Modeling High School/Marching Band

[NewYorkCentralgirl]

My high school is a one hundred year old building just waiting to be modeled.  In my layout i am going to pretty much make a scale model of our main street area.  There is a double track mainline and at the back of the layout on a slight hill will be the high school.  I am building a scale model using everything i got, i have taken scale measurements and i am using google earth aswell to give me a top view perspective. I have never built a model from scratch before. Any tips?

Also in the back almost as a tribute i am putting my marching band out on the field.  I am a big of fan of my trumpet as trains so i want to combine them.  I have my drill charts from which i am accurately going to place the figures. I was wondering if anyone has had any experience with this kind of a set up.  Does anybody know of any companies that make the figures or should i hand paint them nd make little instruments. If it helps our band has around 120 people.

Thanks in advance,
      NYCgirl

[Paul M.]

Preiser sells well-detailed figures, and they may have band-players. OTOH, their figures are pretty expensive, so a 120-person band is out of the question for all but the nearly unlimited budget.

Do you have a picture of your high school? Modeling different buildings depends on what type of building you want.

[Paul M.]

Also, if you're interested in something less than $3 per Preiser person, I'm ordering a large lot of figures from a Hong Kong-based wholesaler. Contact me off-board ( by email : texas-pacific@sbcglobal.net ) if you're interested.

[RAM]

You said that you have taken measurements and plan to build a scale model.  That is nice, but you
may not want to do this.  A scale block can take up a lot of room.  You may want to compress it
a little.  I think they call it select compression.  Say a building is 120 feet wide.  Make it 100 or 90
feet wide.  You have the measurements, so lay it out and see how much room it takes up.

[pdlethbridge]

If the building is at the back of the layout, by making it smaller you force the perspective of distance. If you scale down the HO building to N scale you will still have the ability to buy figures for it.