Interior - building system

adapted to my brewery

This appeared in Modelspoormagazine 74. More text and pictures can be found there...

When a building is close to a layout's edge, so viewers can inspect it thoroughly, building a complete and uliminated interior is recommended. I designed my own system to do this.

Of course, we can place curtains to prevent people from seeing right through a building and to give an "inhabited" look. But when a room can be viewed from two angles, you can't but give it a fully built interior.
It's possible to build this while constructing the building itself, but this causes lots of problems. When, on the other hand, you have free access to the building's bottom side, it's possible to make an "interior house" and shift it in after the building's "outside" part is constructed and painted. Because of the lights in the rooms and their wiring, it can be useful to built each floor seperately.
When building such interior boxes, you should take their aren't any obstructions while moving the box upwards inside the building. As some rooms can be seen from different angles, the windows should have interior carpentry, too.

The drawing shows a section of wall (1), with a window opening. The dark green part is the plastic outer part of the window (2), the light green part is our styrene interior "box". On the outer window part, we have a layer of "glass" (3) and the inside window part (4). To allow us to shift the box in easily, we need a smooth inside of the building. This means thickening the walls on their inside. By gluing strips of styrene with the right thickness (5), slightly thicker than the composed window sets, this is possible. In the interior box walls (6), we have to make openings, corresponding with the building's outside window openings.

This is the building I wanted to give an interior. Except for the windows, everything is built, painted and even partialy wheathered. This story explains the construction of the upper floor of this part of the rather large building, complete with lights and wiring. The other floors are built later, each floor at a time. The building's walls already got strips of 2mm thick styrene on the inside. These were placed from top to bottom to guide the interior box and keep it away from the windows while it is slided in.

Measure the building's inside carefully and construct a fitting box from 1mm sheet styrene. Don't glue this box to firmly, as we will have to dismantle it shortly. The height of the box should be the same as one floor height, minus some room for the lamps and their wiring.

This box is now shoved in the building's outer walls up to the desired height and placed horizontal. If your box is measured and made alright, it should tight-fit and hold in place. If not, some scrap bits of material can be used as wedges.

Now we can scribe the window's outlines to the box. Once this is done, pull the box back out. Before dismantling the box, mark all its pieces so re-assembling it can be done inthe right order.

After dismantling the box, the window openings can be cut and filed to shape. Re-assemble the box in two parts: one with the floor and two outer walls, the other with the ceiling and the other walls.

Let's get the windows right. Their inside parts are made from thin styrene sheet. Their form should fit the outer window parts. When having lots of similar windows, computer-printing them on adhesive paper is handy.

After cutting the window shapes, they can be painted. Now we ca nstar assembling the window sets. Start by gluing "glass" to the outer window part, while the paint of the inner part dries.

Now we can glue our own cut-out pieces to the glass...

... and the composed windows can be mounted in the building.

Back to the interior box. First, painted all the window edges black. This paint will block any light from our lamps. You can now build the dividing walls on the box's bottom part. As each room can be lit seperately, at least one side of each interior wall should be painted black.

Door openings between rooms should be cut before gluing these walls. Now the interior decorator can start his job: painting doors, installing floor tiles,... The tiles are computer-printed.

Before attaching wall paper, the window frames should be painted in a suitable color.

Wall-paper should match your era. On the internet, lots of designs can be found. After attaching the paper and window openings are cut, the paper sides should be painted in the matching colour.

After this decoration part, we can move in furniture and people. Some furniture was scratchbuilt, other came from the Preiser catalogue.

Time for the electricians. To reduce building height, I used SMD-type LEDs. Holes in the ceiling, fitting the LED's cap, were cut and painted black on their inside.

The tiny LED gets thin soldered wires. Watch the SMD's polarity, en take care not to heat the joint too long, as we solder very close to the component's core chip.

There are two types of white LEDs: warm-white and cheaper cold-light types. The latter's colour can be adjusted with a transparant paint to give a warmer colour. This paint dries very quickly, so you can add drops until you have a satisfying result.

Now the SMD kan be placing in the ceiling's opening. A drop of glue holds it in place.

Connect the wires as you like, using a resistor to reduce current to a desired level. Using some glue, the wires are fixed to the top of the box.

To imitate a ceiling armature and to diffuse the light beam, I glued a small disk of acrylic glass over the lamp.

Now the box can be closed. Some clamps hold everything in the right position while the glue sets. After drying, the box might need some sanding on its outside.

To shield any light, the entire box, except for the window opening sides, is now painted black. Especially the glued joints should get enough black paint.

Once the painted is dried thoroughly, the box can be shoved in the building to itscorrect position. Take car not to harm the wires. If nescessary, some drops of glue hold the box in place.

Viewers can no peek inside the building and discover what inhabitants are doing. With smaller buildings, you can build the entire interior as one part. Even existing buildings can get an interior this way, providing the windows can be removed without to much hastle.

See: smoke - naughty