I was surfing web in the warm comfort of my den when a visit to Phylis Nicklin's photo collection inspired me. She took an excellent series of photos of the Birmingham area in the 1950 and 60s. Suitably inspired by some of the modern buildings in the photos, I decided to build in something other than brick.
After inspecting my strategic reserve of plastic kits, a decision was made to use the Bralick building. A "peel" was performed to see how much of a three sided building I could wrangle from one kit. The answer was surprising- quite a lot of structure. The back and roof were constructed of Plexiglas. The local DIY store sells the stuff for replacing the glass in doors and it's cheap as far as modeling supplies go. There's a stiffener in the middle of the building and a few corner braces inside as well. You want a reasonably stiff structure or you are liable to pop windows out during handling.
The length of the Brum Building is 740 mm actual, or in 1/76 scale, a nifty 185 feet long. It's still looks to be only 2/3 the length of the prototype building and obviously only 1/3 as high.
The colour chosen to paint the darker accents on the Brum Building turned out to WWII German Luftwaffe, Dunkelbraun RLM 61. One of a large number of bottles of paint rescued from a “going out of business” sale, the color seemed to approximate what was in the photo. By the time I actually read the label and discovered I had put Luftwaffe paint on a British building, it was too late to go back…
The Brum Building still needs window glass, and I don’t even want to think about an interior right now. |
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Cool Photo! 791x539 BrumBuilding01NicklinPhoto.jpg Buy Print |
Bra Licking!?! 1280x960 BrumBuilding02.jpg Buy Print |
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Behind on the left is the Walther's Sugar Mill and on the righ is Heljan's Brewery. 1280x960 BrumBuilding04.jpg Buy Print |
YIKES! 1280x960 BrumBuilding05.jpg Buy Print |
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After painting the interior and roof flat black, the interior was stuffed with paper before the ultra white flat paint was sprayed onto the exterior. 1280x960 BrumBuilding07.jpg Buy Print |
Look what showed up in the post! 1280x960 BrumBuilding08.jpg Buy Print |
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Small rectangles of clapboard siding styrene were used for the grillwork on the small roof top facilities building. 1280x961 BrumBuilding12.jpg Buy Print |
A beer was needed after all those windows! 1280x960 BrumBuilding13.jpg Buy Print |
Standing in the grass on a summer Saturday watching the trains roll past... 1280x960 BrumBuilding14.jpg Buy Print |
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