Other Details for the Diorama
Updated:
As the old saying goes, the Devil's in the details and here is where I'm putting the ones that are not directly involved with a building or are not one hundred percent decided upon yet.
Here are some of the vehicles I plan on using in the diorama. I will have a page dedicated to some of them at a later date.
1977 Ford Courier. I'm not 100% sure on which version this will be built as, the "Free Wheeling Pickup" or the "Mini Van", so I'll update this later. When the build starts, I'll put a link here.
Early Jeep CJ. I don't know the year of the Jeep as it doesn't say on the box. I believe it is from the 50's or early 60's though. I'm thinking this will be a cool beach cruiser when I'm done.
This is a Pop Up camper I am building from scratch. I got the idea while drawing out patterns of the camper that started the discussion and helped form the idea of building the campground diorama. I'm working on this while I'm letting the details on the buildings dry, so progress is going to be slow.
Once the pop up is done, I will be starting on making the full camper that started all of this mess. Since I can not get another copy of the camper if I mess it up, I'm going to be using the one I have as a pattern to cut out new panels from sheet stock. If I decide to at a later date, I can also build more campers using the original pattern since I am not using the originals to build the model.
I also have a 1978 Chevette that I will be building as the store clerk's car and a 1996 Ford Explorer that will be in the parking lot. One of the other vehicles I'm seriously considering building for this is a 70's Datsun Bullet Side Pickup with a camper shell. Unfortunately I do not have any pictures of them right now, but I will add them to the page once I take the time to break out the camera.
After I get to a better point in the build where I need to start thinking about what other vehicles I will need for the diorama, I'll dig through the boxes of kits I have and decide on what else I will be building to include in the display.
These are some of the other detail items I am working on for the diorama that either don't have a specific place yet or I am not sure exactly where they are going yet. Basically this will be a catch all section.
Here are a couple of the machines I'm building for the diorama. The reason they are here instead of with the buildings is I'm not sure which building the games are going in and the soda machine will be outside of one of them. These are scratch built from pictures and dimensions I found on the web. Once again I used plastic signs from Lowes to build these.
This is the beginnings of one of the games showing the tools and supplies I used to make most of the details on both the buildings and details for them. Notice the lack of fancy tools and supplies. I'm using just basic equipment and cheap plastic on this build. While I do have more expensive tools and could buy everything I find that is available for the diorama on the web, I've decided to go back to the basics with this build.
This is the beginnings of what will eventually become a driving game. It's just a few pieces of flat plastic cut into sections and glued together to form a basic shell. Once the basic shell of the machine is built, a little trimming here and there, add some detail items, a little paint, and some printed graphics and you will get...
Something that will be unique to your build like the unpainted and undetailed machines above and the almost completely finished Pac Man machine below that was created from the machine in the right of this picture.
Here are better pictures of the almost finished Pac Man machine. I added a straight pin for the joy stick and printed paper graphics that were glued to the machine with white glue. Once I get my printer problems figured out, I fully plan on removing the graphics from the side and front panel of the machine and replace them with something that looks better. I found the graphics by doing a web search for arcade games, but I still need to either find or make the panel for below the joystick and add the one or two player buttons.
These are a few things I will either be building or buying for the diorama.
This is an emergency light for the inside of the buildings. I'm more than likely going to be building these as I have the spot lights from the gas station kits already here that are not being used on the building, and I don't like the design of the ones I have found on the web. I have an actual emergency light from my old shop in my garage and can duplicate it quite easily since I have everything sitting there anyway.
This is an outside light. I'm going to be building one of these for between the side doors of the bath house and might build one for the single outside bathroom door on the store. I have the globes already and can make the bases easy enough, so there is no need to purchase one.
I'm still unsure about this one. It's an older outside light for a building and would look ok above the main doors of both buildings, but I might go with something that resembles newer sodium light.
In one of the models I'm going to be using in the diorama, there is a rally pit station included in the kit. I found a card table in it and I will be using it in one of the camp spots. Please note that this is a picture from the web, not the actual table I will be using. They are virtually identical though.
Here is a first aid cabinet I found on the web. I have a smaller box style version in my parts collection already, but I just might build one of these larger units for the store.
This is an outdoor propane tank that I'm considering building for behind the stores. IF I can figure out how to do it, I'll also make a filling station for the small camping tanks to go with it.
This is going to be one of the more interesting things I will need to build for the diorama. The basic build is not going to be hard, it's finding a multiple unit power meter to get the pictures and measurements of so I can correctly replicate a commercial unit that is being a pain so far. Businesses just don't like people snooping around the back of their stores and fooling with their power boxes for some odd reason. It might be the chance of death by electrocution thing they are worried about...
This is something I'm going to be purchasing; I just need to decide which size I want now. I like the looks of the old coke coolers and since Scale Models by Chris already has them made and available to the public, I'll be saving time by buying one from him. I really wasn't looking forward to working with all those compound curves anyway to tell you the truth.
