Pinto Heights

     Okay, so 'heights' isn't exactly the best descriptive word I could use for the little hillside above the tracks, but it'll do for now.  As part of the Railroad Line forum's 'choices' challenge to build something off the shelf, (and my own resolution to finish more projects than I start) I selected one of my un-built structures from my 'digital shelf'.  A couple years ago I bought and downloaded the Clever Models Company House just for this location (the dark gray building with the pinkish add-on in the center-right of the photo above).

     Pinto is a sort-of company town.  The mill isn't in Pinto, but rather a few miles up the Big Tujunga Lumber Company interchange which connects to the Ocali Creek at Pinto.  The Clever Models company house comes with several 'textures' from which to choose; various colors of Insulbrick, or clapboard, different shingles or rolled roofing, and even a variety of brick colors for the foundation.  This means I can make a few slightly different houses, all of the same basic design.  OR, I could just print multiple copies of the textures I like and mass produce one style.  I haven't decided which way I'll go, but I'm leaning toward different colored homes.
     The company houses will also appear on the backdrop.  Another nice thing about paper models, besides the ability to print multiple copies, is that I can reduce them a slight bit and print up a smaller structure to force the perspective.  These smaller copies will be false fronts with minimal detail, built as 3-d flats set right in front of the backdrop.

     But the company houses aren't the only structures in Pinto Heights.  I have also mocked up the Classic Miniatures Queen Anne house (where the foreman lives, on the left in the above photo) and the AHM 'Speedy Andrew's' (aka Ma's Place) as a home, not a business (sorry Mr. Moore).  For a while I tried putting the latter across the way from the former, but it just didn't look right.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.  For a while there was no road across the tracks.  Once I nixed the idea of a loading platform in the fork of the siding (where the road now runs near the freight house) then putting in the road was easy.

     Once the road was in place, and I had shifted structures around on blocks for a while, I remembered the old photo of the church at Caples, WV.  Now that prominent corner across from the Queen Anne cottage will have a church - mocked up for now using an older building I had stashed away.  That stone church may end up as a middle background structure in Watson, someday.  Caples church was wood with lovely gothic arched windows.  If I build this structure this year, I'll need to scratchbuild those windows.
     The final 'structure' for Pinto is actually another old photo I found.  It will live where the yellow false-front is standing in at the end of the street.  I spent a little time recently learning how to colorize black & white photos using Gimp, a free photo editing software.  What fun that is!  Now I can adapt just about any structure I find on Shorpy or elsewhere, to use as a backdrop image.  There are a few other structures, cut from magazines or calendars, and even a few of my own pictures, that I will use on the backdrop.
     Hopefully these photos give you, dear reader, an idea of what I have planned for Pinto.  There is one more foreground structure to mock-up, and that will be the subject of a future post.  The current backdrop images are merely stand-ins to give me an idea of what I'll paint there.  I will be detailing the build of the company house on the Railroad Line thread linked above, and who knows when I'll get to any of the other structures.  For now the mock-ups and stand-ins are doing a good job.