Art Park on Idlewild Boulevard - Beginnings

I finally stumbled upon a place and arrangement for the SRSv2 and L’il Overlook buildings: I thought I’d organize them into a public art park on the southern end of the city. Basically, it’s an area that was once a thriving light industrial area, but after going through a prolonged state of neglect where many of the businesses closed down, the old derelict buildings were demolished and it was revived into a tourist area. An early part of the revival was the installation of sidewalks so visitors could walk down from the city, but it’s now moving on to landscaping, structure installation and road building. It’s beneficial to have a level-crossing nearby to bring in tourists – hopefully, it’ll have a station platform to service the park.

There is still some industry nearby. Just to the north, on the other side of the tracks, is the undeveloped location for the Barrel and Marble Works – maybe Cedar Heights Station will find a place here too. The Barrel and Marble Works is a repurposed building: it once housed a mill, but instead of demolition, it has been renovated a bit and leased out to smaller businesses. Further north and east is the Moore industrial park where the still thriving Bunn’s Feed and Seed, and Jones Chemical Company are located. One can see the progression from modern to legacy land use and how the railway fit in.

No, I haven’t lost my mind. Thinking about how the businesses might have evolved helps me to develop the railroad even though it’s just a retro-modern fiction in HO-scale. I’ll try and keep posting photos as the scene develops - this one is just the beginning to set the stage.

Cedar Heights Station

I’m interested in models that one can see into or through. Scarboro Square Station was one project where I tried out this idea. It doesn’t have any glass components, but you can look through it from many angles. Cedar Heights Station is a simple project where I wanted to use a glass wall as the dominant element.

The concrete base is built from several pieces of 0.080 inch styrene glued up into a single block as was done with the loading dock at the Jones Chemical Company. When solid, the outer surfaces were coated with putty and sanded when dry to help mask the styrene edges.

The glass wall is cut from a piece of thin clear plastic - I seemed to have lost the specification sheet. It’s edged with 1/16 inch L-shaped styrene pieces that were painted with Tester’s Model Master steel paint prior to gluing to the wall with thick superglue. That job was a nail-biter. I had to be extra careful not to get any glue on areas of glass that could be seen. This may not be the best way to attach these things and I need to look into better methods.

The roof is corrugated Evergreen styrene sheet laminated to a piece of 0.010 inch styrene to give the roof a little more depth and structure.

When I glued-up the various pieces I positioned and held all of them by hand while they dried. I should have used some clamps and templates because things got a little crooked. I pulled things apart a bit and did some re-gluing to square things up, but it only partially fixed the problems. A little strategic camouflaging with figures and scene details helped make things look a little more aligned and righteous.

I’m having a bit of a problem deciding where to place the signboard. I’ll post an update when I’ve made up my mind.

{A rather ominous picture (!) now that I look at it more closely}

Although I like the look of this building, Cedar Heights Station wouldn’t stand-up in the real world; way too flimsy and unbalanced for Ontario, and maybe anywhere else. But, that’s one of the good things about model building, you can build whatever you want.

Barrel & Marble Works: An E.L. Moore style building in HO

When Debra and I were traveling through Prince Edward County in the summer we made a stop at the Armstrong Glassworks in Wellington. We’d never been there before, and I was surprised to see a relatively large old mill complex standing directly behind the shop. While Debra did some browsing, I did some photographing.

It’s visually quite an interesting complex, and it immediately struck me as something that might have sprung from the pages of an old E.L. Moore building article. It looks like it was originally some sort of mill – we were making a quick stop and I didn’t have time to hunt someone down to ask questions and take photos at the same time – that now houses businesses for making new household objects, like chairs, from barrels, a marble works and a recycling facility.

I’ve always wanted to do an original building in an E.L. Moore style, and this one struck me as the perfect candidate.

For purposes of getting started, you can think of this complex as having two major parts: the barrel and marble works on the right, and the recyclery on the left. The barrel works is that 2 or 3 storey tall structure in the centre, and the marble works is to the right of it in the smaller, appended annex.

So, here is a photo walk-around of the first part.

And here is a photo walk-around of the recyclery on the left.

One could take a variety of approaches when turning this into an HO-scale building for a model railroad. It could be ‘restored’ to its original use for railroads set in an earlier time-period. Or, one could just chose to model the centre section since it’s very distinctive on its own. I chose to model it in its present-day, 2010 form, but selectively shrunk it to fit on a smallish model railroad, and with the back wall remodeled a little to accommodate a simple rail siding. I’ll probably make other changes as I proceed, but those seem like a good starting place.

I started by making a rough sketch of what I thought the building looked like from the photos, with various dimensions downsized. You could use a drawing tool like Sketch-Up, but I’m happy with pencil-and-paper. At this stage, I’m just trying to understand how all the major parts will fit together, and the tactile immediacy of a pencil seems to help me.

Next, I decided to draw a little more accurately the outlines of the walls for the first part of the structure. I just used an HO-scale rule, a square and a pencil for this task. In sizing the complex, I have assumed that the plans must fit on 2 or 3, 8 ½ x 11 pages, in HO-scale, as if it were an old-school E.L. Moore article. At this stage I’m not concerned about all the details you’d find on finished plans, I’m just trying to work out the major dimensions and get it to look pleasing.

For windows and doors, I’m again going to forego using the classic techniques that Mr. Moore applied and use plastic moldings. I bought a window and door selection from Tichy Train Group last year, and I laid out some on the plans to see what might fit. Once I’ve cut out the walls, I’ll draw in and cut out the window and door openings directly in the wall material. At present I’m just checking rough fit, and to see if I’ve got suitable parts for this project.

I set the scaled drawing aside for awhile. Something wasn’t quite right. I think I drew the front and back walls of the marble works a little too short. I think it should be about the same length as the barrel works: 24 feet, instead of the 20 on the drawing. I’ll also make the recyclery 24 feet long so that everything looks balanced. Anyway, it’ll be interesting to see what it looks like in plastic.

This rock is mine

Trees can get very territorial about their rocks.

Lost

It's not here.
Or here.

Turns out I've lost the E.L.Moore V.W pickup I used in some of the red shed photos I took last week. I've looked everywhere and haven't found it. I'll need to be more careful when taking photos outside. Well, it's a good excuse for building another one.