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NYC Fan posted:

Anyone else who has tall buildings on their layout, I love to see them!

 

Here's an overview of the Manhattan part of my layout.

Tall Buildings 01

 

This is the view of Macy's Department Store on 34th St. from the top of the Empire State Building.

Tall Buildings Tuesday 10

 

Before the Pan Am Building (now Met Life) was built in 1960, the New York Central Building was what one would see directly behind Grand Central Terminal when looking north from Park Avenue.

Tall Buildings Tuesday 11

Totalyy amazing.!!!  Worked 10 years in Manhattan.  And also many yearly visits.

coach joe posted:

Alan the "modernistic" skyscraper is very interesting.  Is it a curved rectangular prism or some sort of a tetrahedral?

The Art Deco is sweet, just needs some flourish at the tops, like the raptors atop the Chrysler Building.

Hi Joe....I am assuming you mean the one with the curved walls.  Well....let me tell you the story:  I was driving by a local second hand/antique store and I saw sitting outside their front door a display rack...you know, the kind that slides over a base/pole and then rotates.  I turned around to take a closer look and decided to park and get out to inspect this potential "skyscraper".  It turned out to be essentially three sided and basically triangular shaped display that was originally used for Remington gun parts, etc. and was made completely out of metal!  Very heavy...!   I saw some possibilities for a conversion so I negotiated an exchange of a 10 dollar bill for the display.  When I got home I slid the main display off of the pole and then went to work on removing all of the pegs that were welded on the surface of each of the three sides.  I then spray painted the entire thing with an aluminum colored base I found at my local Walmart.  I wanted to find some sort of material that would allow light to pass through that I could use to "glaze" the three large sides of the emerging building.  It occurred to me that ceiling light panels would be the way to go so a trip to Home Depot took care of that!  I cut the light panels just a little larger than the span across each face so that when I pushed them in place, the bend in them would remain so as to create the look of the curved window face you now see in the pictures.   As it turns out the pattern on the panels worked great and look like windows/ floors.  I added modified CD holders as detail elements along and up the entrance side of the building as well as on the roof.  So...now you have the whole story!!

Alan, are you sure you're not one of those Imagineers that work for Disney.  Reading your story I can now totally see the display rack heart of your skyscraper but I don't think I could have gone from A to B in my mind just by looking at the display rack.  I will admit that some of buildings have made me aware of alternative uses for many objects.

coach joe posted:

Alan, are you sure you're not one of those Imagineers that work for Disney.  Reading your story I can now totally see the display rack heart of your skyscraper but I don't think I could have gone from A to B in my mind just by looking at the display rack.  I will admit that some of buildings have made me aware of alternative uses for many objects.

Joe....anyone can do this!  What one has to do is to start looking at re-purposing objects.  I am into several different eras of railroading so I felt that my city should span a time frame architecturally from the mid-late 1940's to today.  This way I could run steam as well as first generation diesels right up to current diesels.  I wanted the skyline to have a few older structures but also have some glass walled buildings so it looked like there was progress taking place and not just set in a 10 year time span.  In order to do this, I simply could not find ready made structures that fit the bill so I began to see every vertical object as a potential skyscraper conversion.  I can tell many more stories of objects that have been turned into skyscrapers on my layout and if you start to look closely at the pictures I have posted over the years here on the forum and my Youtube channel, you will begin to notice some familiar everyday objects that have been "converted"....

NYC Fan posted:

Anyone else who has tall buildings on their layout, I love to see them!

 

Here's an overview of the Manhattan part of my layout.

Tall Buildings 01

 

This is the view of Macy's Department Store on 34th St. from the top of the Empire State Building.

Tall Buildings Tuesday 10

 

Before the Pan Am Building (now Met Life) was built in 1960, the New York Central Building was what one would see directly behind Grand Central Terminal when looking north from Park Avenue.

Tall Buildings Tuesday 11

Those are SUPERB models. Are they scratch-built?

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