Cardstock Model: Office Building Shared by Mayo Brothers and Father

 

Rochester, MN is home to the Mayo Clinic.  Started by brothers Charles and William Mayo, they shared an office with their physician father early in their careers.  It was in the "Cook Block" building.  It no longer exists, but I made an N-scale (1/150th Japanese scale) card stock model of it.  Feel free to download and build it.  Just print the two pages on 8.5"x11" card stock (I send them to Officemax for a really nice print job).

The two PDF files for the building can be downloaded here:

1. Rochester_MN_CookBlock_OriginalMayoOfficeBuilding.page_1_of_2.pdf
2. Rochester_MN_CookBlock_OriginalMayoOfficeBuilding.page_2_of_2.pdf

Photo of assembled card stock building

Cook Block photo from Wikimedia.org

Two Inkscape Projects to create two PDFs...

Cardstock Model: Office Building Westby, Wisconsin

 

Back in 2004 my wife and I stayed at a B&B in Westby, Wisconsin.  On the main street was a small office building that caught my eye.  I took a snap with the thought of making a card-stock model of it.  Sixteen later, here it is.  Someday I'll update it with textures for color printing.  I left photos the PDF file of the building itself and the steps I took to create the model.  The N-scale PDF file can be found here.

Cardstock Model: House I grew Up In

 Most have fond memories of the house they grew up in.  My house was warm, loving, and always there.  I made a very rough model of my house from some photos and memories...somewhat stylized.  It's simple and will someday make a better one.

You can download a PDF of the model here.  

Old Chateau Theater of Rochester MN to SVG - Part III

Using a photograph of one of the window dormers as a guide, I created a vector image of the window detail.  I didn't want to add too much detail, as in N-scale things are pretty tiny as it is.  Though I may go back and try adding detail.

I also started tinkering with the medallion (see yellow below), but I did that freehand sort of (without referencing a photo).  I'll see if I can somehow take the actual pattern of the medallion from a photo.  My SVG front of the building is still pretty rough.  But it's fun to tinker with (and learn how to use) Inkscape.

And for reference what I'm trying to model...

Old Chateau Theater of Rochester MN to SVG - Part II

Dimensions & Math

The best I can estimate is that the old Chateau Theater in Rochester, MN is about 70' wide and 165' deep:

For Inkscape, I'm using a standard 8.5"x11" canvas.  I'm using metric units.  I created a simple spreadsheet in Google Docs to determine the size in mm that the SVG elements need to be when creating the file:

num of feet	inches in foot	scale	scale inch/foot	scale mm/foot
1	12	160	0.075	1.905

Here's some various angles from satellite.  In addition to the marquee, there will be some angles to deal with such as the slope on the wall/roof where the window dormers are in front.  I may just do flat surfaces at the beginning, and then in subsequent revisions add more detail.

Old Chateau Theater of Rochester MN to SVG - Part I

Now that winter is fast approaching, I find myself getting back to some of my previous interests... such as wanting to make SVG models of interesting buildings in Rochester, MN.  The idea being to have a PDF that can be printed out on card stock, cut, and glued.   

Just below is the original photo I took looked like (f/10.0, 16mm, ISO100, 1/100sec).  Note all the distortion.  I had to use a wide angle lens.  Using Pixlr Editor (not the Express or O-Matic versions), I was able to use "Edit->Free Distort" and straighten it out as you see above.

I did a very rough/quick prototype in Inkscape of the front.  There's a lot of detail to model and I'll need to get the sizes/proportions done properly.

Aerial shot of the theater.  I think using Google maps I can get a direct above satellite photo to determine the outer dimensions of the building.  Once I have that I can then look at the proportions and figure out exact sizes/dimensions of the model.  I'll have to spend some time tinkering around with the entrance way and fitting up an accurate marquee.

Trial Run

This past weekend my six-year old son Sammy helped me put together a trial assembly of the Tomix tram track. The tram track simulates trolley/tram track in a road. As in the design, my sheet of plywood is 48"x32". I ended up putting in some extra track to elongate portions.

This is the plan I worked off of. Conclusion: I need a much bigger sheet of plywood.