layer 1 : Doors and windows
Layer 2 : Brickwall
Layer 3 : The electric equipment over the roller gate, lamp and sign


Last detail is the security gate (brass) and the rail (styrene)

The second building front based on a Street View image.
That concludes my 2013 model railroad session.



First task in 2014 will be to transform fronts into buildings.

Reinhard,I'm looking forward in seeing the changes.. I know they will be interesting.

My wife got a nasty cold and new years eve became more or less a nursing and railroad eve...

I really like your street view 'screen capture laminating' technique. I have been thinking of doing the same. However I have not yet been able to get good photo's of buildings in my modeling area, a lot of them are a bit too far of the main road, so that they don't show big enough for me to capture, I'll have to keep going round a bit more to see if I can find some more

Koos

The side walls are a bigger problem than the fronts. This little photo shows the front bricks on the left and the bricks used at the side wall on the right. I can not find any commercial available bricks on card board or styrene to mimic that kind of wall. Styrene is more robust and gets closer to the prototype if treated real harsh but printed brick card board is far to beautiful.

The side is often in a much worse condition making it even more complicated to find reasonable sheets of brick to be used.


The building from last night has sides made from Faller N 2568 (right side) plus massive black wash. I will use Vollmer 6042 (left side) today

A mortal wash on the Vollmer bricks. The card board bricks are not a good ground for mortal wash because they are to flat. Anyhow is adds the light gray touch typical for the side walls.


ps. There is one extreme expensive wood and and one molded brick wall available that would match much better. But the price can not be justified for simple side walls only.