Thanks Mark! I did find this in Scenic Express' catalog and it might work, although it represents an investment that may be out of proportion to its importance. The 3-sheet set should give me reasonable coverage to give the correct impression.
I realized when I got up this morning that I may have snookered myself by gluing the 2nd floor ceiling in place yesterday since I wanted to add the vision blocks to that floor AND I wanted to work on some exterior lighting like the prototype has. I had to put the vision blocks in with the building turned upside down. Instead of over-engineering these I simply cut them out of cardboard and pasted some black construction paper on them using PSA.
To make sure it didn't interfere with the fit of the first floor diorama, I measured its height and marked that height on the side wall. Then measured the cardboard to be slightly smaller than this distance. It's glued to 2nd floor ceiling with some Aleen's.
I glued a small ceiling piece over the front door area and was debating with myself if I wanted to have any lighting in that spot and decided, "NO". The ceiling is glued to the side window which is part of the building proper. Then I glued the main store window after shimming up the back edge of the inward facing window that leads up to the front door. I double checked to see if the building would go together and not interfere with either of the window assemblies. The main window was a little distressed so I relieved its height just a tad and now it fits completely flush when the floor is at its final position. All of this nonsense is because I wanted to make the insides removable. My wife suggested tonight that I probably risked wrecking the project in my attempt to make it removable, especially since I may never have to take it apart. She may be right … often is.
Another complication which I thought about this morning, and especially since I'd blocked access from above by gluing in that 3rd floor was making it easy to tap into power for the outside lighting. I engineered a system that will enable me to power the outside lights which are part of the building by the power hookup that's part of the first floor. I cut the power cord shorter and added a junction block (Euro Style). I stripped and prepared the leads for ferrules. But before adding the ferrules, I stripped another set of leads that would go to the building's front, and put both sets of leads into eh same ferrules thereby giving me a nice parallel circuit for two more LEDs. These too will be driven by their own CL2N3 driver chip and being parallel will enable to me to add more LEDs without reaching the voltage limit of a single series circuit. I then connected the main power lead to the other side of the junction block and led it out of the floor. The diorama is laying on its side with the base to the right.
Then, in my usual over-engineering mode, I wanted another junction nearer to the front where the outdoor lighting leads would connect. Had I thought this through, I could have eliminated the need for the first junction by simply making the front junction the only one and using that for the voltage tap. 20/20 hindsight. That's servo tape holding the junction blocks in place.
So… I'll be able to slide out the diorama and then disconnect the power to the outdoor lighting, again making it so the interior will be completely removable.
My last thing was to start building the front doors. As with everything else with this model, my laser-cut door pieces were too wide, so I'm scratch-building those too. As this pic was taken, I still need to cut out the white part, glaze the door and add the back framing.
