Inspiring Elements

 

“The Bell Hotel,” RICHES, accessed June 6, 2026, https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/omeka/items/show/4230.

With the Shifter done enough for now, it's time to begin the Summer Challenge 2026: Orange Avenue! in earnest.  Let's start this journey with a close examination of the photo above; the Bell Hotel in Sanford, Florida.  It includes several elements that are typical of the 1920s that I want to include in my street scene.  It also includes some humorous history, but we'll come to that later.

So what do I want to include that is visible in this photo?  The building itself bears a strong resemblance to my Rosenbaum building, which is actually based on the Carmichael building in Ocala in the image below.  The commonality is the canopy above the sidewalk mounted below the transom windows.  Of course many similar buildings existed in the 1920s which is why I'm including one in the scene.

However, the Bell Hotel also utilizes window awnings, something the Carmichael building does not.  I've got some Woodland Scenics vacuum-formed plastic awnings but I plan to use them on the tobacco shop next to the Rosenbaum building.  I want to leave the second floor windows on the Rosenbaum open for viewing inside as I plan to add an interior there and the canopy will obstruct the view through the first floor display windows.

Sharp-eyed viewers may have already noticed a familiar structure to the right of the Bell Hotel.  Stripped of its veranda, now with the second floor door bricked up, stands the Ensminger building.  Having studied the brickwork of that cornice I can say without a doubt it is the same structure, decades later.  And that brings us to the next important aspect of this photo: the date.

The RICHES site dates it at 1917.  Nope.  No way.  The Central Florida Memory site offers the same date, but more importantly offers a transcription of the information on the sign board in the street.  "YMCA diamond ball tonight 7:30 by the Zoo free E. Side Farmers vs. Piggly Wiggly"  That's more than enough to give a more accurate date to this image, or at least a good date range.

Piggly Wiggly was the first grocer to offer self-service and was established in 1916 but didn't spread far beyond Tennessee until the 1920s.  "Diamond Ball" was the name given in 1922 to an indoor ball game which, in 1926, would be renamed to its more common and current name, Softball.  It was heavily promoted by the YMCA as an alternative to baseball which was, at the time, associated with drinking and gambling, even during prohibition.  Okay, now we're getting closer.

What about that Zoo?  Here's where things get strange.  I'll link to the source here if you want more details, but this is what happened.  In 1923 a travelling carnival went bankrupt while stopped at Sanford.  As the troupe broke up, their Rhesus monkey was given to a custodian at the Elks club.  After mistreating the female guests there, it was given to the fire chief who brought it to live at the firehouse.  A man gave the firefighters a dog, which the monkey befriended and learned to ride bareback.  Oh but wait there's more.

One of the firefighters found a female monkey.  The local ice man began collecting animals and bringing them to the firehouse for their growing collection, including racoons, squirrels, even an alligator.  The city tried to put an end to it but due to public outcry the collection was relocated behind the firehouse to the site of the former city jail and given official status as a zoo.  Though the location has changed a couple times it remains a zoo to this day.

Speaking of animals, there's an elephant in this image that hasn't been mentioned yet; the popcorn wagon.  That's really what caught my eye when scanning through these old images.  It's the prototype for Jordan's HO scale Popcorn Wagon, a Cretor Model C.  Dates for the Model C vary online, wildly, but Jordan pegs it at 1912, so let's just go with that.  I grabbed one for the streetcar station, a likely location for such a vendor.

That brings us to the last clues to date the photo; the vehicles and the stoplight.  I'm no expert, but I suspect those aren't 1917 vintage cars.  The stoplight isn't much more of a help, except that the standard three-light unit was patented in 1923 and spread throughout the county by the 1930s.  This at least puts the kibosh on the 1917 date.  I'm going to guess and say....sometime after 1925.

In the end the exact date isn't really important.  As with so many things from years long gone, our understanding of them is more than simply a fixed point in time.  A popcorn wagon from the teens would still likely be in use in the twenties and beyond.  A popular regional sport might still be known by an outdated name long after it was officially changed in some far away city.  

Even if they're not exactly right, those cars have the right look.  Sure, awnings and canopies are still used today but not to the same extent as back then.  Giving a historic scene the right flavor comes down to a careful selection of the elements that characterized the era.  I haven't mentioned the brick street or the broad sidewalks or the ornate multi-bulb sign on the corner of the hotel, all of which contribute to the feeling I'm after.

Up next, I prepare to install some sidewalks.  Thanks for reading.

Done Enough

Back in December of 2025 I committed myself to complete the Shifter before tackling any other projects.  I was mostly successful at keeping to that condition, though while the primer was curing and the paint after that, I did begin the Ensminger Building construction.  Happily, this is a hobby, and the only restraints, deadlines, goals, etc. I place upon myself are purely of my own making and can be adhered to or ignored as the need arises.

That said, I really have wanted to get this little gem finished and on the rails sooner than later, and now more than ever in light of my Summer Challenge 2026: Orange Avenue! (the exclamation point makes it more exciting) beginning now.  So while there are a few steps remaining to complete the Shifter such as adding bell and whistle cords, a coal load and some weathering, I'm calling it done enough.

Here's a video:

This has been a long journey - over twenty years in fact - to reach this point.  I'm very happy with how this little locomotive has turned out so far and I look forward to many years enjoyment running it.

Down in the Valley

While delivering my son to his summer internship down in Mountain View I got to do a little railfanning. Nothing says "Silicon Valley" quite like sitting behind a Tesla watching CalTrain blast through a crossing on our way to the SETI Institute.  Good times.

Meat Market Mock-Up

Okay, just one more and I promise I'll be done with mock-ups for a long while.  I've completed the mock-up for the branch house and meat market structure that's replacing the ice factory at Ocala Springs.  

This one is different in a few significant ways.  Firstly, it's bigger; it needs to be large enough to seemingly justify handling even a small carload of meat and yet small enough to not overpower this end of the layout.  Branch houses received carcasses from a larger slaughter house and processed them into smaller cuts for distribution to grocers or even home use.  They're an ideal way to get the meat industry onto a model railroad without the brutal compression or massive real estate required for a large slaughterhouse.

I've imagined this branch house would also sell meat in a storefront as well as operate a small abattoir for butchering local animals.  The combination of functions gave me a good general guideline for laying out the structure.

R to L; storefront, processing building, shipping/receiving, abattoir and not pictured, the stock pens.

The photo above illustrates the second major difference; it's only one story tall.  This fits the overall progression of heights from the low branch house to the two story pool hall, the peaked roof and ornate brick cornice of the soda bottling plant and the three story drug store beyond that.  This is another reason why the ice factory simply didn't work here.

I had always envisioned Orange Avenue with its storefronts to be the highest point on the layout with the structures along this as-yet-unnamed street descending from it.  There are indeed hills in central Florida, elevation changes your car notices when driving.  However, on a flat layout surface I'd need to indicate an elevation change by visual trickery and this, to my eye, accomplishes that effect.

Finally let's talk about the source material.  I've got three AHM kits and one RDA kit in this kitbash.  The storefront itself is from the Ramsey Journal building with parts of the processing room and abattoir using more of its walls in addition to two sets of walls from AHM's Fire House.  The shipping/receiving section is from RDA's Delaney Iron Works, now offered by Rail Scale Models.  (Note: they also sell RDA parts as "kitbasher parts", something I've wished other manufacturers would do!)

Ramsey Journal (pink), Fire House (dark red and brown) and Western Union (yellow)

Texturally this building will be stucco, cinderblock (or maybe "hollow bricks"...I haven't decided) and concrete.  In the 1920s many slaughter houses were constructed to project a clean and sanitary look, setting them apart from the heavily ornamented structures of the 19th century.  The AHM "brick" is really large enough to be hollow brick or cinderblock so that's what it'll be. 

To disguise the structure's origins I'm keeping the quoins on the storefront walls but eliminating them from the rest.  I'm aligning the corners to "interlace" the quoins as they would be seen in real life - another reason I've chopped them off the majority of the corners.  These walls also provide ample room for painted-on signs, a feature I'm looking forward to modeling.

Operationally I can spot meat reefers of any brand at this location though in reality it would have likely only ever seen one brand; Swift, Armour, etc., as branch houses were tied to their parent company.  I'm imagineering and probably bending reality to do this but I like rolling stock variety more than prototype fidelity, in this case.  I can also spot a carload of animals at the stock pen; again stretching reality a bit but again, affording me the chance to run the occasional stock car.

Alright.  Enough mocking about.  June 1 is coming and the Summer Challenge 2026 will be upon us.  This structure stand-in was one of a handful of tasks I wanted to complete before the challenge begins and I'm chuffed with how it turned out.  Thanks for reading.

Sightline Switching Short

Recent renovations have brought the layout out from the wall so I've used that opportunity to dust it, clear away the clutter and run trains again.  I also set up my tripod so I can grab a quick video if the mood strikes.  I'd like to make longer videos featuring the trains going about their business but for now the occasional short is all I can manage.  Here's a quick test shot I made to check this sight line between the two structures along this spur.  Where the paper is lying on the surface may or may not be a pipe dealer.  Open space is important to me, but so is a flat car or gondola with a cool pipe load.

Summer Challenge 2026

Not the most exciting title, I know, but I'm working on it.  

The most recent Walthers Flyer included this year's National Model Railroad Build Off contest details.  As usual, there's a freelance diorama category.  In this category the modeler builds a large diorama that can feature any subject, in any scale, as long as it isn't part of an existing layout and fits the 2'x4' size limit.

I have no intention of entering this year and yet, the idea still appeals to me.  When I entered in 2022 and 2023 I really enjoyed the four months of focused work that resulted in a finished scene, from soup to nuts.  It puts pay to the tired trope that a layout is never finished!  When I entered in 2022 I knew we'd be moving soon and the layout work would be put on hold indefinitely.  Before then I had been building real momentum working on the layout which I have yet to recapture since.  It is time to get that back and make significant layout progress again.

So here's the plan.  

I'm going to complete approximately 8 contiguous square feet of my layout instead of creating a diorama for the NMRBO.  From June 1st to the October 1st deadline I'm going to build all the scenery, structures, trackwork and details in that area.  This is the same time period entrants in the contest will be following.  Here's the area outlined in red with salient features added:

The red zone includes structures, sidewalks, street track and an orange grove

If you've been following the blog recently you may notice that the Ensminger Building is already (nearly) complete - this would disqualify me from the Walthers contest were I using it on a standalone diorama.  Note also that the area isn't a rectangle.  This delineation makes the most sense for the content of the space while loosely keeping to the 8 square foot area.

I'm going to start with the street and sidewalks, including the streetcar track since it is part and parcel of the roadway.  The sidewalks need to go in before the structures, though I can work on the buildings at any time and probably will.  In previous challenges I've kept two or three work stations full, shifting from one to the other as necessary.

Here's the caveat: if I don't complete the area fully, that's fine.  I'd rather err on the side of quality and produce a result I'm pleased with than rush something just for the sake of an arbitrary timeline.  However, I accept that "letting the perfect stand in the way of the good" doesn't help and is a trap I've fallen into before.  An imperfect model completed will always bring more satisfaction than a perfect model delayed indefinitely.  That's a significant aspect of this challenge I take to heart.

If you can think up a better name for what I'm doing than "Summer Challenge 2026" please comment below.  Also, if you've got 8 square feet of layout that needs completing and would like to join in, let me know.  I'll be sharing my progress here on the blog and on Instagram.  Before that, however, I've got to complete a couple overdue projects and clear off the workbench.  Thanks for reading.

Her Shrink Ray Eye

This one's a little different, but boy howdy does it align with the philosophical side of this blog.  

Every now and then I wander down a back alley into the thought processes behind the hobby of model railroading.  Take these posts, for example:

https://ocalicreek.blogspot.com/2025/03/geissel-got-it.html 

https://ocalicreek.blogspot.com/2024/03/tired-tropes-or-tried-and-true.html

https://ocalicreek.blogspot.com/2022/08/the-post-project-blahs.html

There are more, but these should suffice to make the point; I consider thinking (and writing) about the hobby an important part of the hobby itself, and something I enjoy doing.  I don't recall when I started reading Koester's "Trains of Thought" column in Model Railroader magazine, but once I did it became my regular source of thought-provoking hobby concepts.  I didn't always agree with Tony's ideas but I have to give the column some credit for opening my mind in novel ways.  Ditto the editorials, occasionally.  Of course these days many blogs scratch the itch, with 30 Squares topping the list.

So when I discovered the "Her Shrink Ray Eye" podcast I was delighted to have found a thinker who could offer some well-composed commentary on miniature hobbies.  Joan Biediger is an artist, cartographer and writer living in Salt Lake City.  She created the podcast as a place to discuss "ideas about scale, perception, and what small, constructed worlds can reveal about how we see."  

As of this writing I'm still working my way back through the catalogue of episodes, but let me suggest one of the first ones I listened to as a starting place, "Storytelling Isn't One Thing".

I listen on YouTube, and you can find that episode here:

I have found these podcasts to be well written and delivered, offering a solid foundation for the topics covered as well as thought-provoking questions to take the listener in new directions beyond the basic ideas.  While not specific to model railroading they're easily adjacent to this community with relevant themes.  I recommend them to anyone who enjoys thinking about the art of making miniature things.