Last car at Ocean & Museum

From the hotel window across the street

I've been itching to try some photographs now that a bit of overhead is in place. This one is of an eastbound Ocean Boulevard streetcar about to stop at Museum Road as seen from a hotel window across the street. It looks like the car is about to pickup late rush hour riders.

One last facade

I've been doing a bit of work to finish up the facade of the central building in the Canadian Press complex.

Each of the floor drawers were painted with a sea grey, and window shades were cut from sheets of white paper were glued to the front of each drawer. Nothing exciting about those tasks, but necessary.

The main business that I'd been putting off for a long time has been building up the ground-level facade. Delay no more. One rainy morning I downed copious amounts of coffee and got to work.

I laid out a simplified arrangement of windows, doors, and framework on a thin piece of clear sheet plastic. Permanent ink Sharpie pens were used for the black lines, and some El Cheapo permanent ink, no-name pen from China was used for the silver framing. The silver ink wasn't as permanent as advertised, so I sprayed the piece with Testor's Gloss Cote. That fixed the silver smudging problem, but caused ripples in the black lines. Instead of discarding the piece and starting again as I should, I merely tried to strengthen the black lines a little more by relining them and continuing on. The black lines still have a little ripple, but I didn't want to lose my momentum by starting over. Live and learn. 

Acid-free construction paper was used to make the panels, which were stuck onto the plastic with transfer tape. Soloway's Hot Dogs isn't actually at this location, but I loved getting hot dogs at one of their outlets, washed down with a Dr. Brown's Black Cherry, with the guys back in days of yore, so I indulged in a little fantasy. The frame around the leftmost doors, the main Canadian Press sign, and all the doorhandles were cut from styrene.

To the back of the layup, strips of transfer tape were added. It was then just a matter of pressing the taped up piece to the ground floor clear acrylic wall, and presto! 

Construction is now more-or-less finished. I need to work out something for lighting the various floors as it's the lighting of the prototype that attracted me to it in the first place.

One floor down, five to go

I've been futzing around this summer, and my model building work has been scattered. In odd moments I've been adding details to one of the floor drawers. The walls are covered in pieces of construction paper, and the whiteboards and doors are drawn on white paper, cut out, and stuck on the walls. Lighting is from a piece of LED strip, and the conference room table is built up from Bristol board - it is actually glued down square, but the low angle of the photo makes it seem otherwise.

Mavericks

I haven't given up on the Canadian Press complex, just parked it for awhile. It's in the final stages of detailing, but with summer weather here, my mind isn't aligned with the concentrated work this will require to get the buildings finished.

Although, a few weeks ago I added some detailing and framing to the street-level restaurant on the leftmost building. It's basically built up from construction paper and glued to the acrylic base with Weld Bond. It still needs a little more framing detail and some light weathering.

One day billboard

Yesterday I did something I haven't done in a long time: built a model in one day (ok, it was a simple one) :-)

Rooftop billboards were fairly common in Toronto at one time, and the real estate on top of the bank of Nova Scotia building looked like it needed one.

The entire project was freelanced from studying some pictures and then gluing up a structure from various pieces of Evergreen styrene strip along with a small piece of 0.020" styrene sheet for the billboard's main surface.

The advertisement for radio station CFRA was scanned from their 3 May 1971 top 30 leaflet I found stashed away with some old papers, and then sized to fit the billboard. According to their top 30 for that day, Three Dog Night's Joy to the World was number 1, and Chairmen of the Board's Chairman of the Board clocked in at number 30; however, when it comes to model building I usually relate more to their other hit, Give me just a little more time.

Making a start on signs

I haven't been doing much model building over the last couple of weeks, but I have squeezed in a little time to make a start on signs for the buildings in the Canadian Press complex. The Quebec bank building on the left does have a hamburger place on the ground floor called Big Smoke Burger, which we've had great burgers at, so I copied the canopy sign from the prototype. It's just a paper and construction paper assembly. For the bank on the right, I painted up some plastic letters and glued them to the facade with Weld Bond. I think the prototype building was a Toronto-Dominion bank, but since the TD tower is down the street, I didn't want to have too many of the same company. Anyway, for some unknown reason, this little facade said bank of Nova Scotia to me, so that's what I went with.

Street level overlays

I cut two overlays from construction paper for the street level entrances to the tower's offices and stores. The verticals will have another layer of card glued on to mimic the thickness of the prototype's. Hmmm, these unforgiving digital photos show the overlays need a little clean-up before installation, but at least the fit, shown in the tilt-up below, isn't too bad. 

The Unsigned

I've noticed that many of my buildings don't have signs or other external details that the real things would. Without signs, and lighting, they seem dead. I created a temporary street on the shelf behind my desk - which turns out to put the ground floors at eye-level when I swivel my chair around to have a look - so I could look at buildings neighbouring the Canadian Press model, and maybe fix-up their detailing as the CP building is finished. I hoping that dealing with a group that needs small details might create a big improvement of the overall scene.

I also lined up a few buildings that are also missing signage and details as these will look rather abandoned when they appear on the layout. I'm hoping by having them glare at me I'll finally breakdown and add details :-)

I won't be adding snow as a detail as I've seen enough. Luckily that stuff melted after 30 minutes or so, but as I write this a new flurry has moved in to fill the gap.

Back wall

Title tells all I guess. I haven't made any attempt to detail the back walls. The centre building's is simply covered with some old MicroMark self-adhesive block paper. I do plan on aging the back walls with pastels or paints so the surfaces won't be too obtrusive.

I've glued the three buildings together with Weld Bond. On the one hand it's probably too early to do that, but I wanted to begin dealing with the complex as a unified whole so that the final piece didn't look too much like three separate things arbitrarily glued together.

In other news: snow! Those white streaks aren't some sort of digital artifact in my camera. It's real, live snow.

Floor drawers

Each of the floors in the middle section has a 'drawer' that provides the stage for whatever scene is happening. The drawers are made from 0.040" styrene, and are designed so they can slip in and out of each floor, allowing a scene to be changed if desired.

Those little styrene panels stuck perpendicular to the back wall are pull tabs so it's easy to extract the drawer. And like the floor on the tower, all the sharp edges were sanded off each drawer so they don't get stuck. Interior decorating is next!

Looks more like a file cabinet than a building :-)

Once more into the sunlight

After a mid-morning discussion with the head of the 30Squares' Department of Photography I went outside and took some pictures of the Quebec Bank stand-in in the glorious sunshine that is pouring down on Ottawa. The model certainly has a more realistic look. Hopefully there'll be lots more sunshine in the months ahead, and maybe some more outdoor model photos too.

Right side done

I had an urge to do some painting and so decided to continue on with the building on the right - my stand-in for the Quebec Bank building.

Before getting on with painting I added a fourth floor that tried to capture the basic characteristics of the modern addition to the prototype. It's simply a box built up from 0.040" styrene sheet with styrene brick sheet glued on top along with some 0.020" styrene sheet scored to mimic concrete blocks. The windows are castings from Tichy Train Group.

The brick colour is a loose mixture of Model Master burnt sienna and Tamiya green acrylic paints, but just about any burnt sienna mixed with a darker green will give an acceptable result.

Once everything was painted, a thin wash of flat black was applied.

For the side wall I added a ghost sign from a photograph Vince generously provided. The sign advertises Hugh C. MacLean Publications, which was a publisher based in Toronto from 1909 to 1964. Vince's prototype photo is posted to his Instagram account - I need to add a link.

I resized the photo to fit, and then printed it on a piece of white decal paper. Copious amounts of MicroSet were used to get it to snuggle into the brickwork.

Those windows on the side wall don't look windowy because I closed them by gluing a piece of styrene brick sheet behind them. I also did that to all the windows and doors on the back wall. On this complex I'm mainly interested in the facade, and didn't want to spend much effort on detailing other areas, so I've taken a minimalist approach to side and back walls on the complex.

Office lights

I thought I'd spend sometime creating a lighted floor for the tower. As you can see, the 6th floor's got light. Now it just needs a tenant.

The floor is basically a box made from 0.040" styrene that slips into the 6th floor. It isn't glued in place so it can be taken out for adding or changing the scene. 

One important thing I should note is that all of the box's outside edges need to sanded a bit to round them off. If they remain sharp they catch on the building's walls and make it difficult to insert or remove the box. Also make sure to use the sanding stick to blunt the front corners of the box so they don't dig in while the box it being inserted.

The floors have been notched so that wiring can snake down the building through to the layout. Each floor box has a false back wall that hides the wiring.

I don't know if all the floors in this tower will be detailed and lit, although they will be on the centre Canadian Press building. This tower might only have the 6th and ground floors detailed. Decisions, decisions :-)

Test arrangement

I was working on weathering the roads and thought I'd try a test setup on the Ocean Park end of the layout. Moving the buildings around and trying different arrangements is part of the fun for me. I'm beginning to see the look I'm after starting to peek through, but more detailing, and finishing the Canadian Press complex, is needed.

Three amigos

I was anxious to see how the three buildings in this complex looked now that the centre one was standing. I especially wanted to check on the squareness of the whole thing. It's not too bad. I think I'll have a go at the new 4th floor on the rightmost building.

Centre building standing

Building the core for the Canadian Press building was a little tricky. One thing I learned was I need to buy a specialized foam board cutting tool if I'm going to continue working with that material.

The main side walls, roof, and walls for the ground floor stores were cut from 3/16" white foam board. They were glued up into a structure using a combination of transfer tape, Weld Bond, and Roket card glue. I'll admit to overkill, but I wanted to make the structure as solid as I could.

The interior floors are cut from 1/8" white foam board. The back of each floor has a couple of notches cut in so lighting wiring can be snaked to the ground floor. I envision the floor details being built up on styrene 'trays' that can be slipped into the structure.

That light brown outline on the foam board edges is transfer tape for bonding the floors to the facade.

The resulting box had a slight twist in it, so before attaching the facade I put it in an old frame clamp that I found when I was cleaning up the workshop a few months ago. I had thought I had lost this thing and was quite glad to find it and see that it still works.

The very last thing was to bond the facade to the box. While the glue was drying I placed a heavy book on top and waited.

It stands pretty square. There's a lot of detailing on the horizon for this thing, but the basic structure is now finished.

This isn't Ocean Boulevard Jason, it's Gotham City

My isolation reading has now moved on to my old stash of comic books. That panel, with different words of course, is from Open-And-Shut Case!, the first in a series of stories from The Master Crime-file of Jason Bard that appeared in Detective Comics No. 425, which is the first issue of that comic I bought. In my mind it's always Batman I associate with Detective Comics. I'd forgotten about this Jason Bard who seems like an actual detective as opposed to a superhero. I've got a few more issues and it looks like there are some Jason Bard stories in them too. I should note that Open-And-Shut Case! was written by Frank Robbins with art by Don Heck.

Standing on the right

Instead of standing up the centre section I decided to do something a little easier and stand up the building on the right. It was just a matter of cutting the remaining walls down to match the facade and gluing them all together.

Well, there was one other thing. I had to narrow the back wall a bit because I'm not using the left trim piece on the facade, so to make the front and back the same width, the back had to be slimmer.

One thing you can't see in the photo is the slanted cut I made on the wall that will attach to the centre section. It's a boo-boo that can be fixed to square things up, and luckily it won't be seen.

I'm not doing the prototype justice by generically referring to it as the-building-on-the-right. A little internet searching found that's it's called the Quebec Bank building. It was built in 1886. You can see from the photos and description at the link that the prototype is a fascinating building, and my little approximation doesn't begin to capture its magnificence.

Standing up the building on the left

The order I placed for the rightmost building in this complex also included the styrene channels I needed to complete the side facade on the leftmost tower. They were painted up to match those on the front and stuck on with transfer tape.

The moment of truth had arrived. All was ready for assembling the tower.

The first thing I had to do was figure out the dimensions for the other side wall, the back wall, the floors, and the roof. All this activity needed was a sharp pencil, ruler, and my trusty calculator. All of those pieces were cut from 3/16" black foam board. The street level store will have a styrene floor, but that will be added later.

First up was cutting out the floors. That notch is to allow wires for lights to be snaked down the back wall to the base and into a hole in the layout to connect up to a power pack. I'm thinking that interior detail will be setup on styrene sheets that can be slipped in and out of the floors.

Transfer tape was stuck to all edges of each floor piece except for the back where the notch is.

In this photo the foam core side wall, and all the individual floors, have been stuck in place. All that needs to be done now is to attach the last side.

The back wall isn't glued in place. You may remember that in the Thomson building project I built a back wall that slides into place. On this tower the model is too small for a slide, so I cut the back wall to friction fit to the sides. It seems to hold ok, but time will tell if I need to make a more secure attachment.

Gluing on the other sidewall was a tricky juggling act involving superglue, Weld Bond, cursing, and many clamps.

After the action had ceased, it was left to completely dry overnight.

The foam core that forms the back wall has a piece of 0.020" sheet styrene stuck on. It was cut wide enough to overlap the end walls to make things look neat.

To the sheet I attached a piece of channel to one corner as well as some Micro Mark self-adhesive concrete block paper and a strip of their brick paper. These were lightly painted with the same colour as was used on the facade's verticals, and then were washed with thinned flat black. Some of the colours and textures from the papers are still visible after painting which gives a rather nice effect. 

I'm thinking the tower has a little problem with squareness. Yeah, it doesn't look too bad over there compared to the square, but I think its base might need a little grinding or shimming once I begin to attach the other buildings in the complex. Any oddities that result along the base I should be able to mask a bit when I put on the ground floor storefront overlays.

That's the finished back wall and the side wall that will attach to the centre building. Only half of the side has been papered and painted as the lower black part will be  unseen.

On its own, this tower seems a little small for HO, but it could be just fine for N once suitable adjustments had been made on the ground level storefront. But, when I place the tower near the two other facades that will make up the complex, it looks about right. It's always fascinating to me how context changes perception.

The other thing I noticed about the model was that once it was standing I had a feeling of recognition. I've walked by the prototype many times, and on seeing the model I strongly felt it looked right, which suggested even with its faults its likely heading in the right direction.

Well, that's that for now. The next step will be to stand up the centre building.