Structure Mock-Up: Walthers Heritage Furniture Building

As I mentioned in one of my earlier posts, the second building I want to include, the Heritage Furniture kit, is a bit taller and has some tricky areas with the covered loading dock. Knowing that, I decided to try something different here and went with simple cardboard. I got that idea from another great modeling channel on YouTube: djstrains. Click here to go right to the video that shows exactly how this process works. 

Walthers Cornerstone Heritage Furniture background building.

To make this build a bit easier, I used a 3D CAD software (Unigraphics NX 9.0) to mock up the rough shape then printed off 1:1 scale views for all the outer pieces I would need to cut. Once I had the prints, I went to work cutting the pieces from recycled Froot Loops and Mini Wheats boxes. 

A look at the scale prints generated from my approximate 3D model of the structure.

The easiest thing I found to do with these was tape them down onto pieces of the cereal boxes and cut around the printed lines. This meant I was cutting through the paper and the cardboard at the same time, so it helped keep things consistent and saved me one step. 

Getting ready to tape down the 2D prints onto pieces of cardboard before cutting.

Once all the pieces were cut, it was pretty easy to assemble them. I just too some masking tape and taped the inner corners together until the full perimeter was secured. The only piece I did differently was the top. I made that out of the poster board I sued for my first mock-up. This gave the whole thing a bit more rigidity, which comes in handy as I constantly move it around trying to come up with the perfect track plan.

A look at the finished structure from the back. 

This one will not be getting any paint. I didn't even cut out all of the windows in the interest of saving time. Even without those, it will serve its purpose in helping me finalize the layout for my shelf project. I'm actually leaning towards not using this one just because of the unknowns that come with getting the clearance right. I don't want to build up my track and realize the cars won't fit into the building. We'll see though, I haven't completely made up my mind yet. 

A look at the finished mock-up on my shelf layout.

While this one may not be as nice looking as the other mock-up, it came out pretty nicely. I really like using these mock-ups before just going out and spending $30 or more on a kit that may or may not even work well with my track plan and layout. I've got one or two more of these to try before I can finish the track plan, so I'm hoping to get to those soon.