East Theater, Part 1 of 3

The Miller Engineering Crestline Theater kit ought to have been the natural starting point for the East Theater, but in a strange twist of irony, I wound up using the theater kit for the firehouse, and most of the firehouse kit for the theater! But it was a much longer road to completion for the theater than the firehouse.

Although Naughtright is hardly a ritzy community, I still wanted to give the theater a quasi-Art Nouveau look. So, I decided to try bashing something together, perhaps using some parts from Miller Engineering's over-the-top Pink Elephant Car Wash kit.

So to the internet I turned to search for images of old downtown theaters. Luckily I had no end of hits in this department, and based on the dizzying variety that I found, I concluded that I could make up just about anything I wanted and it would probably pass as believable. Things really started to click when I stumbled across a theater that vaguely appeared as if part of Miller Engineering's car wash kit was grafted onto the lower half of an old town hall building.

But when it came down to designing the marquee, I was torn: chaser lights, as in the original add-on lighting kit, or an animated neon sign from the Light Works USA series? Using both together, I felt, would be overkill—too many blinkey-lights (I already have another animated neon sign planned for the Triangle Bar, which will be right across the street from the theater). Not to mention lots and lots and lots of tiny holes to drill! The neon sign would be a quicker assembly solution, plus it would have the tall vertical sign style that I really liked.

The smallest animated vertical neon sign appropriate for the structure that Miller Engineering makes, however, is way too big for Z scale, but I thought it could be cut down (yes, really) to something a little more reasonable. However, the connecting tabs are located more toward the top of the sign, rather than the bottom, which posed a problem of disguising the connectors. Roof access? Big AC units? This is a bridge I'd have to cross later; just settling on a basic building design was the biggest hurdle.

The facade eventually became a kit part mash-up: the marquee was made from car wash roof parts; the main entrance doors were from the original theater kit (stainless steel version), while the side windows and marquee were from the car wash. The second floor of the theater was made from two firehouse kits spliced to produce a building about 25% wider than it was originally.

It sounds like a real Frankenstein's monster! Which is why, for the feature film, I chose Young Frankenstein.

The "monster facade" became the deciding factor in the building's overall dimensions. The building's width was matched to the width of the marquee. The building's overall height, unfortunately, had to be changed so that the top of the marquee could clear the second-story windows. And the marquee height equaled the difference between the bottom of the animated sign's connector and the bottom of the animated sign itself. Thus the building height became a function of the entrance window panel height plus the marquee height plus some extra space to accommodate the height of the animated sign's connector, so that it wasn't sticking above the cornice.

As one might imagine, assembly was not straightforward. The first challenge was making the whole building a few scale feet taller; because the extension that jutted out on the right side was being eliminated, the right side had to be pieced together; and finally, the back had to be made wider to match the front. As a consequence, all of the walls were patchwork quilts. Thankfully, since the theater would be located between two other buildings, most of the wall joints would not be an issue (which is a good thing, because the bricks could not be made to line up), although both of the other buildings are shorter than the theater, so vertical joints near the roof would have to be as neat as possible.

Since I needed two kits to expand the width, I already had plenty of spare brick wall material to add height as well. After divvying up the various puzzle pieces, I broke out my big old paper cutter and started whacking at parts. Care was necessary in order to preserve the integrity of the delicate detailing pieces on the front.

The original Crestline Theater kit would become a firehouse.

Two firehouse kits would comprise the bulk of the theater building.

The Pink Elephant Car Wash kit has some good Art Nouveau elements.

The City Scoop kit provides a few bits and pieces.

Somewhere in this pile of stainless steel are the makings of a theater.

The original animated neon sign is 1.5 inches tall—nearly 30 scale feet!

The chopped-down sign is a little more reasonable at 22 feet.

Ten wall pieces are soldered together into two groups.

The two wall group assemblies are soldered together and bent.

Unlike the Passenger Station project, where most of the joints were relatively short, the theater wall joints were quite a bit larger, and soldering with an iron proved impractical. So, after taping the wall sections together with masking tape, I heated the entire area with a blowtorch set on very low. Because the brass is quite thin, soldering went very quickly, and in about 15 seconds everything was done (that said, some wall parts did warp a little owing to the heat, and internal bracing would be required). After thoroughly cleaning off the soldered parts, I made the corner bends using a smooth-jaw vice.

The front inset wall parts also got sliced and diced to fill in the area occupied by the arched firehouse doors. The two inset parts were assembled separately from the rest of the building to facilitate painting.

Continue to Part 2
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