Stand-ins Part 2

Behold, the Ocala Springs Chero-Cola bottling plant.

I decided to sneak in a quick palate cleansing project between the sidelined Drug Store and the beginning of the National Model Railroad Build Off 2024 diorama project.  I had already photocopied the walls from my Walthers Greatland Sugar Refinery as they seemed a good match for the brick style of the prototype Chero-Cola bottler in Ocala.  All I had to do was heat up the glue gun, pull out some foam core board and get building.

Glue stick for minor changes; 3M Super 77 adheres the paper to the foam core.

In truth I've never done a mock-up with a foam core base, but it really was easy and fun and as usual, quite instructive.  I discovered two major changes I'd need to make before cutting the actual plastic.  The first was choosing to reduce the height of the back wall by cutting away the top row of windows with the more decorative double window instead of the middle row of plain windows.  Otherwise these special windows would be hidden by the loading dock building.  No need to let them go to waste; I'd move them and the back double-door around the side.

Replacing the decorative double window row with a plain single row.

The second was moving a spare large door to the main large building along the spur side.  I had already reduced the loading building by one bay to fit the space on the layout.  I decided to include that big door on the main building in order to create a receiving door as well as a loading door.  Now switch crews can spot inbound carloads of bagged sugar or bottles at the main building and empty cars for shipping out finished soda at the other.

A car spotted at the receiving door.

This is as far as the structure will go now that March has arrived and work will soon begin on the NMRBO24 diorama.  But this is enough to tell me I really like this structure in this spot.  It has the right mass for the scene, visually anchoring the near-center of the layout area.  The building is large enough to be feasible as an industry capable of receiving carloads of supplies and shipping out a carload of soda.  This will be a fun kitbash when the time comes!

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.

Decommissioning a Diorama

My National Model Railroad Build Off 2022 diorama has served its purpose and now, for the greater cause of reorganizing my garage, has been decommissioned.  All the structures, trees, people and details have been saved.  One of the structures will find a new home in Ocala Springs on the current railroad, but another that was headed that way will find a different home.  More on that in a future post.

I tried to save the brick street with its track but was unable and that's okay.  While the brickwork was sufficient for the diorama, I'd not have been entirely happy with it on its own.  That is one reason to build a diorama - the chance to try new techniques without any pressure.  I salvaged the rail but naught else.  I did manage to save the spur next to the Purina building and will be incorporating it into a display stand...someday.

 

 

Drug Store Saga, Part 1

I'm calling this a Saga right at the get-go because I can already tell it's going to be one of those builds.  The drug store in the title is the Scale Structures Limited Corner Drug Store.  A classic structure, to be sure, but the model is not without its flaws.  Even on its release in 1972 the folks at Model Railroader took note of how the angles of the bay walls don't match the angle of the ornate wall cap casting.  (More on that later.)  However they also noted one of the kit's strengths; the construction allows for easy rearranging of the walls.

Early in the process, before the fitting frustration set in.

In that regard I have taken things one step beyond.  The space intended for this structure in Ocala Springs is located on an intersection and bounded by a spur at the rear and the next building down the block.  I've got leeway down the block as that next building hasn't been decided yet.  But between the street and the spur I can only go so far.  However, the problem was not that the building was too wide, rather it was too narrow.  I envisioned an alley between the building and the spur, but this space was large enough to shoehorn in another structure.

The solution was to lop off some of the long end of the drug store and glom it onto the shorter side.  Now my structure is a bit more squarish.  Careful measuring meant the window openings could be kept evenly spaced without trimming and the surgery was relatively painless.  But I'm making it sound all too easy.  Before I even reached this point I had struggled with the aforementioned angle difficulty, and realized another aspect the folks at MR noted; the need to carefully read the instructions (many times).  

Note the original rectangular "floor" set onto the roof of my reconfigured structure

This freedom and flexibility in construction means the kit doesn't drop together in a simple sequence of tabs and slots.  The stiffeners inside the structure are the floors.  To begin with I cut new ones from thicker card as I couldn't see the thin stuff provided doing a good job for the long haul, even sprayed with sanding sealer.  This allowed me to correct the issue with the bay wall angles.  You are instructed to measure and mark the floor levels.  The plans give you an indication of where the first floor goes, and the roof along one wall, but not the others.  

And you're instructed to build the thing "upside down", aligning walls from the top.  That's fine for the front walls and bay, but not the back walls which are two different heights.  Add to that the challenge of a too-small wall and laying out the floors gets confusing quickly.  This tiny wall is some sort of mistake, a wrong part.  At first I thought it was N scale but a quick examination with my scale rule checked against the plans and no, I have no idea what this shrunken wall is.  I didn't lose sleep over it but, using the plans, I was able to fabricate a new one which is fine since I had planned to move that wall's windows to a different wall.

"Shrinky Dink" wall in the center, replacement on the left, relocated windows on the right. And all this before I decided to reconfigure the walls.

To recap at this point; building the original kit as instructed is already challenging and then I had to go and make it even more so.  But the problem became the solution.  I don't have a set of precast plastic walls that don't fit, I have cardstock.  Cardstock can be easily replaced.  The card in the kit for the die-cut walls appears to be good quality material.  It cuts cleanly and sands well.  No watermarks but I'd suspect a quality similar to Crescent or Strathmore board.  

This post has already gone far too long so I'll save the tribulations of working with the castings and printed wall textures for another part.  Thanks for reading.

Horse Car Revival

Since the early planning stages of the Pine Branch Park pike, I have endeavored to tell a story.  That story is about the changes in transportation and its effects on the culture of 1920s Florida.  This transition period - not the steam-to-diesel transition period of oft modeled by so many - saw the shift from horse-drawn to horseless carriages.  By the late '20s the horse-drawn streetcar had been replaced by a horseless car of another kind, still on rails, but drawing power from overhead wires.  If not, then it was replaced by the automobile and its tracks in the street pulled up or simply paved over unceremoniously. 

Neatly paved street track in Jacksonville, 1920.

That ripping out of the old was what I sought to portray on the main street of Ocala Springs.  I had plans for a street crew to be digging out bricks (follow this link for inspiration in that regard) and loading them into a wagon, and rail being put onto a truck for delivery to the scrap dealer. This would be an interesting scene in itself, but when another wagon's wheels got bound up in the street track and tipped over its load, a traffic jam ensued - naturally, at an intersection, to cause the most chaos.  Now we're talking.  Humor and interest.  The old Horse Car was not to be scrapped, but instead purchased by that entrepreneur, Strickland, and placed on a display track as a tourist trap roadside attraction where visitors could have their picture made as a souvenir.

Horse car in Ocala; appears to be broad gauge.

But recently I've been considering the disposition of dioramas.  Last year's NMRBO entry was built around a brick street with the horse-drawn streetcar modeled in service, rolling down "Orange Avenue".  What if that track never went out of service?  Sure, the last horse car ran in San Francisco in 1913, and my diorama was set in 1914, but the Ocali Creek is set in the late 1920s.  Did horse cars survive that long?  According to J.H. White Jr., "...New York, had a few horsecars running until July 1917. Pittsburgh ran its last hay burner in 1923, and Sulphur Rock, Arkansas, shut down the U.S. horsecar era in 1926."  Well, horse-puckey.

So now I'm faced with a wonderful dilemma where both options are interesting.  Either I live with the anachronism and keep the old nag pulling her coach, or I proceed as planned and show the line as being removed.  In these sorts of cases I tend to look at the pros and cons for each scenario and make a decision after I've mulled it over a while.  In this case, I'm in no hurry, but this is the best time for this sort of cogitation, when there's no rush.  So I drew up a plan, or rather, modified the existing plan to include a rough indication of the functioning (or not) horse car line and a car barn with attached stable.  Here 'tis:

Click on the image to see it larger.

The horse car track is shown in red.  The curves are a bit sharp and would likely be eased a bit.  Though the car itself actually rolls, this won't be an operating model as I haven't perfected the miniaturizing gun to work on living tissue, beyond the odd pigeon, and I'm not sure what you'd feed a miniature horse.  The car barn and stable shown in orange would probably be either an ornate affair with some gingerbread or a simple shed.  There would also be a passenger platform (not shown) near the station so the horse car could make connections with local branch passenger trains.

Of course some of you may have already hit on the compromise I may inevitably take, to do both.  That is, to lay this track including a now-shuttered car barn and depict the line as being removed by the road gang.  But there is another option still.  I could install overhead wires over the main street portion in front of the businesses and place a cute little Birney there, as if the line were still in operation now converted to electricity.  Hmmm...maybe I'll have a bowl of oats then hit the hay and think about this in the morning.  Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments.

Sub-Roadbed for Streets, Ditches and More

I decided to use cork sheets for the base of the streets in Ocala Springs, aka Pine Branch Park.  The wider road uses 3/16" thick material while the narrower road uses 1/8".  Note the cork is cut wider than the road surface to include the sidewalks, shown here in their raw, gray resin state.  These are herringbone station platforms from Frenchman River which I will cut and modify as needed.

Speaking of station platforms, I will also be using a herringbone brick pattern there but this one is laser-cut material by RS Laser Kits.  The base under the station platform and parking area is 1/4" cork and will be slightly sanded and shaped before the area is scenicked more fully.  The plan for this and the streets in general is to use spackle, though that may change as I consider other options.  There's more to be done before that step.

That gouged-out mess in the second photo is going to be a drainage ditch.  Drainage is THE most important element of track laying on the prototype.  Here I used a Dremel with a cutter attachment to rout away the press-board sub-roadbed surface.  Once contoured and scenicked it will not be so ragged.  Pipes will be used at the track to convey the water away.  Not sure yet what kind of pipe I'll use.

I also painted the track using Espresso - not the coffee, the paint color by Rustoleum.  I like their UltraCover Paint + Primer.  It claims to cover wood, metal, plastic and more; ideal for track.  The finish should be 'Satin', but appears glossier than that to my eye.  That's okay, as it will be dulled down with further color applications.  Ties will be painted with various shades of brown and gray, then washed and dry-brushed, before rail and tie plates receive a coat of rust color and grime.  I may take one section all the way through ballasting to see how it looks.  We'll see.

About That Chair...

 ...the one I mentioned in the previous post.  Here 'tis, in situ:

Peak Peeve

Okay, this may sound like a criticism, because it is.  However, I offer it in the most constructive and encouraging spirit so please take it as such.  I have a pet peeve when it comes to how modelers treat the roof ridges of their structures.  Too often have I seen what is clearly outstanding work and thoughtful effort put into a model building only to cap it off, literally, with an unprototypical folded strip of paper or some such shortcut, which is then weathered to match the shingles.  No.

If you're going to shingle a roof, the cap shingles along the ridge need to be just that - individual cap shingles laid according to prototype practice.  Modern homes sometimes have a metal ridge cap over composite shingles, but that's not what I'm talking about.  If you are modeling a metal roof, then a folded strip of paper or styrene painted to match the rest of the roofing material is perfectly acceptable.  But, if you're modeling an earlier era of shingled roofing then there might be another option - the decorative ridge trim.

Here again however is another tempting trap - to just stand the trim along the ridge by itself.  WRONG.  These ornate trim features found on Victorian structures were made to not only add character to the structure but also protect the ridge.  The trim was flanked by flashing that supported the ornate vertical piece and rested on the top row of shingles on each side of the ridge.  Typically it was cast as one piece or built up to make one unit which was attached to the ridge.

This is easily modeled as I have done by painting paper strips to match the trim and gluing them in place.  Simple.  After all have been applied I will go over the trim and strips with a second coat of paint to cover any imperfections.  In this photo you can hopefully see the strips applied beneath the ridges in the front while the others in the back do not yet have it.  The strip in this case is 1/16" wide (high) and trimmed to fit, in order to give the right "reveal" to the shingles below.  The paper material is basic brown paper bag, the same as the shingles.

Admittedly we all pick and choose.  We all decide for which details we will pursue prototype fidelity and on which details we will compromise.  Track is perhaps the most common example.  How many layouts have you visited where the rail was either left unpainted or painted a garish rusty red?  And joint bars or turnout details?  I suspect most folks don't add them, but running trains draws the eye to the track and really well done track detail looks terrific. 

I suspect we've become accustomed to seeing less-detailed track in the same way we accept a strip of folded paper as a ridge cap on a shingled roof.  A quick image search for "decorative ridge trim" will bring many prototype examples and the solution to the problem is, in this case, pretty simple.  I think it looks pretty good, too.

Back on Station II

I say I'm back on station again because I had neglected this project again.  But now I'm re-engaged and hopefully this time I'll carry it across the finish line.  In addition to some roof work, I'm finalizing the interior details.  The only major custom work left is the ticket window bars...that's something I'm looking forward to seeing, but not necessarily doing.  It will be a challenge, to be sure.

This post however is about the stove.  Even in Florida a stove in the waiting room or even a fireplace was common.  Winters were cold and coffee was enjoyed year 'round so my Ocala Springs station had to have one.  I'd primed and painted the casting itself a while back but hadn't installed it for lack of a good stove pipe.  I was all set to bend one from heavy wire when I remembered I had saved a few sprues in my bits box.

The nice thing about sprues is they come with elbows and angles built-in, for replicating all sorts of piping.  This sprue segment in particular came from a Jordan kit, already black, so no need to paint.  I drilled into the casting as well as the sprue and CA'd a little bit of wire between as an alignment pin.  Then when that was dry I carefully glued the stove in place...though not carefully enough as I still managed to get glue on the chimney.  Hopefully the mistake won't be that visible through the windows.

Station Details

Some old, some new, some no longer available except second hand.  Scale is HO.

The chair is from Vector Cut, and is laser cut taskboard.  Brilliant little kit; too bad the company is on hiatus with no sign of returning anytime soon.  The spitoon (cuspidor) water cooler, stove, desk lamp, typewriter and clock with signs are all Scale Structures Limited.  I scratchbuilt the little table beneath the water cooler.  The signs I will scan in and whiten in Gimp, while the clock may be a candidate for Oyumaru and Milliput reproduction, keeping the original as a master.  The benches are Atlas, I believe, but I can't be sure.  The calendars, Chero-Cola signs and election posters are all found online.  Lastly, the pattern at the bottom of each shot is a tin ceiling tile image I found and 'tiled' using Gimp image editing software. 

The station has been under construction for far too long now.  It is time to push forward and finish this structure, so look for more posts in the weeks ahead.