Steinberg's is open for business

Open for business? Not really, but major construction is finished.

I had to make 2 more signs: one for the glass front wall, and another for the left side wall. Both were made using the same technique used on the right side wall sign. 

One thing I should note is that I've used logos from different periods in the company's corporate history. Also, there seems to be an involved story about the use of Steinberg and Steinberg's, and once again, I haven't been consistent. I've mixed and matched for this model. The main sign on the front glass wall is what I recall as the sign used on this store at Cedarbrae Plaza in the late '60s and early '70s, and it's based on one of the reference photos I showed in the series first post. The side wall side is cut from an image found on the internet which seemed suitable for the model's side walls. So the message is: don't take my use of signage as historically accurate and consistent.

Take care if you decide to have a go with the sign construction method I've used. Over there is a little discussed puncture wound caused by paying too much attention to the record player and not enough to the business at hand :-) so to speak.

But, once the blood flow was staunched, and work continued, the end results weren't too bad.

One thing I should have mentioned earlier in the series was that to give the box that forms the main structure better rigidity, I glued on the roof and cut openings in the floor. Later I'll add some sort of photos or graphics for the interior as well as some lights. 

The last step was to fill the front planter with some ground foam bushes from Woodland Scenics. White glue was painted in the planter, and applied to the bushes, to get the plantings to stay in place. I don't remember the prototype ever being this lush and bursting with plants. It was usually pretty sparse and grim with the main crop being cigarette butts. 

And that's that. This building wasn't located by a streetcar line, although there were a couple of TTC bus stops nearby along Lawrence Avenue. But, it's not looking too bad along Ocean Boulevard.

Thoughts on the "Layout Gallery" concept

A couple days ago Vince sent me a link to a new post by Lance Mindheim called One Room, Several Layouts. Vince thought there might be some overlap with a few ideas that have been discussed here over the years. Maybe there's a little overlap, but not much. Even so, Mr. Mindheim's post is excellent, and I think the ideas he's putting forward are quite interesting. It's well worth reading, and I'd like to see more of posts like his that are exploring new ideas.

Maybe the perceived overlap is in the use of the word 'gallery', as I had written some posts about classifying layouts as either museum, gallery, or studio: The Museum and the Gallery?, Notes on the characteristics of Gallery, Museum and gallery and studio, and Through house and garden via Lego Train. My ideas didn't get beyond the nebulous definition stage. I was thinking of gallery-style layouts as being somewhat more freeform and experimental than what we think of as layouts with strict definitions of time, location, and operability: gallery-style would be something of a cross between a Games Preserve and a Place of Fine Arts style Exploratorium, but with a model railroad as a medium slant. In a later post I introduced the studio category, which is essentially a variation on gallery, but again, as Yogi Berra might say, the definitions aren't well defined :-)

I think Mr. Mindheim's proposal for several small layouts, that are maybe thematically linked, although maybe not, is quite an intriguing idea. However, I suspect in practice the modules might be in different stages of development at any given time, and that it might be difficult to keep the gallery clean and tidy as shown in the photo. If the emphasis was more on the gallery being an informal environment for ongoing development, exploration, and learning, as was the old Exploratorium, that might be more workable and help the gallery from devolving into a showroom - but maybe all I'm doing is putting a new spin on a what it means to be a workshop :-) 

I like the support structure for his N scale layout. It would be interesting to see what if any changes in viewer perception would arise if it held the layout at eye-level instead of what looks like waist-level. I think that would further help move model railroading away from its train set roots.

Anyway, an excellent post and I hope it stimulates discussion. 

Some mining cars?

While I was looking through my tree photos I stumbled across these unusual railway cars. I suspect they are some sort of mining cars, but I can't say for sure. I think I took this photo in Wawa in 2008 when we were on a trip to Thunder Bay to visit my cousin.

On that trip I wanted to stay at the motel where Glenn Gould used to stay. That wasn't possible, but we did stay at a good place, which we were told recently might have been washed away in a flood a few years back. Anyway, here's Glenn Gould in Wawa. 

End wall sign for Steinberg's

It looks like the prototype had just 2 signs: one on the front glass wall facing the main parking lot, and one on the side wall facing the auxiliary parking. I don't recall the other sidewall having a sign because that wall was connected to the plaza. However, since my model is free-standing, it should have signs on both sidewalls. Now that I've figured out how to do one, the second shouldn't be too difficult.

I downloaded an image from the internet that looked fairly close to the partial picture I have of the end wall sign. The image was then sized, printed out, and glued to a piece of Bristol board. Each letter was then cut out and glued to some thin styrene support pieces. The letters are a little rough, but aren't too bad and I'm happy with the overall impression.  

Although there've been some tedious sub-assemblies to this project, as each has finished I've gotten a good vibe off the model as it has developed. 

Roots

I have thought a good deal about trees; I like them. They speak eloquently of the balanced dubiety which I told you was the sceptical attitude. No splendid crown without the strong root that works in the dark, drawing its nourishment among the rocks, the soil, hidden waters, and all the little, burrowing things. A man is like that; his splendours and his fruits are to be seen, to win him love and admiration. But what about the root?

Those are Parlabane’s words from a longer chat he had with Maria about scepticism in The Rebel Angels. Maybe 2021 will be a year of roots? Who knows. I’m well into the second book in the trilogy, What’s Bred in the Bone, and so far so good. Although this one seems to really put the gothic into Southern Ontario Gothic :-)

Happy New Year!