Got up early this morning to putter around with buildings on Pine Branch Park. I like the quiet when the family is still asleep and the garage is still cool. Won't need the heater anymore this year, but the time is coming when I won't get more than an hour or so before it gets a little too warm for comfort.
In the top center-left of the image you can see the Union Ice Factory, still under construction, on its siding. Following that track down to the lower-center there are two buildings. The one closest to the track is a scratch-build (of sorts, using DPM wall segments). The one next to it is an actual DPM kit, a Carol's Corner Cafe, if memory serves me right. The kitbash will be a bar restaurant (prohibition, remember?) and the cafe will become a pool hall. My Dad really enjoyed shooting pool, so this one will have a highly detailed interior.
Across the street from the pool hall will be the brightly colored Purina Mill, with spots on the siding for grain loading/unloading at the silo and doors for unloading into the main building. But there are a few blanks along this dead-end industrial drive, and I'm not sure what I'll put in them. Oh, I have ideas, but I'm open to suggestions. It may be tricky to imagine the streets here, so let me fill them in using Gimp:
Site A between the businesses and the ice factory will likely be a kitbash of the Pola brewery, the brick version of the pickle factory. I've got one from who knows where and it'll need to be disassembled before kitmingling can begin. There's a picture I found and stashed away in my Florida 1920s folder of a neat soda bottling plant, in Ocala no less:
Delightful and Famous. That'll be the title of the blog post if I build this, or something like it. I think the brewery is a pretty good starting place, and what drew me to it was the arched brick windows similar to the ones in the brewery. Unfortunately the brick on that Pola kit, well, calling it brick is charitable. But it may work. I do have more DPM wall segments, and that could be good too.
In Site B I'm thinking a small coal & oil dealer. I had a coal dealer in mind for the spot the (former) bar and pool hall will occupy and was disappointed to lose it when I put those two structures there. But they really seem at home in that place so I went with it. But now, seeing the Purina building laid out and knowing what sort of room I have across the street from the ice company, I think I could put it in there.
Again, if anyone out there has any ideas - keep in mind I'm modeling Central Florida in the 1920's - then leave your thoughts in the comments below.
There's an Art Curren kitbash called 'Perry Shibbel Fruit & Produce Co-Op' that uses two of those breweries. However, after studying AC's cutting diagrams I think it could be built from 1 kit and some pieces of styrene brick sheeting (since those kits can be a little hard to find, but the Model Power boxing is the same as the Pola). Schibbel's is two stories tall and has a boxier footprint, so it might fit the space better.
ReplyDeleteYes - Perry Shibbel is exactly what I had in mind, but with perhaps a slightly different footprint to better fit the space. As far as I can tell that's the ONLY photo of the Chero Cola plant in Ocala, and as usual I'll be trying to catch the character of the place more than an exact reproduction.
DeleteIn addition to the arched windows, I particularly like the stepped 'shoulders' of the front walls, the painted on signs with the bottles, and the general 'face' like symmetry of the entrance. The round vent on the side of the clerestory is neat too. Of course the figures and vehicles are interesting. This photo is from 1910.
There are a few other Faller and Pola kits that might come closer to the prototype than the Brewery. I've asked a friend who's a big time collector of those kits to have a look. He might have a recommendation.
DeleteThanks! I did poke around in my unbuilt kit stash and found Walthers Cornerstone's Greatland Sugar Refining. There's enough material to come very close to the facade as well as imagineer the rest of the structure. Unless something better comes along, I'll likely go with that.
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