Going Postal

Last week JB volunteered to work on the post office building. On Saturday he sent me a note describing a little problem he had. In attempting to correct a warp in the plastic kit, he warmed the part in an oven set at 250 degrees. That was too warm and the plastic kit wall warped and distorted.
It was too bad, as he did a nice job on the cornice and side walls.

So that evening and the next, I had some time to make a new post office. Since this one was not starting from a kit, I was able to copy more of the features of the Cairo Post Office that is the inspiration for this model.






I laser cut the plywood core. Then I added O scale plastic brick. I used Tichy windows for the upper story, but all the others were laser cut.  The first level doors are several layers of laser cut parts.

The crown molding for the cornice was a piece of molding left over from my daughter's doll house construction. The post office sign is a custom made decal to match the prototype sign. The lettering had to be done one at a time as there was no matching  font.

To detail the interior, I added a photo of a 19th century post office on display at the post office museum. So that completes the post office except for the board walk it sits on.

With post office and depot ready to be installed (I still  need to add chimneys to the depot), I took a crack at installing a piece of backdrop. This backdrop scene is more of Brian Kammerer's artwork. The street at an angle works nicely in this spot. So far so good.

How should I treat the backdrop where the building flat touches. Should I try to
extend the brick wall, add a tree or  leave alone? Any ideaS?