Hotel Royale - Ready for Installation
Entry posted by D869
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Work continues to get the layout ready for the Nottingham show. For my own part I've finally completed work on the Hotel Royale and its neighbouring houses.
As those who know the real thing may notice, I have omitted the glazed 'sun deck' over the entrance that existed in the 1960s and 70s and backdated the building to its original form. Due to lack of photos, I have had to speculate a little on how the entrance might have looked before this was added. In particular I have assumed that the big beam that is present today was added to hold up the 'sun deck' and was not part of the original structure. The two shop fronts on the ground floor of each wing may seem very odd (they do to me), but I have a 1960s photo and this is exactly what was there - both of them apparently without any sign of being active business premises.
I found this quite an interesting building to get to know. When I look at the model on its own it makes me think of Miami or some of the posh flats in north London. When I plug the cottages onto the side of it it takes on a quite different character - rather making me wonder who thought it was a good idea to plonk a big art deco building into the middle of a street of more typically Cornish houses. I am also puzzled by the two shop fronts - if anything they seem even more out of place than the building itself. My theory is that they are evidence of the aspirations of the people who built the hotel - to turn the area into a modern hotel and shopping district, but then a certain Austrian decided to invade Poland and the rest is history.
One of the reasons that it took so long is that I got rather bogged down with the internal walls. The intention is that the building will be lit at some point in the future so it needs a reasonably full set of internal walls and floors, plus provision to allow the light into the relevant rooms. This all had to be done in a way that allowed access to install glazing, interior detail and so on, so all of the internal stuff is made as a set of removeable boxes - 21 of them in all. I had planned to lay out all of the internal stuff for a photo but having persuaded them all to go into the building I didn't really want to take them out again. Here's a photo from the back of the building (which is close to the backscene) so that you can see how it all fits together.
Other members have contributed more buildings than I have, but persuading them to write about it is another matter...
Edit... in answer to Pete's question about how the windows are made...
The windows are done using the Bob Moore pen and Humbrol gloss 41 paint. To get everything evenly spaced I made some stepped jigs from plastikard. The principle is simple - line everything up against the graph paper below the glass, put the steps on the steel ruler. Put the (bevelled) plastikard ruler on the top step and rule the first line. Move the steps outward and repeat. In two sessions with the pen I get a big sheet of windows.
There were quite a lot of rejects - mainly whole sheets that went wrong because the paint spread into a blurry line for some reason. I have no idea why because it was the same paint, same sheet of clear sheet and the same pen. In the end I bought a new sheet and the problem went away.
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