Stella’s Used Record Store & Starlight Yoga Studio: Demolition and Renovation

[I temporarily tilted up the ‘glass’ walls for this shot to see how things looked. One wall was a little too tall and had to be cut down to size.]

I started assembling the Design Preservation corner building kit several years ago, but lost interest midway during construction and went on to other projects. It’s sat in a forlorn, semi-finished state in various locations in the workshop ever since. I eventually realized the problem I had was with the second story. I didn’t like it. It seemed too old, but the ground floor was quite interesting. I’ve been thinking for a long time about cutting the second floor off, and adding a more modern glass-and-steel upper level as a replacement to create a hybrid old and slightly newer building. I finally decided to give it a try. These days I’ve got a lot of ideas for various projects kicking around in my mind – good thing they’re not wearing cowboy boots! – and I figured that if I took my usual plodding approach to building one project after another in serial fashion, I’d barely see any of them realized. So, I thought I’d just make a start on any project that was interesting whenever the mood struck me, and I’d work on any project on the bench that seemed fun to do. This might be wasteful because something(s) is (are) likely never to get finished, but maybe that’s better than never starting them at all and wondering how they might have turned out. Anyway, I thought I’d collect up some pictures of progress I’ve made on this one over the last few weeks.

[After: The second story was cut off using both a disk cutter in my dremel and a razor saw. After it was free, I leveled the top of the first floor walls with the dremel drum sander and sanding sticks.]

[The upper story walls cut from 1/16 inch clear acrylic sheet. This is tough stuff to cut. Basically, you need to score it with a special knife made for the job, and then snap it along the score. Easy to write, harder to do well and safely. I usually break or mangle the piece I’m trying to cut, but I vowed not to do that this time. The mistake I made in the past was to try and hold the piece steady with one hand and use the other to score it. Bad idea on both the accuracy and safety fronts. This time I clamped the piece onto my WorkMate with an aluminum straight edge running along the line to be scored. This makes scoring a deep, uniform line easy, and you can keep your other hand free and clear without running the risk of getting a nasty gash in the process.]

[Once the piece is scored, you can snap it by laying the scored section over a piece of ABS pipe and then smartly pushing down on either side of the line. Presto! A clean break! After I got the hang of the whole process, I was able to easily separate the pieces and get a clean edge at the break simply by snapping the piece with my hands.]

I think one great thing about a streetcar layout is that it allows for many sorts of buildings and locales since the route should service all kinds of places people might go to: homes, libraries, businesses, restaurants, factories, schools, stores, hotels, clubs, parks, ski hills, beaches and so on and so on. For the model builder I think it offers lots of opportunity to try building all sorts of stuff; both replicas and new things. With Stella’s, the first floor will be the used record store, and there will be 2 glass and steel floors above that one: one for the yoga studio, the other’s use is still to be determined.

[The inside surface of the first floor walls have many small indentations – I guess they are from the molding process. I filled them in so I’d get a clean surface to work with.]

[This is where Stella's might finally reside.]

That’s it for now. Here’s a little of the Bill Evans’ Trio to finish off the evening:

29 after the 29th

The winter has been a drag – I’m glad there’s only a few weeks left. This may sound funny, but although there’s 2 or 3 feet of snow covering the yards around here, it hasn’t been a particularly hard winter as winters go. But, I do feel like I’m in a mental funk. Cabin fever maybe. Last January I tried my hand at posting 30 times in 30 days over the course of the month to see if I could do it. The posts themselves varied in quality, but I did accomplish that modest goal. Looking back, one thing it did do was help give me a little boost for taking on creative tasks, so I thought I’d give it a try again. Since the 29th of February only occurs once every four years, so this seemed like an auspicious day to start. Hopefully I’ll post every day, or maybe every two or three, in March. Last year I did my posting marathon in this blog, this time I may split it between 30Squares and retroDynamics as I’ve been thinking about a number of projects that are better suited to that blog. I eagerly await any mental kick-starting I can get to happen 

I thought I’d start with John Ahern’s book, Miniature Building Construction, since it’s been sitting on my coffee table in front of the tv for a long time! Last spring I bought a copy after I’d read about Mr. Ahern’s Madder Valley model railroad in an article written by Chris Leigh in the December 2010 issue of Model Rail. He built it in the 1940s, and what made it unique was that it was one of the first, and best, examples of what became known as ‘scenic model railroads’. That is, a model railroad that has extensive, well-made, realistic scenery and trains, and mimics to some extent actual railroad operation – which is our de facto norm today. The article mentioned that Mr. Ahern was a pioneer in the design and construction of model buildings – he was the John Allen of England, or maybe John Allen was the John Ahern of the U.S  The article also stated that Mr. Ahern had written a book on the subject; that being the case, I knew I had to look for a copy. Luckily, through the magic of the internet, I found one.

The book’s front matter indicates it was first reprinted in 1950, and that my version is a 1956 reprint. Stickers and stamps inside my particular copy suggest that it was acquired by the Kansas City public library for its circulating collection in 1958, and was surplussed in 1991. I bought it via Alibris, and it’s still in very good condition.

It’s quite a interesting look at how to build 4mm or 7mm scale (HO scale is 3.5mm) model buildings with 1940s technology: primarily card and wood – essentially an elaboration on the techniques presented in my grandmother’s teacher’s manual training guide I wrote about a while ago. The old photos in the book, and the colour ones of the still operational (!) Madder Valley in the Model Rail article, attest to the fact that the results are anything but crude. Certainly today’s manufactured craftsman kits are far superior detail-wise, but the skill and charm of Mr. Ahern’s builds still come through even here in the 21th century – well, maybe that’s just my own bias coming through because I admire scratch built projects made from simple raw materials. Hopefully sometime this year I’ll be able to try my hand at one of his builds, or at least try his methods on a new build.

Russian train in watercolour

I stumbled across this 45 rpm record while looking for some old Christmas LPs at my father's house. I like the cover art: a rather striking watercolour painting of a stream train high above a bright winter scene populated with cross-country skiers. I think he bought this record one summer in the International Pavilion at the CNE in the late 60s or early 70s. From the pristine condition of the record, I don't think it had ever been played. I gave it a spin, but the music wasn't to my taste.

Big block rock

Sometimes when I take pictures for a post, ideas for other pictures come to mind based on those I’ve taken. They don’t all have model railroad content, but they often seem worth exploring to me just to see where they might go – they in turn could lead to something else that is even more interesting; but, maybe not immediately. These days I’m finding that I often think about what sort of photos will result from various modeling projects, and those considerations at times drive what gets built. There’s a back-and-forth between picture ideas and modeling ideas, so I’m thinking that from time to time I’ll try and post some of those derivative photos. This simple one came to mind after taking the final photo in the Moe Lass’ fireplace construction post - this rock has sat patiently on the floor of my study for years! The big rock wasn’t cut to that square, blocky shape – that’s the way I found it. It has an interesting shape, good colour and has a serious heft to it.

Moe Lass': Building the fireplace

According to Mr. Moore’s article, this building is sort of representative of a sorghum processing plant dating from the mid-1800s. A building like this might potentially survive into our end of the 21th century with fairly regular maintenance and a whole lot of extremely good luck - the building would be around 160 or 170 years old today! But, it probably wouldn’t still be used for the job it was originally built to serve.

[Basically, the fireplace is built up from several layers of 1/16 inch balsa sheet.]

I struggled for awhile with this one’s story of how it could still be around, and what it might be used for these days. In the end, its massive fireplace was the key: barbecue. With a strategic site on the Lost Ocean Line it could easily be imagined to serve mouth-watering ribs, brisket, chops, chicken, duck, or whatever, to an appreciative clientele from both the industries in the east, the city in the west, and the tourist attracting beach in the centre. The primal call of barbecue is one that can’t be ignored! The aroma wafting through the countryside would no doubt be the only advertisement required. It’ll probably need its own streetcar stop to handle the customer traffic 

[The outside face of the fireplace has two semi-circular openings at ground level for creating the fire. The barbecue operation will need someone to sit back here to keep the fire going.]

I built the overall shape of the fireplace fairly close to Mr. Moore’s instructions, but I did modify the interior hearth to allow for barbecuing, so I didn’t incorporate a place for the sorghum vats. These would have been removed and lost to history during the ongoing refitting of the building over its long life.

[The hearth is so high off the floor because there is a 3-foot tall platform that covers half the floor. So, there'll be an elevated cooking area and lower area for customers.]

Mr. Moore describes a technique for weathering the Northeastern brick walls with tempera paints. Instead of following his suggestions, I decided to age things a bit using pastels since I wasn’t sure if the water-based tempera applied to the paper and balsa laminated walls would warp them a lot. The overall effect of the dry pastels is subtle, but it does tone down the shininess of the brick paper a bit.

[Those super family-sized cans of baked beans on the shelves are made from styrene tubing cut to size and filled with putty.]

I also rubbed down the edges of the brick paper with a soft lead pencil to get rid of the white edge. It sort of gives the building the look of something that’s been drawn with a pencil and then filled in with colour, but that’s ok with me. Some more general weathering is probably on the horizon for this building, but I’m going to ease into it.