Don's Radio Shop in N Scale

I started a couple days ago, after I finished the Gorre engine house.

The rusting green sign under the MERTZ ad is for Nesbitt's Lime Soda, another Negativland joke that doesn't have much to do with Don, but what the heck. I liked it better than putting a damn Pepsi logo on my model. I like making fictional signs, and Nesbitt's has never actually made a lime soda. I altered the colors of a Nesbitt's Orange sign.

The red and yellow "Don's Radio Shop" sign and metal supports turned out nicely.

I realized this model is small enough to fit in a very inexpensive display case designed to hold baseballs.

Gorre Engine House, Pt. VI: Assembly

FINISHED!

There are a couple minor things nobody except me would notice, which I'll fix later, but overall, it turned out very nicely.

Gorre Engine House, Pt VI: First Dry-Fitting of Subassemblies

Dry-fit test. Needs about five more parts, and it should be completed this weekend.

 

Gorre Engine House Pt. V: Rafters

I finished the five center rafters on Clever Models' Gorre engine house. Each of these subassemblies consists of 11 pieces. Two more to go -- with 16 parts each -- for either end of the building. 

 

Believe it or not, this actually hurt my back a little. I assembled these on the kitchen table, which is lower than my work table, so I was hunched over for quite a while.

Stay Puft Ghost Sign

I saw the original Ghostbusters a couple days ago, and noticed a very subtle joke for the first time. In an nearly subliminal bit of foreshadowing, one of the shots shows a faded Stay Puft Marshmallow ad painted on the side of a building.

It's the second building on the left in the foreground.

I needed a break from the Gorre engine house, so I threw together a similar sign in The Gimp.

I went for a 1950s look, because I figured that was when Ray Stantz grew up. The sign in the movie looks a bit more 1930s, with a fatter version of Mr. Stay Puft. The slogan, "Stay Puft, Even When Toasted!" was apparently part of the original script, but it was cut out, and only appears in the film on the matte painting.

I'm tucking this away for future use.

Gorre Engine House, Pt. IV, Clerestory

Assembled the clerestory of the Clever Models' Gorre engine house today. Built the interior and exterior. Rather than print an entire sheet of expensive transparency film just to get eight tiny windows, I turned some leftover windows from the rest of the building sideways, and they fit nicely.

Gorre Engine House, Pt. III, Shingles

In N scale, shingles are a royal pain, particularly when you're modelling in  cardstock. It's not just that you have to make hundreds and hundreds of tiny cuts, the problem is the white edges of those cuts are nearly impossible to darken with a marker or paintbrush.


Looking around the workspace, my eyes lit on a brown paper bag. PERFECT! I took my paper cutter and sliced one side of the bag down to 8.5" x 11", put it in the printer, and got a page of shingles that looks like wood through and through!

I've finished one side. When I got done, I used my tweezers to lift randomly chosen shingles here and there, hither and yon, higgledy-piggledy, to give the roof texture.

That clear plastic case, by the way, was thrown away by a vendor at an event where I was temping. It just happens to be the perfect size for this project. Score!