That is...if you are looking for an inexpensive way of producing a mid twentieth century skyscraper... This is a weekend project and was completed in about 5 hours time. I always wanted a circular tower in the city but of course nothing is available like this in our scale so I had to build it from scratch.
I went to Home Depot where I found the heavy cardboard/paper tubes for pouring deck footings, etc. They range in various diameter sizes and are 4 feet tall. Cost..about $7.00. Then off to the craft store to purchase a suitable covering for the outside of the tube. I found some really nice gold foil reflecting poster board. The color reminded me of some of the reflective glass we see in our prototype buildings. I had calculated that I would need about 3 sheets ( 22" x 30" ) but bought twice that many for a future project. Cost for this project, $4.50. Finally I needed a way to simulate floors and window dividers ( mullions ). I have found that the various automotive striping tapes come in handy so I bought enough to do the planned pattern on the sides of the building...cost, $14.00. Finally, the building needed a "statement" on the top so a spare gold spray paint cap was used for the base of the illuminated tower on top. Guess what the tower is...?? It is an inverted 97 cent Walmart solar walkway light. I was going to make a tower to go on top but while my wife and I were at the Walmart garden center, she came up with the idea and found the light!! The neat thing about this is you can pry the solar panel out and just lay it on top of the roof of the building and it will recharge the battery during the day ( if you have windows in your room ) or charge the battery when the lights are on in the train room. When you turn the train room lights off, presto!!..the crown light on the building goes on!!
The construction of the skyscraper was pretty straight forward. First, I made a big mistake thinking I could use white glue to adhere the gold foil cardboard sheets to the tube. Too much water in the glue....it caused the paper to absorb some of the water and expanded the foil which ruined the first sheet.... So, I decided to use a double sticky tape and wrap the sheets around the tube. Worked like a charm! Now I had my "glass" on the building but I needed floors. Since modern buildings have various exterior designs which can vary the look of the height of each floor, I decided to separate the floors by two inches which is 8 scale feet. I used the 1/4 inch black automotive tape to do this. Then I used the 1/8th inch black automotive tape to create the vertical window pattern. An easy way to get straight divisions on a project like this is to make master templates. For the floors I simply cut a 2 inch wide piece of poster board and wrapped it around the body of the tube...taping it just tight enough to hold it in place as I used it as a straight edge for the tape as I applied it. Then I would slide it down aligning it to the tape I just applied and repeated the process. For the verticle window dividers, I simply used the tube to trace on a piece of poster board the diameter of the tube, cut it out and then I divided the poster board circle into the number of window divisions I desired. By using the seam that was created by the gold foil board, this represented an alignment point for the circle cutout. All I had to do was to align the seam with a mark on the edge of the circle cutout...do this for both the top and bottom of the tube and now I had a two aligned points for a nice straight verticle tape line. I would attach the 1/8th inch tape at the top mark and pull it somewhat taut carefully setting it down on the bottom mark. Worked great! I finished off the building by mounting the decorative tower on top and placing it within the current skyline on the south side in the city. Total cost was well under $30.00...
If you will right click on a picture, then click on "open link in new window" you will get a full page view that can be enlarged even more. Hope you enjoy the pictures!
Alan
UPDATE: More pictures posted further in the thread on 2-17....
