Peter Feigenbaum

You might find this artist will give you some ideas:  http://www.peterfeigenbaum.com/gallery/index.php?album=model-rr

​here is a sample of his work:

how many broken windows

Wow -- interesting idea for a modern layout!

One question is whether you want window "glass" mostly intact ( as your first pic) or mostly missing (as third pic).

If you post a photo of the "glass" from the kit people will probably have suggestions

Colored Sharpies are a good

Colored Sharpies are a good and quick way to "paint" the glass. A lot of older warehouse/factories will have painted panels as the glass broke it would be replaced with wood or steel panels.

Let's break this down

First. You have a factory kit you want to use. I pulled up some pictures on the web. The building has several ground level windows and doors. But overall it doesn't have a lot of windows. But rather more blank concrete space. 

So some thoughts for you. A consistent theme with abandoned or disused warehouses, mills, factories etc is no matter the condition of upper floors, there can be broken windows, open doors, even missing sections of wall the first 8-10ft above ground level or over low roof attached structures will be barricaded. Anything from chained and padlocked doors, boarded up windows to even large openings closed off with temporary concrete block walls. So you'll want to do some combination of those features.

You have a lot of blank space low down just asking for the local gangs or hoodlum population to tag and mark up.

For upper windows you might want to experiment with microscope slide cover glass. Available from a variety of places that is ACTUAL glass. Therefore it breaks, chips and cracks like actual glass. You might find you can achieve some real good effects on the upper windows for broken windows that way. Also it reflects light like prototype glass does as well. It's extremely clear, much more so then the clear plastic provided in kits. You can then whitewash or frost it on the inside, crack and break it etc.

Additionally the dust collectors on the side of that mill are expensive industrial equipment that when the building was shuttered are likely to have been sold off at an industrial auction. I'd suggest not installing them but rather have bits of plastic or brass painted as steel mounts and some straws or similar as piping to them coming out of the building. Give the effect that they were removed. Same with the hoist. The frame would stay, but the beam trolley and hoist would have been pulled and sold off. 

Hope that gets you started. Keep us posted! 

Concrete

Ok so I took another look. The first two pictures you posted are excellent prototypes to work with. They are concrete structures. The third looks to be brick. Your model is concrete. As you can see the concrete structures were painted white and a great deal of that is coming off exposing the concrete underneath. I would suggest a base paint of a concrete color over the concrete. Follow this with a salt mask or other medium followed by a white paint. Then scrub the model to "peel" the white paint exposing the concrete. Do a search for weathering techniques surrounding peeling paint. You'll see most examples are of train cars or automobiles, military models etc. But just because you aren't doing aluminum and olive drab or red oxide primer and boxcar yellow doesn't change the technique. 

Practice on some scrap objects first. Even the back of a hardware store "For Sale" sign before painting your building. Figure out what works for you then transform that building!

Double duty

 To get some operational utility out of the space perhaps a building could be modeled as under demolition with a crane and wrecking ball and some loaders working on it. That way some scrap/rubbish gondolas could be spotted nearby.........DaveB

Thanks

Thanks for your posts and the ideas.   That is why I like MRH.  Lots of knowledge that people happly want to share.

Neil Erickson-  Beautiful models and paintings by Peter Feigenbaum.  There are some good ideas there.

Mark - I want the glass mostly intact. I have a small layout, so the mill, in poor, rundown condition, will still be in production and used as a place to spot cars. The actual "glass" panes are small, so I will cut a few out and paint/frost the rest.

Neil - Using a Sharpie to paint the glass panels sounds like a good idea.  Also, window panes can be replaces with wood or metal. I am thinking of doing that for the above ground level doors.

Matt - Good idea to use microscope slide as covers for glass.  The glass panels are small, so I don't know if you would actually see the effect of broken glass.  I am probably better off just removing the glass from some of the pains.  As for the concrete. I like the peeled paint in the second photo.  On a test piece, I did try the salt method to simulate peeled paint.  The result look like poke-a-dots, not an area where the paint peeled off.  Not a good look.  Also, I tried the hairspray method, but the top layer of paint did not come off.  I am using rattle can spray paint.  May be the top paint layer needs to be an acrylic paint so it can be washed off.  The large concrete areas a most problematic.

Dave - Neat idea.  Unfortunately, with my limited space, there is no room for the wrecking ball and clean up crew.

Thanks, again, for your inputs.

Rick

How is this coming along

Any status updates for us? I'm curious to see how this project is doing.