Building Plans

Huh?

Trainhead - I will try to answer but really it can't be done.  I use too many too list. I use basswood and poplar wood as well as some cabinet-grade plywood a lot.  Evergreen and Plastruck plastic sheets and rods, etc.  I really like to bash buildings from Ameritown panels: I buy entire kits because it is chepaer than building individual panels, and have about 30 three-story panels in my workshop onr on order for projects I am currently doing, including the hotel shown below and about eight feet of backdrop fronts I am making.  

I use Plastruck Plastic Cement and Testors glue, and various paints, both water-based latex and oil, spray and brush on.  

Well, when I bash or build from scratch, as now, I design a plan just for the building, but the plan consists of an idea carefully worked on in drawing, as below, and then I just wing it while in the workshop.  There will be no plan beyond this.    This is the Imperial Hotel which is designed to fit a very strangely shaped parcel on my layout.  It will be about 14 by 12 inches deep and wide, respectively, and about 13 inches high at the very tip of its towers.  I will make it out of Ameritown panels and Evergreen plastic sheets which I will cut up and assemble something like a puzzle. 

My best advice is to study what materials others use here, what is available (going to a large LHS and looking carefully at scenery and building material helps) and then just jumping it and trying.  Over the years, I started out with kits, then lightly basehd them, then heavily bashed, now most scratch-build. 

 This is the footprint of the building, 14 by 12 inches roughly.

Front elevation will look something like this, not sure if I will paint the brick gray, brown or red brick though.  I'll know only when I see the building in rough form. 

Trainhead:

Besides this forum best thing to do is purcahse some books. Kalmbach has an extensive list of paperbacks on this subject that are mostly $20 each.

http://www.kalmbachstore.com/m...ilroading-books.html

Trainhead,

i think that Lee explained a lot of the randomness that happens.  Much of it comes form looking at what other have created, looking at what is out in the real world that we would like to create and then figuring out how to do it for the layout yu are working on. 

I built a bunch of. Are stock buildings mounted on foam core.  Some were pre printed kits that I bashed or built the kit. Certa only mounting them on foam core was not typical.  I also made a few flats with foam core on my own.  

The parts in Ameritown kits and DPM kits makes it easy to conceive of unique structures for a more detailed look. 

Follw the the Sunday scenery showcase and you will see how things are done.

Many of mine of published in O Scale Trains and contain both plans and lists of materials.

There is a lot of useful information in this link:

https://ogrforum.com/t...20#38596414994349120

Thank you all....this was very helpful advise!