Scratchbuild project - In-n-Out Burger in n scale

I'm waiting for the weather to get nice so I can have a long window to put the final coat of paint on my mill project, so I've started another structure scratchbuild to keep myself busy.

In-n-Out burger, a California institution. Here's the prototype I'm modelling. Since the In-n-Out in Modesto is a couple miles up the road from my 9th Street scene in real life, I'm using a little selective compression, and putting it on the edge of the layout on the end of the scene. The actual In-n-Out that I'm modelling is in El Cajon CA, close to where I grew up. Here are a few shots:





Looks like one of Jerry's palm trees there by the sign

I always make a scale drawing of the structure first, so here it is:

 

Double double animal style, some fry's and a chocolate shake. I think the Redding CA location is the closest to me.
Kevin

 

Nice! Looking forward to following your progress. Jamie

 

Here are the initial walls - the entrance and the side wall



I'm using .040 styrene for the walls with no windows, and the walls with windows are double sheets of .020, so I can make the window sills on the inner walls. The cutout for the window is a bit larger on the outer wall, to expose the sills on inner wall:



Here are the 2 walls, it's kind of hard to see the sills in the picture as i took it before I painted them....



The benefit of doing the walls this way is that you can paint the inner and outer walls separately and not worry about having to mask the sills to get a clean line.

 

I was struggling as to how to make the yellow arrow for the signs on the building, since it has an angled profile, and didn't look right just cut out of a flat sheet. (Luckily the arrow on the big sign is flat!)

So, I made a trip to my local Hobbytown where our resident Skipgear works. He's an awesome problem solver....he took a look at the photo and pointed me to Evergreen quarter round, and explained how to make a fixture in piece of wood to hold the strip w/ the rounded side up. Then, take a razor blade to scrape down the round side to a flat surface, which becomes the base of the arrow.

It worked great!

Here's my first try - the arrow doesn't look right:



The quarter round with the round side scraped down and used as the base, which lets me use Evergreen's 90 degree angle for the arrow. The arrow heads were a bit of a challenge, basically just cut and scrape w/ a blade til it looks close:



Much better - Thanks Tony!!!

 

I had to do some serious trig to figure out how long to make the side cuts for the roofs. My daughter is doing trig right now in high school so I had her do the calcs for practice .

Since the Vollmer tile is a bit dear, I made some practice roofs w/ plain styrene first to make sure we got the calculations right . Nothing is glued down yet in the photo:

 

Dave, that made me laugh. The only real-world application I ever found for High School Trig was making the roof for my Flagstaff depot.... With Vollmer slate shingles, yeah, you can't afford to make a mistake!

 

Wow Dave that looks fantastic, your flying right along.
I'll sure be watching. Gotta love their Burgers

 

Awesome going, Dave! Don't forget to invite me to the Grand Opening!

 

Good stuff - making me hungry!

 

Subscribed to this awesome build to one of my favorite burger joints. Anyone want to tackle a Tommy Burger stand?

 

I don't remember anything resembling a standard "look" for those. They were mostly just very small walk-up stands/shacks in LA -- no modeler's compression needed! There were also many fake Tommys around LA (Tommy's No. 5, Tommie's, etc.), some good, some bad.

We now return you to your regular burger stand project. I think I have to wait about 9 hours before In-N-Out opens. Dang!

dave n, you might need a couple of Jerry's palm trees (or reasonable facsimiles) for the exterior.

 

a 4 x 4 pls, god going to LA at end of the month, cannot wait for the burger.

 

I see Randgust and I share views about High School Trig. When I was first setting up my OO/HO tramway, around 20 years after leaving school, my pass in "Geometrical and Engineering Drawing" finally came in useful.

The forthcoming GONNABE layout in US outline N will have a burger establishment, but it'll be a Burger King, as I can't abide the alternative over here (you know the one I mean, with fallen [sorry, golden!] arches). I understand its product is a lot better over there, both in terms of cost and size of portion.

Regards,

Pete Davies

 

OMG you are awesome!

That's what a scratchbuilt model is...all about!

 

Great modelling! Reminds me of the guy that was doing all the ultra modern modeling...a gas station in particular. He just kinda disappeared if I recall, so don't fall into the trap! lol

In-N-Out is coming to Texas now. (or at least the Dallas/Fort Worth area...not sure if they've been in El Paso or wherever else) Most I know that have had both says it can't touch Whataburger, but we'll see. There are so many hamburger joints here in the D/FW area now that we're just burnt out on "the next great burger" spin. They definitely waited too long to enter the market here.