Removable Buildings

[Slim Rail Mike]

Years ago companies like Revell made model railroad structures with plots of ground to plant the building on as well as the detail bits. The base could be blended into the “Train Table”.

I’m looking to construct my layout buildings to be removable.

My layout as it is, is modular/sectional. Being able to safely remove buildings to storage and then replace structures is important. The layout cannot be in place full time.

The ability to work on a building or a group of buildings on the work bench is a big plus.

@Lemosteam on his The LIRR Industrial Service, Inc. shelf layout  is using magnets to attach things to his layout, that is a great idea.

Those of you, who have removable buildings or scenes, what is you approach? What works for you? Please share you experience.

Micahel

[chuck geiger]

Slim, based on Boomer Diorama's method of not attaching anything, making it all removable is what I am attempting to do. I'll post some pics on the buildings tomorrow.

[davefoxx]

I just use scraps of styrene glued to the base for the building to key into.



You can see how the steps fit into the sidewalk, and, between that and the three scraps of styrene shown above, this structure does not move around but is easily removed from the layout.



Hope this helps,
DFF

[robertjohndavis]

Planning on removable buildings as well. Just bought some mini neodymium magnets and metal tape. Will see how it goes. - Rob

[Slim Rail Mike]

Chuck, I just recently came upon Boomer’s videos, what a fine modeler. I haven’t yet seen how he anchors his buildings. I love his enthusiasm.

Dave, Yes it helps. Your building seems well grounded, there is no hint of it floating. IE gaps under the structure. The sidewalk helps hide the bottom of the foundation. Do you add extra landscape foam around the base once the building is in place?

[Lemosteam]

What I did prior to installing my structures is created duplicate styrene bases of each building and taped them down with 3M thin double side tape before adding my ground cover.  After the ground cover dried, I pulled up the false floors and installed the proper bases (some buildings did not have a base so I created one, in addition to the false floor.

I made the buildings removeable mainly for the lighting and for cleaning them, and the areas around them.

@davefoxx 's are much superior to mine, but I like the magnets in case the structure gets bumped.

[Chris333]

Here you can see all the building removed and all of the "keys" that hold them in place.


Simple to figure out the sizing;

[randgust]

I sorta do that myself.   I've evolved into adding a 'foundation' layer on any building as you usually don't have the ground floor right on the surface, particularly houses, etc.   Most are a little elevated.  I prefer to build that foundation layer out of styrene.  I've faced some of them with stone-surface material to gain a scale foot or more.
And then when I decide where they belong, I surround them with 1/32 square stripwood on the surface.   Glue with a non-soluble glue, remove the building, paint earth brown.
Then I'll scenic, dirt, turf right up to and over that stripwood.   Then in the end, the building fits down in the socket, it's a pretty tight exact fit.
In a city situation, I've evolved into socketing them into scribed sidewalk material instead of gluing the sidewalk to the building and setting that on a surface.  Really difficult not to have a visible separation crack.   The only fix for that is hiding little screws under and behind things to tighten that down.
And for my Ttrak modules that get flipped around in all directions, I'll hit a couple corners with a tiny bit of rubber cement to keep them from bouncing out during transit, but I can still pull them out of the 'socket' if I need to.

[davefoxx]

Dave, Yes it helps. Your building seems well grounded, there is no hint of it floating. IE gaps under the structure. The sidewalk helps hide the bottom of the foundation. Do you add extra landscape foam around the base once the building is in place?

Yes, I do.  In fact, the structure I showed in the pictures above still needs scenery materials applied on the other sides. 🤣


DFF

[mmagliaro]

I have a roundhouse that I made removable so I can clean the interior tracks or retrieve an engine in the even one ever gets stuck inside.   My approach is similar to what others are posting in here - essentially hide the edges with scenery material ground foam), and key the building so it can be placed back in its original spot.  I epoxied 4
steel wires into corner joints on the inside of the building.  Those go into 4 matching holes in the layout surface, so putting the building back is just a matter of getting the 4 wires started in their holes and dropping the building back in.   I did add ground foam and glue with an eyedropped all around the building.  That makes sure the building never looks like it is floating on top, and the crisp glue edge of the ground foam layer against the sides of the building assure that it can only be placed one way.  It's not designed to be mobile, like an N Trak module.  But I like the idea of using magnets to guarantee that buildings won't fall off when a module is placed in a car or in storage.

[GGNInNScale]

I use balsa sheets cut to size.  I have a bunch of magnets that I use for holding containers together.  Never thought about using them for buildings- Great Idea!  Thanks.

[samusi01]

A few years back I was at an event in the Dallas area and took some images that may be of interest, especially if you are considering lighting the structures. These are HO buildings but the principles should hold for other scales...

[chuck geiger]

In the words of Frank Abagnale, Jr - I CONCUR. I am using small brads and push pins through the bases into the foam. It doesn't work for all of the structures.
The above is the best.

[Lackawannae8]

My club has A metric sht ton of these buildings plus many many more they are looking to Liquidate soon. ill try and get some pics for you not sure how soon that will be