Reconnecting the Ocean Park module

The Ocean Park module has been hanging on a wall in the basement since late last March. Back then I thought that around September I'd take it down to begin preparations for Christmas showings of the layout. That was all scuttled. I haven't assembled all the modules since last March. So, for no other reason than to see if all the modules could be reconnected I got Ocean Park off the wall and got to work. 

I was happy to see it connected just fine. There wasn't any warpage to any of the pieces. Last time I ran it the loop got its power from rail joiners from the Ocean Blvd line. Even though I had  soldered power leads to the loop I hadn't attached them to the main track power. That'll be the first job as I don't want to continue to rely on rail joiners at the module boundary for power.

Waiting

Waiting for the Ocean streetcar at the Mortimer subway station.

Customization gone very wrong

From that to this:

I was searching through my old spares box and came across the parts of a Lesney Mercedes-Benz 220SE that I had tried to 'customize' sometime back in the '70s. However, unlike the Maserati Mistral, I didn't have all the parts, and the ones I did have were pretty far gone. In a spirit of restoration - or maybe just being full of spirits :-) - I decided to superglue together what was left, and that improbable vehicle was what resulted.

It was -20C here last night. Driving around in that Mercedes would give new meaning to 'cool ride'.

Reviving an early project

It's hard for me to believe, but I did this little quasi-kitbash close to 12 years ago. The post documenting the completion of this project was the 13th one I published at this blog. Here I am 1,500+ posts later doing a little bit of clean up and revision on it. How time flies!

It has been sitting on a shelf for a few years gathering dust. I haven't made use of it recently as back then I had attached a permanent base that included a parking lot and chunk of sidewalk. That configuration didn't work on my new layouts. So, I decided to remove the 'permanent' base, salvage the figures and accessories, and fix up the building so it didn't need the base. That wasn't hard and only required a styrene 'concrete' slab be added under the front doors, and some ground-level sidewall repair to fill slots where the kit's base attached. After that work, and some serious dusting, it's ready to once again be part of a layout.

This is a test, this is only a test

I've got a number of big building projects in mind that involve large and elaborate facades of cut stone. I'm leaning towards using the old construction technique of building up facades with cardboard layers, but before diving into one of those intimidating buildings I thought I'd try out some of the methods on a smaller project.

I did a little of this sort of experimenting on the Thrifty's project, but it was much uglier than the big projects I have in mind. The old Art Metropole building on Yonge St. has features more in line with the styles I want to build, so I thought I'd try to make its facade as a test.

These days I think the Art Metropole has a payday loan company at street level and subdivided offices above. I'm going to back date the building a bit to be closer to that historic image I found on the internet. 

I've started on drawings. Over there is the first, but I think the middle windows need some adjustment. 

Full moon last night, so this is an auspicious start. I better get filled up on coffee!