Amberly Petrol Station, Garage and Showroom - a working Diorama

I think I have vague memories of adverts in the 60's of tiled showrooms, hence I chose the chequers you see. Yes, Marley tiles, only the best! The salesman said "they were surplus stock of genuine Marley, but don't let on to anyone how cheap I sold 'em to ya!"

 

So now for a bit of external detailing, plate glass windows, drain pipes, painted concrete ramp, stone skirt, some paving and some doors.
I was wondering how to do Glass doors? A chap on another forum suggested that a good cheap source of plastic, is CD jewel cases! They even have a little 'rail' that has become the door handle. The inner area was masked off with tape and the edges painted white, makes a great 'thin' frame.

Eh voila! bi-fold glass doors!

 

Next comes the showroom roof. The 'tin' roof is scratch built of Wills plasticard to complement the modern showroom building. It needs to be bright, but not have any 'spots', so many and angled is the order of the day. No point in re-inventing the wheel, so I have used strips of LED's instead of individual ones, nice and simple, no resistors for my common 12V general lighting supply. However, a resistor is required for the home grown 'lightning bar' that hanks over the roof sign. You can see the brass bar supports sticking through that also act as conductors. The wiring is just stripped wires from insulated cable (tin coated rather than plain copper), soldered in situ and super glued to the plastic. The three pronged pins are a 0.1in pitch PCB header that fits onto a standard servo wire, which is hidden in the building behind a column. Thus I can remove the roof, to re-arrange the showroom content, it just sits on top of the L shaped blue barge boards.




And yes, two separate circuits, so the showroom lights can go off in the evening but the sign can stay on till midnight