Stand-ins

The drug store project has led me down a path I hadn't intended to take just yet.  Well, two, actually, but one (LED lighting) is the subject of another post.  I put the under-construction drug store in place on the layout only to find its presence altering the way I perceived the rest of the scene.  That is, I'm really happy with how it looks, where it looks; a tall, ornate gem on a prominent corner where the detail can be appreciated.  But Strickland's Service Station suddenly didn't look right across the street.  The Purina building adjacent to the drug store didn't fit right either.  Hmm.  

Two things were at play.  I had grown accustomed to seeing the Purina building and Strickland's on their diorama.  That setting was more rural and both structures were in different orientations to their respective streets as well as having a bit more room to spread out, so to speak.  On the Pine Branch Park layout the orientation was different and the setting more urban.  Strickland's sat on a corner on the diorama and that suited its odd porch/drive-through design.  The Purina building was on a dirt lot, set back far from the road.  

The white demitasse cup stands-in for the bandstand. Note the trolley on the street.

It was an easy decision to replace Strickland's with a bandstand.  I had already found great photos of Winter Haven, Florida in which a city park, complete with bandstand, is bisected by the Atlantic Coast Line main, complete with station.  A block of storefront businesses stands nearby.  I can put the (Campbell) bandstand at one end and the old horse-car at the other.  Voila, a trolley park located along the Orange Avenue line.

On the left, pool hall, lunch counter, ice factory.  On the right?

But the Purina building...that's harder for me to imagine a replacement.  Both structures could easily find homes on future versions of the Ocali Creek.  But the problem remains; what to do about the current situation?  In order to help me parse out a solution I decided to bring in some old structures I've been storing from previous layouts and, well, lay them out as stand-ins.  That's what's shown in these pictures.  

The tan paper behind the Purina building is the instruction plan for a pipe yard.

Each structure has its own story and some will get dedicated blog posts, no doubt.  But even this hurried-together approach has shown me I want to push the scene into a more urban direction.  Sure, in many towns there was a feed mill right near downtown, so there's good precedent for keeping the Purina building as is.  But even pushed back from the street it just doesn't fit.  What this location needs is a rail served business with a storefront that faces the street(s), right on the sidewalk, preferably two stories tall.

I haven't forgotten my previous post on fitting in the Chero Cola bottling plant somewhere, so maybe this is the spot.  That was back in April of 2021.  My, how things have changed since then.  Things are likely to change again a few times before structures get mounted in place.  Stay tuned.