Finding large structures in HO scale for my Avenue project is a challenge. Most buildings in 1:87 are rather small to leave as much space as possible to trains on the typical model railroad layout.
Walthers have a wonderful kit in their catalog in the Cornerstone series #3466 called Argosy Booksellers. The kit seems to be the premier kit in their Main Street USA series, that include several nice, but rather small, buildings.
A great thing about the kit is th great sign for a bookshop at the ground floor. I added some more bookshelves near the windows as well as an elderly gentleman browsing. The shelves and the wooden floor are printouts from Scalescenes.
The signs included in the kit allows you to easily dress up the windows. This sign is most useful for explaining the emptyness that seems to plague the insides of most model buildings. 🙂
All parts of the kit was treated with washes and later highlighted with drybrushes during the building process to bring out the many fine details.
I added another figure, that attempts to deal with the model loneliness in his own way. In my experience, adding too much interior to normal HO scale buildings is usually not necessary, because very little can be seen from the outside, unless lights are added inside.
Even the rear of the building is relatively well detailed, making this kit a pleasure to build.
The next step will be to place the building on a wooden base similar to the Bachmann Spectrum City Scenes hotel and add a sidewalk as well as posters, commercials and other details to spice up the building.
With its many fine details, it will make a great addition to my avenue, perhaps playing the part of an old and smaller building in an expanding neighbourhood.
The building on the corner in the left side of the image seems to be of a similar type on this photo of Columbus Circle in NYC in 1920. Now I only need to build the beautiful scyscraper behind it! 🙂
Epoch 