Tall Buildings Tuesday

How about these?.....

Happy Hump-Day Wednesday,

Carey - The GCT looks great on your layout.

Alan is that a revolving restaurant or just an observation deck in the center top of the first picture?  What did you use to fabricate it?

Fantastic scends, my tallest building is a two story milk plant, light towers and water towers don't count

Ray

Skip, your RCA buildng brings back memories, my first Industral Enginering job out of school at RCA's  I/C Somerville NJ  plant. 

A view from the Empire State Building.

Dr. Jack posted:

Skip, your RCA buildng brings back memories, my first Industral Enginering job out of school at RCA's  I/C Somerville NJ  plant. 

I have my Dad's old RCA Strato-World Radio in my office. Love the sound of an old tube radio. Can use a little work but the FAN and CBS AM come in clear as a bell.

I had the pleasure of knowing two gentlemen and fellow train collectors who worked of RCA in the RCA building.

Milton Walsh was a charter member of the TCA who worked for RCA in the 40's and 50's and moonlighted as a repair man in Carmen Webster's train store on 45th Street I believe. When Carmen closed shop Milton bought all of the Lionel repair parts including the cabinets and set them up in his basement in Ossining, NY. He did several repairs for me on my post-war trains and charged me whatever the original price was on the original Lionel envelope. We were friends up until his death in the late 80's or early 90's.

Eddie Murphy was an electrician in the RCA Building who used to string the lights for the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree back in the 50's and 60's. Eddie was a great guy and I used to see him at the York Train Meet. We kept in touch by email until I got word from his wife that he had passed away. I still have a cookie tin of Christmas lights Eddie gave me that were used on the RC tree.

coach joe posted:

Alan is that a revolving restaurant or just an observation deck in the center top of the first picture?  What did you use to fabricate it?

Great catch there Joe!...it is in fact supposed to represent a revolving restaurant.  In reality, it is an old non-functioning smoke alarm...LOL!

How about this:  (don't forget to click on the picture for a nice detailed large size....)

I really don’t have a lot of room for tall buildings, but I did just add a GGD Coaling Tower to my layout (Beth Marshall at Public Delivery Track had a great deal on these a couple of weeks ago). This is one beautiful building. It is really tall (for me, anyway). The Todd Architectural flat against the back wall is a Scale 5-story building, and the tower is taller. Wouldn’t want to climb to the top of the tower!!!

OGR CEO-PUBLISHER posted:

coach joe posted:

Alan is that a revolving restaurant or just an observation deck in the center top of the first picture?  What did you use to fabricate it?

Great catch there Joe!...it is in fact supposed to represent a revolving restaurant.  In reality, it is an old non-functioning smoke alarm...LOL!

OK... that is one great scrounge (or recycle if you prefer). @M. Mitchell Marmel would be proud!!!

Skip and Alan, absolutely great skyscrapers.

Alan two questions if I may; did you have to cut all the windows into the restaurant or was that just the design of the smoke detector and is that an N gauge water tower on the lift bridge?

OGR CEO-PUBLISHER posted:

How about this:  (don't forget to click on the picture for a nice detailed large size....)

Most impressive!!!!  WOW!!!

coach joe posted:

Skip and Alan, absolutely great skyscrapers.

Alan two questions if I may; did you have to cut all the windows into the restaurant or was that just the design of the smoke detector and is that an N gauge water tower on the lift bridge?

Hi Joe....The smoke detector is very old...probably at least 20 or more years...  It was an AMWAY product (the long time multi-marketing company) and what you see is the exact design.  All I did was to add to the "top" of it with a plastic lid and golf tee.

The water tower on the lift bridge is an HO model with a red flashing light.  I thought it looked good and added a little depth to the scene even though it may not be completely prototypical....

Ah....gold and silver...my two favorite precious metals...ah, I mean window colors...

Alan are the silver and gold windows colored plastic, mirror, foil over substrate a combination of any or all?

coach joe posted:

Alan are the silver and gold windows colored plastic, mirror, foil over substrate a combination of any or all?

Joe....you are correct, the windows are a combination of all of the above.  The gold tower is made from foam core board covered in a sticky sided reflective foil which I found in the wall paper department of a local home improvement store.  The silver mirrored building next to it is made up of four 4 foot long dressing mirrors that are marketed to be used on the back of either bathroom or closet doors.  The floor divisions on both buildings are various kinds of electrical and automotive striping tapes.

The 7th Ave side of Macy's on 34th St.

Good Morning everyone!  Here is one of the "Modernistic" skyscrapers downtown:

Give me the steam era buildings Looks great BTW Skip & Alan.

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.

 

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

 

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.

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

Time for Tall Building Tuesday! (and any other structure YOU consider tall for your layout!)....

Here is an art deco style skyscraper on my layout built from several American Skyline kits....

NYC Fan posted:

The 7th Ave side of Macy's on 34th St.

That is just a fantastic scene! Unbelievable modeling. Just as I think I remember it when in NYC.

FYI, for those fans of Bethlehem Steel, Martin Tower - the last HQ- may be imploded by the end of April or May. 

Get your pictures now while you can.

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.

I would like to try scratch building  some tall buildings and other buildings. What do you guys generally use as building material ?? I also thought about kit bashing some. What are the best kits for that??

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!!

OGR CEO-PUBLISHER posted:

I am assuming you mean the one with the curved walls.

 

Reminds me of something from The Fountainhead.

Love it!

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.

 

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

 

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.

Those are SUPERB models. Are they scratch-built?

Happy Tall Building Tuesday!

Yep...it is tall building Tuesday already...again!!  Here is the Ameritowne Hotel surrounded by the encroaching steel and glass forest!

Latest view of downtown with "south" town behind it against the wall....

Time for Tall Building Tuesday!!....here are a couple of pictures of the "Scott Building" in the south town area of the city.  This structure is a combination of a couple of pre-war Scott Bilt E-Z tin building sets I purchased on Ebay...

Very interesting architecture Alan.

Headquarters building for “South Fork Railroad”

OGR CEO-PUBLISHER posted:

Time for Tall Building Tuesday!!....here are a couple of pictures of the "Scott Building" in the south town area of the city.  This structure is a combination of a couple of pre-war Scott Bilt E-Z tin building sets I purchased on Ebay...

Now that is some interesting architecture.

Where's Skip???.....It is time for Tall Building Tuesday!  Here are a couple of early morning shots in the city as the sun is rising:

Here are a couple of the OGR World Headquarters Building....