Reminds me of riding the elevated train into Chicago

I used to travel to Chicago on business and I would ride the train from the airport into downtown Chicago.  There is one section in particular with two story buildings where the tracks are elevated and you can see the wide variation of rooftops and all of the various things there.  I never thought of taking pictures.  This very well done article reminds me of those train rides. 

Thanks for providing encouragement and guidance on enhancing another part of a layout.

Cheers

Bill

For us ground dwelling folks,

For us ground dwelling folks, roof top detail is one of those things we rarely get a chance to examine in detail, and if any are like me, we guess of what a roof should look like based on limited exposure. This is indeed a great article with lots of ideas to chew on. Now, do I replace some track, add roof details, add another decoder, shovel the driveway (oops, how'd that get in there!) or just run the layout? Thanks again.

Steve  

Excellent material

I was thinking about this with my current crop of kits from Walthers - there has to be more roof detail than this.  What a great article.  One that I will reference often in the future, I'm sure. 

Great job

Great job, Tom.  I also was a Bldg & MEP inspector, and can attest to the fact that you do see everything on the roof.  E.G.  How about all of the body panels for a 1940's era pickup truck, on a restaurant roof;: The owner said it was the only place to safely store his valuable parts.  I wish I had a camera when I was in the field.  (I'm glued to a desk doing plan-checking; they say that I'm too dangerous in the field, and I take that as a complement! ).

You certainly captured the real look and feel of what is up on the roof.  Well done.

Great article on a much needed topic.

I noticed that you used masking tape to simulate tarpaper rolled roofing.  Do you add any sort of glue to the top of the model before putting down the masking tape?  I've seen masking tape curl up and come loose at the edges in particular after a period of time.  Have you had any problems in that regard with masking tape?  I ask because I'm in the planning stages of an L shaped switching layout modeling part of the Los Angeles Junction Railway, and will need to detail quite a few commercial and industrial roofs.

Do you need to clean the roof thoroughly before taping?

The title says it. I just want to make sure that when I start detailing that I dontover look something that will cause the tape to pull up after I've done a bunch of work on it.

My first kitbash, a

My first kitbash, a conversion of a DPM City Cab in the the J&S Barge service Co  on my first BC&SJ happened sometime around 1997 (I think).  I added a peaked roof and used masking tape to simulate tar paper (I read about it somewhere, can't remember where).

That roof is still intact and stuck down  (masking tape on styrene).  Given how hard it is to peel old masking tape off of stuff its not too surprising I guess...

Charlie

Thanks for the tips!

I really enjoyed this fabulous article. Using the blue masking tape was one of the best tips I'd seen in a while. I've long been interested in rooftop details and appreciate the descriptions and details.

Eric

Awesome!

Fantastic article!  There is so much to this I know I'll be reading and re-reading it and then referring back later.  Great information, photos and ideas!

Thanks for sharing it!

Nice additions

Thanks again for more great photos!  I have seen plant life growing around HVAC units before but I think that is the largest growth I have even seen on a rooftop that was not being cultivated!  Great shots!

Great article! I have a

Real Tile, I did the final

Must jsut be the angle then, and some well laid tile, I RARELY see it that good out here.  $1.3M might explain why it's so well done.

Modern Warehouses (Concrete Tilt-Up) Roof Types

Hey Tom,

I was wondering if you know what kind of roof would be found on a modern warehouse.  I am modeling such a warehouse and want to get the roof right.  This would be the modern concrete tilt-up type warehouse.  A view from Google Maps makes it look like a tar and gravel roof.  Is this right?

Mike

Tilt up roof tops and the look

Some Tilt Ups also use a troff system of drainage where the actual top of the roof sets down below the top of the tilt up wall 36 to 48 inches and the walls have drain holes every 10 feet with a 6 inch drain pipe running down the outside edge of the building.

17 years ago I was a welder working for west coast industrial in southern California and they built Tilt ups. Tthe tilt ups contain a lot of re-bar steel inside the concrete. On all the corners there are tie points where you weld these steels re-bar pieces together at the corners first to square the first two pieces of walls after they get tilted up and then finish each corner by building a corner dam from bottom to top with steel Molds and then pump in more cement after which they remove the corner molds and start to build the roof.

The roof it is made up of all steel Eye beams and girders covered with corrugated metal and then 2 layers of our favorite 2 inch Blue contractors foam for insulation and then a layer of glue which is covered by 3/4in or 7/8 in Plywood and finally a 1inch layer of white polymer rubber like Tom was talking about and then all the edges are sealed with RTV Rubber sealant.

Like Tom said the white rubber is very shinny white to reflect the heat and help keep the buildings cool. The seams are about 4 feet apart and 20 foot long so if you make scale 4ft X 20ft sections across the roof it should be perfect and don't forget the AC units and piping.

Dan

Gravel roofs

 Excellent article. I can also relate to the comments about the roofs and backs of old brick buildings and tenements as  seen from the Chicago "L", then and now.  They constitute a virtual moving catalogue of old brick industrial architecture.

As we speak I am attempting my first gravel roof (the roof of a large HO CMR acrylic roundhouse) , and things are not going as well as expected.  The roof has been prepainted with Floquil grimy black.  My "glue" applied on the painted roof panels is brushed-on thick  Pollyscale grimy black applied in sequential small segments c. 3x5" max. and the "gravel" is Arizona Rock & Mineral "Roof Gravel", an extremely fine salt-and-peppery tan/gray sand-like substance. After a full covering application from a shaker on each freshly-painted segment, I lightly press/pat the gravel into the paint with finger pads and wait 30 minutes before continuing. It looks good until-- I pour off the excess sand (after 30 minutes) when too much of the grimy black persists in showing up, made worse by in the pattern of the brush strokes.  

Well, now what?  I cannot add more paint because I lose the gravel effect of  that already there.  What about using thinned white glue- as in applying ballast? Ideas welcomed!   DEnny

Gravel roofs with white glue

Thanks so much for the excellent advice. I immediately put it to use on my roundhouse roof project, and not unexpectedly, I found a learning curve: my first brushed application of white glue was too thick, resulting in an excellent roof surface that turned out to be marginally darker in color, and with little or no loose sand,  than the adjacent next surface to be covered with a more circumspect glue application (with some loose sand remaining after the glue dried). The overall effect is extremely good, however, and I will not attempt further "adjustments". 

I have had to do this all in small segments because the roof surface is so very large.

My next challenge is to continue the application to also cover six large removable roof access segments in such a way as to not cement them down in the process, while at the same time doing my best to effectively disguise the joints between them. That I will soon be running out of Arizona Rock & Mineral Roofing Sand adds to the mix.

Walthers Cornerstone Roof Details:  These have apparently been popular items and I have not been able to find any at LHS or the popular internet sites that I frequent. Walthers reports that they will not have more until late June.

Denny  

More great details!

Tom,

Thanks for the great photos and descriptions of the roof top details.

You have opened my eyes to the myriad of details one could include on rooftops and the boost in realism a well detailed roof provides is simply amazing, IMO.

Thanks again!

Rooftop details

here is something interested to model. The other day in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida they had a demonstration in downtown and they had position snipers on several rooftops.

Holes...

Perhaps bullet holes ought to be modeled in rolling stock and locos that are near tall buildings?

Charlie

How often do you see parking lots modeled on roof tops?

I don't know about othe cities, but here in Los Angeles and in the pic Nick posted from Ft Lauderdale, roof top parking is common.  It is more common in Los Angeles in older industrial neighborhoods.  Big cities frequently have a shortage of real estate downtown available for parking lots, just like our model railroads.  How often do you see a city in a model railroad with a parking lot on the roof of a structure?

Parking Lots on roof

Russ, that is an excellent point and observation !!!  That is so true. I have never seen that modeled.

Model parking lots

Here in the DC suburbs, we get both roof top parking, and parking built under/into the building.  There are several new condos that back up to the MEtro/CSX combined main line on my way to wrok each day where the parking is in the back of  the building, and on the bottom X number of floors.  This makes it visible to the rail line.  Might be the thing for one of Lance Mindheim's laminated photo walls on a backdrop depth building flat.

And in DC, snipers on roof tops are a dime a dozen.

Hi Tom- First let me say this

Hi Tom-

First let me say this is the best article written in MRH so far.  I was hoping that I could impose on you a bit and get some advice on modeling details.  My layout has a large warehouse facility that has a portion which has been converted to cold storage.  Can you give me an idea of what I should be adding to the rooftop of the buliding that would be appropriate for supporting a large refrigeration system?  My layout is set in the mid-70's if it matters for era-specifica accuracy.

Thanks in advance if you can help.

~Rich

Much needed info

Tom:

I really enjoyed the article and appreciate the new photos in this thread.  This is great stuff for structure modeling.