What are you building now?

Fred wrote:

Brad- I'm building a city- what is your skyscrapper sources for printing
Fred

Fred, from here, using google sketch-up:

sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/cldetails?mid=d77a22926f2fe4ebe7515b537fe2fdfe

I see you have skyscrapers on a background that look awesome. I was dreaming of 30-50 story 3d 'to scale' skyscrapers.

Brad, That looks like a great site- not sure how to operate all the bells and whistles yet.
Another good site is skyscraperpage.com
You can type in the city you want and scale drawings of many buildings are shown- also gives height and that can be adjusted to Z. I've built the WORLD TRADE CENTER in Baltimore-a 5 sided scraper, and two loosely rezembling the TWIN TOWERS. with several more in various states of constriction. I've almost finished the Naval Academy Chapel, and will post pictures soon. It took way way too long to make. I just had to add detail and more.
I like PRETTY buildings, they also create an "Atmosphere".It's a neat idea to build a city- I know you like grand "Vertical Developement" and with tall mountains, and big skyscrappers, Z appears even smaller! And another thought- we can do it in Z where as the larger scales would require an open roof.
Thanks,
Fred

PS. For the backdrop and distant buildings, I might use flats, but I like the 3D effect and will keep flatz to minimum, also doing visual compression

Still building the layout. 15' by 5', about 80 feet of mainline. Gluing roadbed, lots of roadbed. Laying track, laying track, laying track. cutting flex track, filing the ends of flex track, cutting foam, cutting foam, gluing foam, soldering jumpers, solding turnout wires, drooling, dribbling, gibbering, muttering a lot to myself....

Seriously, the layout is going fine, all the engineering things are going pretty well, I just can't find enough time to get it done. I just wired up a couple of mainline blocks and powered them up. It was nice to see some trains running finally. I've got about a third of the mainline down, completed the storage yard, and a good start on the main yard. Never enough time. I'll put up some more pics soon.

Todd

We talking modern boxy skyscrapers or old art deco looking ones with big monkeys swatting airplanes? I kinda remember an article in an model RR magazine that made them out of Plexiglas and they were masked and painted or something. Somebody here wrote about using car window tinting too I believe. Might be a way to make a modern skyscraper in kit form if somebody had a laser. one solid sheet with windows cut out laid on the Plexiglas, (although it might be a pain to stick it on without distorting lines and getting glue on everything.) Should be pretty easy to make a roof with some photo etched and cast details like water towers, antennas AC units, (big boxes with a fan and grill, might find that in the N/HO section of the local hobby shop?) Maybe a helecopter on top with rotors spinning?

Another source is Posters R Us. Great city views. I got a couple of posters and then copied the skyscrappers UP to Z and made some 3D buildings.
Fred

This is the current progress on the bridge module as of November 15, 2008.

Bob, Tell us more about that beautiful bridge. Cheers, Jim CCRR:cheer:

The bridge and support peirs are uhmmmm...HO scale. The Peirs are Chooch and most of the height will be burried under ground to shorten them. The bridge is a HO single track bridge with the hand rails cut off. I'll add new hand rails from the hand rail material shown in the just posted scratch building materials photo. It's a Z Mod module.

OK, I won't tell. Cheers, Jim CCRR:)

Very Nice!