The Elgin Jazz Club Revisited

A couple last songs before closing.

It's well over 10 years ago the Elgin opened for business. The last set of photos taken there date back 9 years when it was located at the corner of Sinatra and Ocean Blvd on the Lost Ocean Line.

As I've been playing with layout design principle #1 I decided to dust off the Elgin, rearrange the figures, and try taking a photo or two. One of the uses of the Taronna layout will be to stage scenes for photographing so I figured I should try out that aspect while designing it. 

To create the effect of a spotlight on the singer I made a second roof for the Elgin from a sheet of 0.060" thick sheet styrene. I drilled a 1/8" diameter hole in the roof over the spot where the singer stands and set an LED flash light on top. The photos were taken after turning off all the room lights.

That roof isn't permanent. It can be swapped with the original whenever the picture taking mood strikes. Other buildings might get a similar treatment to open up other photographic possibilities.

Designing continues.

The Elgin gets updated

Signs, shrubs and some interior detailing were added - along with some no parking signs out back :-)

The interior details are only temporary so a variety of scenes can be staged. They're held in place with some slightly congealed rubber cement. 

Looks like someone should pressure-wash that side wall to clean it up a bit. 

The back wall needs some clean-up too.

2 am, corner of Sinatra and Ocean Blvd.

Last car, but the driver’s in no hurry….

… because you don’t hear a voice like that every day.

‘Fluorescent’ lighting for the Elgin

[The roof fit needs a little tuning]

I’ve been fiddling with the Elgin build this week while I’ve been waiting for the new drill bits and fibre optics for the Mel’s Drive-in project to arrive in the mail. Also, it’s been gosh darn hot – well, hot for here – with daytime temperatures in the low 30s and humidex in the low 40s, some evening model building in the cool of the basement goes down rather well these days.

[Compared to the WSMoftheWBB the Elgin is pretty small]

When I started the project I didn’t plan to put lights in, just clean it up a bit, but while rummaging through my left over optical fibres trying to figure out what I’d need for Mel’s, it dawned on me that some simulated fluorescent lighting by way of side illuminating optical fibre might look alright in this little building. It looked like it was going to be relatively easy to install, and I had enough parts left over from other projects so I didn’t have to buy anything new; I decided to give it a go. 

The lights are made from 3mm diameter side illuminating optical fibre. The 'fixture' part of the light is simply a U-section styrene tube.

Surprisingly, it isn't easy to find a glue that will bond the optical fibre to the styrene fixture. Eventually, I found that this Hercules double-sided tape did the trick. 

Here's an end view of the fibre. I painted the end that dead-ends against the glass wall frame with silver coloured paint.

Here's the lights after installation. What got me started thinking about this sort of lighting were some recesses in the short glass wall. The assembled lights fit neatly into them.

I bought a couple of these LED closet lights at the dollar store down at the mall when I was trying to figure out how to light up the fibres in the WSMoftheWBB build. They didn't get used on that project, but one of them was useful on this one. Note to self, even though it's called a 'dollar' store, these things cost $2.

This is what it looks like after the cover and reflectors were pried off. The optical fibres aren't too flexible, so I cut those yellow power wires from the batteries and soldered in some longer pieces so I could get the LEDs close to the fibres without too much undue fibre bending. I also cut out the on-off switch from the circuit board to replace it with a slide switch that could be more conveniently placed in the structure.

Here's the light after the re-wiring. As you can see I also cut off the outer housing to allow the unit to fit into the building better.

A piece of sheet styrene was glued to the bottom of the light unit so I could insert it securely between the walls of the secondary structure. 

A hole had to be cut in the sheet in order to replace the batteries at some future date.

So, here's the lighting unit installed in the secondary structure. The on-off switch was taped to the floor in a convenient location.

The optical fibres were trimmed and attached to the LEDs with heat shrink tubes. A hair dryer was used to shrink the tubes.

There was an interior garage door between the main showroom and the secondary structure. I cut it out and replaced it with a photo of a room printed on standard 8 1/2 x 11 paper. The third LED, and the residual light from the optical fibres, backlights the paper and helps reinforce the illusion of a detailed room in the secondary structure.

I still need to add some signs and details, but I'm going to park this one for awhile and work on Mel's.

The ‘Building in a Bag’ becomes The Elgin Restaurant

[The walls were temporarily leaned together to see how things will look.]

Although simple and toy-like, this is a rather charming kit. I started by making new pieces for the long sidewall and the small back wall. Each new wall is made from two pieces of styrene cut and glued together: the outer piece is 0.020 inch sheet with an embossed stucco pattern, and the inner piece is regular 0.030 inch sheet. 

[These are the walls that were replaced.]

[There's a gap between the stone wall and the main section window frames that will need a sliver of thin styrene sheet to fill.]

Prior to an initial spray of colour, all the walls were washed in warm soapy water and sanded a bit to remove any remaining sprue burrs. Many low-cost toy-like structures can be improved considerably just by giving them a more nuanced paint job, and I’m hoping that will help out this little building. Things are looking promising and even painting the once light blue window walls have made it clear that they have rather nice shapes and detail.

Building in a bag

Back in the winter I bought this bag of building parts at a swap meet. The seller assured me all the parts were included. For some reason I believed him and plopped down $4. It turns out he wasn’t lying and all the pieces were present, which is good because I wanted to believe him since it looked like from the parts on view, it might be a rather nice kit of a mid 20^th century style building. As it turns out, it is. It’s a Plastiville HO scale, ‘50s or ‘60s style car dealership. Overall, it’s rather toy-like, but it has a nice front façade and signage. I think with a little work it could be turned into a passable model; maybe a restaurant or diner. Located nearby a convenient streetcar stop of course :-)