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When I think of a city, I think of New York; and when I think of New York, one of the things I think of is fire escapes. As an actual safety device, they're dubious, due to their sad habit of peeling off of the building when they're in use. Many were retrofit, starting in the mid-19th century, and in this case they were typically just bolted to the face of the building. Even without years of neglect, the building wall was never intended to hold their weight, plus the weight of people trying to escape. If the escapes were part of the building's design from the start, they could be bolted to the opposite side of the building. With proper engineering, this provided a much stronger attachment, but years of neglect and rust means that many extant examples no longer have the strength they started with. New York banned external fire escapes from most new construction starting in the mid 1960s, requiring instead an internal fire stair, which now tends to be the strongest part of the building. Nevertheless, they were state-of-the-art for about a century, plenty of buildings still have them, some of them feature decaorative ironwork, and I've always enjoyed their look. In some communities they function as balconies (often illegally), leaving a lot of opportunity for modeling interesting scenes. Even if they're not in use, they add visual interest, so they were a natural item for me to include.
After looking at a few options, I went with the Vintage Fire Escape set by Walthers. This had a look I was happy with, for the most part, and didn't use any photo etch parts. I have no experience with photo etch, and though I would like to change that, my fist model when getting back into the hobby didn't seem the right time to do so. I also considered a set by Tichy, but the only one I could get my hands on had vertical ladders. I guess those are found in real life, but I don't remember seeing them, and it wasn't the look I was going for. My hoped-for model would have the bottom stair vertical, since that's what I'm most familiar with, but I didn't see any kits with this feature.
This is another example of learning as I went: first, the cornice above the store front (i.e. below the second floor windows) sticks out too far to allow for a fire escape. Specifically, the ladder down to ground level would crash into the cornice during installation. I've seen this problem in actual buildings, and the solution has been for the cornice to be trimmed back in the relevant locations, but doing so on the model is easier before the parts are assembled. I made the cuts with a sprue cutter, since it cuts flush. The plastic discolors as it's cut, meaning that my decision not to paint had consequences here. I decided that during the installation, the cut-away cornice was tarred over, and so was able to black out the discoloration. Since the fire escape is also painted black, the cutout isn't very obvious. I also had to cut through the architectural detailing to allow the struts for the bottom balcony to reach the brick walling. I could have cut the struts short, and had them rest on the detailing, but the struts include an expanded region where they meet the wall - in the real world this allows for bolting the strut in place; in the model it gives more real estate for the cement to work with. A cut-short strut would lose this real estate, leading to a weaker bond between the escape and the wall. As with the cornice, I've seen these types of adaptations done in real life. Once the balcony was in place, and the glue was dry, I again applied black paint around the openings as if tar had been used to seal them.
The other layout lesson I learned centerd on the swing stair. The bottom level
stair's counter weight intrudes on the doorway to the shop, and the stair extends to or beyond the edge
of the building. The kit is unfortunately limited in forcing the ladders to
only run down to the right (to the left, if you're looking at the building
from across the street). Since I had already laid out the building with the
bedrooms behind the right windows, (I was still entertaining the idea of a partial interior) and the middle and left windows for the
living room, I was stuck with either putting the fire escape only in front of
the living rooms, or having the stairs stick off the right edge of the model.
I chose to do the latter.
I primed and painted the fire escape with Tamiya spray primer and gloss black, then took some Testor's flat black and semi-gloss black, working them in randomly to give the look of a repeatedly-repainted, repeatedly-faded and chipped fire escape. There's no real reason that I used Testors for this, other than that's what I had. Diving deep into my paints, I found several variants of rust, and applied them, too. Rust tends not to be a solid color - I think it starts out brighter and darkens with age - so using a single color to depict it can look odd. Less is more here, and I ended up repainting some of my rust to black.
The kit goes together easily. Scrape the paint from the areas where you'll apply cement - this is particularly important here since the parts are thin and there's not much plastic for the cement to work with even after you've scraped the paint away. I think I had one seam that came undone and needed regluing. There is a lip along the balcony railings where they fit on to the platforms, making it easy to line things up. I later discovered that one of my corners didn't come together properly, but I suspect the error was mine, rather than a shortcoming with the kit. Best practice is to figure out where on the platform the stair will need to attach, and scraping the paint before adding the balconies to the model, since access is easier without the building's wall in place. This goes for the stair railings, too. I attached the bottom-most ladder to its balcony prior to attaching the balcony to the building. There is a small piece with two steps that goes between the wall side of the swing ladder and the balcony (see the last photo), which would be difficult to add later. Since the ladder is actually sandwiched between this piece and the outer railing of the balcony, I added the ladder during the construction of the bottom balcony. Note that this ladder actually swings freely, and so can be modeled in an up or a down position. The mortar lines on the brick formed a natural level for me to line up the balconies with. If I had painted the walls, I'd have scraped it away where the balconies attached, then used a dab of black paint to cover the gap, as if the repaints on the fire escape hadn't been carefully applied. Alternately, I could carefully reapply the appropriate wall color and blend in the weathering, perhaps adding a rust stain if the blend wasn't convincing.
Adding the bottom balcony led me to realize that the second floor's bedroom air-conditioner protruded so far out the
window that anyone climbing down from the third floor would have to climb over
the air-conditioner to get to the final ladder. From a safety
perspective, this is a problem, so initially I put everything down to
reconsider. On reflection, though, I realized that safety-hazard or not,
this is commonly done, meaning that from a realism perspective, I hadn't lost
anything.
Once the balconies had dried in place, I found they were attached solidly enough that I could add the ladders without difficulty. This requires test fitting, trimming, and test-fitting again. The handrails were a puzzle at first. The story height of this model must be less than Walters counted on, meaning I had to trim the ladder beyond the length of its associated rail. The solution was to trim the topmost upright off the then attach the top of the railing to the balcony above.
Once the fire escape was in place, I used both black paint and rust to touch up any chips from where I had removed paint to apply cement or had to trim parts back. With everything else done, I could now finalize the rust and the varied sheen of the black paint. The final image shows more rust and more gloss than is generally noticeable, due to the flash and close-up. If I do this again, though, I think I'll pay more attention to getting my flat and semi-gloss into the railings, rather than just on the front, as I appear to have done here. Even with that in mind, I'm happy with the result, which is of a typical fire escape, as seen in any city.
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