Big box for the big store

I set the sign aside for awhile and started work on the building’s primary structure. Overall, it measures, 30 inches long by 4 1/4 inches wide by 4 1/4 inches tall. I’ve never seen anything other than the prototype’s façade, so the structure is just guess work to make something that seems plausible tempered by a need to not create a building that is too big – it’s plenty big as it is :-) I suspect the prototype is much deeper than this caricature just based on my wanderings inside. 

The back wall is built from two 15 inch long pieces of 0.060 in styrene sheet. Both pieces have doors for people, and the right piece also has three loading doors for truck deliveries. In retrospect, they are too big even though I used an HO scale truck to size them. Well, they're on the back of the building, so once everything is painted, they hopefully won't be too noticeable.

The front wall on the prototype has what looks like some sort of recessed service doors on each end of the building. The pieces for both of them are shown above. They're cut from 0.020 inch styrene.

Here are the doors glued together and waiting to be installed.

The various wall pieces were glued together on the work table. The front wall was reinforced with 1/8 inch square section styrene tubing.

Metal metre sticks were used to keep things straight while I glued the wall sheets and the reinforcing pieces together. The side walls are cut from 0.030 inch styrene sheet and reinforced with styrene T-section strips.

Here's the back wall. I didn't plan on detailing it much, and figured I just paint it in some sort of grimy fashion. But, as I looked at the wall some more, I decided to run a strip of brick across to try and break up the vast expanse of plastic. It'll be sprayed red along with the other brick surfaces.

So far I've just added enough interior structure to keep the walls from bending and making sure it can't be twisted when handled. Some more is going to be needed. The back wall still has a little curve in it that I need to fix a bit, but it's not too bad. 

Here is the door unit set behind the opening on the front wall. It hasn't be glued in yet, but it doesn't fit too bad.