Scratch Building

Heading eastward across Forest Avenue, Guilford's local works the Bishop Street Branch on one of my custom-built commissions.

The vast majority of my customers are prototype modelers. That's my niche. With these types of projects, the likelihood of finding a commercial kit to model the signature structures of their theme is highly unlikely. That means for me to capture the signature look of the scenes that are important to them, I need to scratch-build some structures or, as a minimum, heavily kitbash a kit. It's not that simple, though. The space available for a layout is far smaller than the prototype. Structures often need to be compressed so that a) they don't dominate a scene and b) they fit the space available. That's the art, and what my clients pay me for when they hire me to build a custom model railroad.

The photos shown here were for a commission representing Guilford's Morrill's Corner neighborhood in Portland, ME. First, I visited the site with my customer and photographed the key structures, mostly from a dead-on, ninety-degree perspective. I then built a 3D core of the buildings out of styrene. The images from the site visit were photoshopped, printed out, and then laminated over the core.

Crossing Forest Avenue at Deering Jct. The industry in the distance, Plasmine Technology, was also scratch-built

This scene is of the same intersection but facing north. The fuel pumps were scratch-built using photos of the prototype as was the rest of the service station.

My point with this blog posting is to point out the breadth of what can be done with respect to capturing the vibe of a treasured prototype scene. (As a side note, I do not build individual structures for folks. I only do scratchbuilding of this nature within the umbrella of a full custom-built layout commission.) I'm now discussing projects for late 2026/early 2027. These types of projects entail a significant financial commitment. Serious inquiries only.