Interior Building Detail
I’ll focus on detail for a “general store” and address it from two perspectives: furnishings and commodities.
Furnishings such as shelving, tables, work benches, chairs, display cases and counters are available. I either scratch build what I need or purchase what I need from Banta Modelworks or Ty’s Planes and Trains.
​
Speaking of details in general:
Finding interior and exterior detail parts for F/G scale structures is not all that simple. There are a few sources but it’s not like you can overwhelm the interior or exterior of your building with detail like you can in HO scale. Some sources that I tend to turn to include:
-
Iron Creek Shops - https://ironcreekshops.com/ They have several items that can be used in and around buildings.
-
Wild West Scale Model Builders - https://www.wildwestmodels.com/ Unfortunately most of their large-scale items are out of stock.
-
Shapeways miniatures - https://www.shapeways.com/marketplace/miniatures/trains?tag=f%2Bscale Limited number of building details.
-
San Juan Details - https://sanjuandetails.com/architectural-parts/large-scale/?page=5&mode=1 They have lots of building detail parts such as doors and windows but have very little in the way of interior or exterior non structure details.
-
Ty’s Planes and Trains - http://tysplanes.com/home - Ty has a reasonable amount of interior and exterior large-scale detail parts.
-
Ozark Miniatures - https://ozarkminiatures.com/ Lots of G and some F scale details. Mostly what you would find in an engine facility, depot, or logging operation.
-
Etsy - https://www.etsy.com/market/g_scale_train_parts?ref=pagination&page Lots to look through and you might find detail items that you can use.
-
There are lots of manufactures of ½ scale dollhouse details. A great source is My Favorite Dollhouse. https://myfavoritedollhouse.com/
​
In my Martin’s General Store, I have a considerable amount of ½” dollhouse accessories such as food and other commodities. Unfortunately filling a general store with ½ inch doll house details end up costing more than the building. Most people don’t notice them anyway. They tend to notice all the canned goods on the shelves. At first, I used HO scale 55-gallon drums wrapped with food can labels that I found online. I searched “free vintage food can labels”. I found a bunch. I also found a lot more that were very inexpensive. There are a lot in 1/12 scale for dollhouses. On the sites that were free I used the screen shot ap on my computer. I sized the images using Preview. I could have also sized them using the printer scale setting. I ran out of HO scale drums and started using dowel rods. I’d glue on the labels then cut the dowels. I painted the top of the cans with silver paint. For the CONOCO station I also glued labels on S and O scale drums.
If you look closely at the “goods” on the shelves in the CONOCO store you might notice that I glued 2-D images to the back of the shelves and added 3-D commodities in front. I did an online search for vintage general store photos. I found several photos with just stocked shelves of commodities. You can also find fruit crate labels online. I used some in front of my Gallegos Produce building. With a little searching you can find online images of box and bag goods. Many of them are images that are intended to be made into 3-D objects. On Etsy you can find vintage food/medicine labels in 1/12 scale. You can use your printer or Preview to scale them to 1:20.
Image capture on the left (shift command 4) of food labels.Two pages for less than $5. They are downloaded and come sized for 1/12. I did an image capture to show what's available. The image below are ones that I found for free online. They are intended to be made into 3-D packages.
Image above of Martin's General Store is full of commodities. Because the building is "downsized" there isn't a whole lot of room for shelving and display cases. The image on the right is a top down view on the CONOCO gas station store. The shelves on the back wall have 2-D images glued to the back of the shelves. The shelves on the left are a combination of 2-D and 3-D. The items on and in the display cases are all 3-D. The image at the top of the page on the right shows the shelf and case. Looking in the window below you really can't tell that the commodities are 2-D.
