Inglenook Lake: Toying with fire

Designing Inglenook Lake has really captured my imagination. I identified a few issues with the layout in the previous post, and I've started to wrestle with them. 

Over on the right in the above photo I've made two updates. The rightmost track piece has been replaced with a 12" straight so it'll fit the loco I plan to use on the layout and a 40' box car with a little wiggle room. This change will allow the Inglenook switching game to be played. The second was to replace the Atlas switch with one from the Peco Setrack range. The straight portion of the Peco switch is around 6cm shorter than the Atlas, so I can recover some length on the long straight section at the back to try and get the total length of this layout into 4'. I may replace the switch on the left side with a Peco too to get another 6cm back.

Speaking of the left side, I've added a 9" straight to the switch so the proverbial 40' boxcar can be parked there. 

A fire lookout tower mockup built from Peter-Austin girders.

I've been thinking about what sort of buildings might be located on the layout. After some diddling around I think I've settled on a forest fire lookout tower that also performs some air traffic control functions.

Prototype inspiration: 30m tall Tower Hill Lookout in Parry Sound, Ontario.
Image Source: Curiocity.
Built in the late 1920s as a fire observation tower.

After surfing the internet a bit it seemed the old lookout tower in Parry Sound had the right look: tall, solid looking with its square cross section, but still looking scary with its spindly framework. 

I sized the tower to 'tower' over the airplanes so they aren't the largest objects on the layout.

Well, of course, after looking at the Parry Sound tower, the Peter-Austin construction toy came to mind, so I decided to pull it out and build a mock-up.

As I built it I started to think that even though it's a toy, suitably painted, and with some selected details added, it would make a nice homage to the Peter-Austin construction sets. Some might consider that defacing a classic toy, and others might see it as a crude addition to a layout, but to me it seems right to include this Peter-Austin reference. Also, I think it's interesting to use a play set that was once meant to build bridges and roads to now use it to fight forest fires. A new role for an old toy! Everything old is new again :-)