A New Hotel In Waterbury

The finished hotel set in place against the backdrop

 A Building Flat From Nick and Nora Designs....by Don Janes

          Back in November 2018 George and I attended the Model RR Expo in Albany, NY.  One of the things I always look forward to at these shows is the nice variety of vendors that set up shop for the show. This particular show didn't seem to have near the vendors or model displays that other EXPO's I have attended had. One of the kits I picked up was this neat looking hotel building flat from Nick and Nora designs.  I had bought it for use in my Waterbury Vt. scene.  Well, a little over two years later I finally  finished the kit..  Waterbury is the last big scene I have left to do on my layout and most of the structures along the backdrop are building flats.  I thought this hotel looked very suitable for Waterbury and since it wasn't that far from the front of the layout I decided I would add some interior details and lighting.

 

This is the kit from Nick and Nora Designs

      Construction of the kit went quite smoothly until I got to the roof.  This unique style roof was one of the things that I really liked about this kit.  It is basically fiber board formers over which you add cardstock roofing. When I went to do the roof nothing fit the structure.  I called Nick and Nora's and he explained there were two kits with the same style roof but with different dimensions and that I must have got the wrong roof.  He shipped me the correct roof parts and I was able to finish the building.  He also threw in a couple of Adirondack chair kits for my trouble which I thought was very nice of him.  They have excellent customer service.

     For the room interiors cardboard rooms that came with a Roomettes kit I had bought at Trainfest in Nov.2019 are folded to fit in several of the hotel rooms in this kit.  I also added lighting to these rooms.  For the curtains I ordered some City Classics window covering sets which are various curtain designs and colours printed on clear plastic sheets.  They are very good looking curtains and I feel they added a lot to the structure.

     The kit instructions called for building up the porch railings and posts from individual tiny pieces of stripwood but I elected to use Tichy railings and posts which was much easier to build and much better looking. The porch steps were built from Builders in Scale stair risers and stripwood steps. I added Tichy posts and railing material to make the step railings.  Pretty well everything else was built following the instructions.  

 

This photo shows a closeup of the porch and stairs.  There are two LED lights over the front door on the porch.

     One thing that I thought looked to plain was the top of the roof.  I felt it was just missing something so  I looked through my parts box and found some fancy etched brass roof trim I had bought for my Wells River station and thought it would add a nice finishing touch to the roof edge. It made a big difference and is something that would have been quite common for this style of structure.

    Before I closed in the finished rooms I added some figures in the lobby and some of the bedrooms.  Waterbury is a year round tourist spot so I figured the hotel should look busy.  Being right across from the train station people are always coming and going. 

    One other thing I added was some brick paper around the foundation to add some interest rather than a stark looking concrete foundation.  This is about as far as I can go with this building until I figure out the final location for the hotel.  Once that is done I can go back and add some more finishing details.  This is one more structure to help finish the Waterbury scene.  

 

Here you can see some of the people inside the hotel rooms and lobby. I think the curtains add a nice touch also.

Here is another view of the porch and the lobby interior. I added a flower box and will also build and add the Adirondack chairs to the porch.

This photo shows the metal trim I added around the top of the roof.  It finishes it off nicely. I see I need to straighten some of the roof trim

These two photos show some of the figures in the rooms.

Another view of the finished hotel