Der Waffle Haus

Amazon sells sheets of steel.

This one is 12 inches wide and 24 inches long, and 1.5mm thick.

It is nice and smooth and the edges are smooth too.

My favorite TV show was Dead Like Me.  Much of it takes place in a diner called Der Waffle Haus.

I decided to make a 1/72nd scale version of that restaurant and I decided to use interlocking bricks, generic Lego bricks.  The model is not finished, I am still gathering data, parts and making decisions about the model.  There were two different versions of the restaurant.  One was a real coffee shop in Canada but most of the show was filmed on a set that is very similar to the actual restaurant.  But they changed up a few things and being a set they built it to be able to move around the interior furniture and sometimes even walls.  So the building sometimes has different numbers of tables and doors in different places.  This is part of my American Cities project.
 

 https://canadagraphs.weebly.com/celebrity-blogs---ends-june-2012/dead-like-me-fans-i-give-you-the-original-der-waffle-haus-set 

Wagon Construction

Here is a simple wagon.  A useful box wagon good for the US from the AWI to even modern times.  Made of interlocking bricks, lego types, wheels from Imex Conestoga Wagons set, wire mesh for the traces, Eagle Games horse, Evergreen Scale Models shapes and sheet plastics, and a generic civilian 1/75th scale figure.

I used these glues to construct the wagon and a tube of Goo rubber contact cement to hold the wagon and horse to the base.

The base is black plastic by Evergreen, that I have sanded the top to give it some texture and make it better to glue onto.

Similar interlocking brick type vehicles under construction.

I am making a number of wagons and horseless carriages for several project.  Dollar Tree and Constructive Playthings have had the bricks for sale for a while now and I spent a little time gathering them up.
 

Horse Wagons and Storage

More wagon wheels.  The Imex Conestoga Wagon set is great for conversions.  The box of the Conestoga is perfect for a pontoon for a pontoon bridge.  That leaves the tentage to use for other wagons, or as canopies for building entrances.  The horses are large and great for artillery.  The figures are generic enough to work from the American Revolutionary War to World War One at least.  A quick head swap can help modify them to more modern troops.

I cut the wire mesh with wire cutters and kept all the little pieces.  In the past I have used them for various purposes requiring a short metal pin, often to do head swaps for 54mm figures.

New York Police Department, NYPD, van wagon, one horse type.

Here is the wire mesh, 1/2 inch mesh.  Any home improvement store should have it.  This piece has lasted over 10 years.

Most of my vehicles are stored in underbed storage boxes.  I line the box with bubble wrap so the vehicles don't slide around, and the bubble wrap is taped into place.  Each box holds about a battalion of tanks or other vehicles.  These are my two wargame tables each 40 x 7 feet long x wide and 40 inches tall, like a kitchen counter.  Each box is labelled on the end and sides with the nation, time period and specific contents in large letters.  Those on the left at this end of the storage are WWII Soviet Union vehicles and figures.  Next are Cold War Soviet Union and finally WWII German.  The right side is WWI, WWII US Army and at the far end a few boxes of JGSDF, Japanese Ground Self Defense Forces, and Danish Cold War Army, and two "fictional" African armies, one Zebra and the other Giraffe based on their camouflage types.  

These are two sided shelves with other armies and air forces and navies on the outsides of the tables.
 

Wagon Construction

Two horse van wagon made out of interlocking bricks, styrene plastic bits, wheels from the Imex Conestoga wagon set, traces from wire mesh, and horses by Eagle Games.  1/72nd scale.

Two versions of the wagon, one van and one more of a chuck wagon with extended rear.

The white bits are axles.  Wire traces are on top of some of the wagons.

Plastic coated wire from Plastruct for the axles.  Very thin sheet plastic from Evergreen Scale Models to cover the top and bottom of the interlocking bricks.

Wheels.
 

More Restaurant

Decades ago my wife's family owned this shop, in digging through some old photos we found this old matchboox.

Morena Liquor will be one of the shops in the Der Waffle Haus shopping mall.  Other businesses include a bank, book store, hobby shop, jewelry store, hair salon, gun store, Army Recruiting Station.

Here is the restaurant again, needs work but this will be the final layout.

A laundromat is also in the strip mall, here are the washing machines and the dryers that I have mocked up.

The restaurant will include the main floor, the counter, fry cook area, back room two restrooms and an electrical room.

Here are two versions of the restaurant side by side.  They are 11 x 15 inches and 9 x 18 inches.  Neither are an exact match to the TV show set or the real restaurant due partly to the absence of blueprints, or floor plans from the real restaurant or the set.  And also due to most of the action taking place in the rear booth next to the counter and along the counter.  There are also some limitations to the lego type bricks.

But it's close enough and should be playable.  I made sure 1/72nd scale figures would fit in most places and could sit at the tables, booths and counter.
 

Der Waffle Haus

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Like_Me  Perhaps my favorite TV show was Dead Like Me.  In that show the characters often meet in a coffee shop named Der Waffle Haus.  It was originally filmed in a real restaurant in Vancouver, BC, Canada.  After the first episode they constructed a nearly identical set to do the filming.  The same set is used on an episode of Stargate SG-1 television series.

So I decided to make a model of both the set version and the original version of Der Waffle Haus as part of my American Cities project.  These photos are overhead views of the incomplete restaurants. I intend to either plate over or cut off the visible Lego type pins, and the tables need tabletops.

I also have to work on the windows, as well as the incidental bits like the grill.  I have been gathering waitresses, cooks, for the restaurant and just for fun, the main characters from the TV show, and later direct to DVD movie.

This version is the real restaurant.  It is the end unit of a shipping center.  My plan is to build the whole shopping center.  I purchased the interlocking bricks at Dollar Tree and Constructive Playthings, an online store.

My intention is to build the whole shopping center, with swap out parts to change up the mixture of shops.  The plan is they can be used for my 1898 War of the Worlds project and all the 125 years since then by either using tenants, like an Army Recruiting station, book store, and others that would be in business for that whole time, or by swapping out obsolete business such as the blacksmith for more modern ones like auto repair.

I have used blue bricks and clear bricks as different choices for windows, but I am still experimenting with the windows.  I am considering "smoked glass" color brick windows because I think they will look the best.  I am building one of these Der Waffle Haus as part of a shopping center and two other Der Waffle Haus restaurants as stand alone shops, to create a small chain of businesses.  Due mostly to a shortage of bricks and other materials I have moved on to another project but I hope to come back to this one in the next month or so, as funding for materials becomes available.
 

Vans and Painting

The weather has been warm and so I am painting a lot of stuff that has been waiting in the line to be painted

This is the paint I use for high gloss black, Rust-Oleum 2X High Gloss Black.  It is great.

I have been painting some of my Ford Woodies at least partially black.

This wagon includes Evergreen sheet plastic, Imex wagon wheels, wire, Eagle Games horse, and lego type bricks.

Looks pretty good when painted with primer.  This is a police paddy wagon van, but it could be any number of civilian vans, ambulance, delivery, photography van.
 

Float Mock Up

Junkanoo float with the major construction done.

Figures are conversions from Airfix and styrene civilians.

Eagle Games horses cut in half and front at the front and back at the back and middle in the spares bin.

This is a little skateboard model.

With four Lego type bricks on top.

Junkanoo floats are often outrageous and wild.

I plan to add more figures and flock the whole thing as flowers.
 

Limber Done

Take a sanding stick and sand down the top of the brick.  Trim the plastic sheet around the edges of the brick so that it's even all the way around.

Glue another piece of sheet plastic on the top of the brick.  The Evergreen Scale Plastic comes in thinner sheets of plastic that are less expensive than the .040 sheets.  They will also work and would same some money if a lot of them were being built.  I use Plastruct Plastic Weld General Purpose Plastic Solvent Cement.  It works well with Lego and fake bricks.  Legos and similar bricks don't always glue well without specialized adhesives.

Cut a piece of Evergreen Scale Models item number 297 Angle 1/4" size that is the same length as the brick.

Line up the edge of the angle with the top of the limber and glue it onto the front of the limber.

Put the wire into the groove at the bottom of the limber.  The wheels are from Eagle Games American Civil War artillery.  They are large, cheap, and durable.

Drill a hole in the front bottom center of the limber the same diameter as the plastic coated wire.  Insert a length of rod into the hole and glue it with the Plastruct glue.

Drill a second hole in the rear center bottom of the limber.  Insert an eye pin into the hole and glue it into place.  Put a dab of superglue on the eye pin, and a dab of Plastruct glue in the hole.  Make the loop at the end of the eye pin vertical.  Using your wire cutters, clip a bit of the eye so that creates a trailer hitch for the cannon.  Eye pins are sold in the jewelry department of stores like Hobby Lobby and are little wires with a loop at one end.  This makes a very good limber, not too expensive and not too hard to make.  I have several other versions that I make and likely they will appear in another issue of Bunker Talk.