I know, long time no post. I've been keeping busy with my American theme home layout but with another 5 day long exhibit of the AsiaNrail layout coming up at Hiller Aviation Museum in April I wanted to finish a few more things on the modules.
This Kato office building was one of the first Japanese buildings I bought back around 2009 but never finished. A couple of years ago I did get around to painting it to get rid of the plastic look. Now I want to get rid of the vacant look.
The Kato part number is 23-435 and they are still available. These buildings are particularly well designed, have interior walls, and can be easily made taller or shorter 2 floors at a time. I'm leaving this one at it's stock 6 floor height.
I decided that I wanted to light and detail the lowest 2 floors. The ground floor was going to be a convenience store and the base already had detail for a restaurant so I cut that off with a hack saw.
The base got a new floor and wall arrangement to resemble a small convenience store. Shelves and counter were made from scraps of styrene and printouts of on line photos pasted to the shelves.
The 2nd floor was going to be a pizza restaurant and the interior for that was built on the existing 2nd floor insert that is part of the kit. Most of the fixtures were scratch built and the chairs came from a Pieser set.
The upper floors windows got blinds printed out on paper, taped to the inside of the windows and set at various heights. The upper floors businesses include a music school, an optometrists, a language school, and a dental clinic. The signs were created using Google translate, then copying the Japanese text into Microsoft Visio where it can be edited for size and color. Background color and any graphics are also added then printed out on plain paper. Glossy package tape was used to give the signs some shine then they were pasted on styrene strip.
Here is a closeup of the floors with interior detail. Two surface mount LEDs were used on each floor. The restaurant has warm spectrum LEDs and the convenience store has white LEDs.
Here is the completed building back on the module. I added that billboard sign on the side of the building from a image I found on the internet. The type of glue featured in the ad is the same as what I used to paste some of the paper parts of this project.
The vertical signs on the front of the building were made the same way as the signs that are above each window then pasted to each side of a strip of styrene.
