Another Crescent Solution

When inspiration strikes you've just got to run with it, especially when it potentially solves a problem that has long plagued me.  The problem?  What to do with that crescent of land along the street across from the business block on my layout.  Since the initial planning days it has been a set of residential homes, a gas station, a park with a horse-car on display and a bandstand, a gas station again, and now?  Now it just might become a streetcar depot.

Here's the latest plan:

Note: the scenic depictions in this plan are NOT to scale.  In particular, the crescent of land where the Streetcar Depot is indicated is in reality narrower than shown.  More about the plan in a minute.  First, the inspiration:

The image above comes from a long-defunct website about the Northern Electric interurban line and its depot in Woodland, California, near Sacramento.  Thanks to the Internet Archive the site is still accessible here.  I've long wanted to include some Spanish Colonial architecture on the layout as it helps set the locale and the era, central Florida in the 1920s.  Though 2000 miles distant, this structure contains elements I want to include; the arcade, the tile roof, the parapet ornamentations and most importantly the trolley inside the building.

I was never totally happy with the original stub-end streetcar line down the center of the street, ending abruptly at the intersection of Orange Avenue and some as-yet-unnamed street.  Some of the ideas for what to put in the crescent were in response to that discomfort.  I had pondered sending the track around the corner and down the alley to the site of an old barn, the former car barn for the horse-drawn car now turned into an automobile mechanic's shop.  That'd work, sure, and would fit nicely into the overall narrative of evolving transportation in the 20s, but as that area evolved that plan changed as well.  

For a brief moment I considered running the line all the way down that un-named street past the motorcycle cop indicated on the plan above with a second line extending past the mainline station but the thought of building six rail crossings - dummies even! - gave me shivers.  Terminating the line at the crescent made sense logistically as well as narratively as long as some sort of terminus was located there.  Before I had imagined selling trolley tickets from a storefront; a common practice even depicted on the cover of Middleton's tome, The Interurban Era.  However, this new structure makes the storytelling simpler and more direct.

Beyond the narrative role it brings more balance to the scene, visually.  Specifically the structure is taller and offers more mass than other options.  Once the track and paving are in place I suspect this effect will be felt more fully.  That's one of the reasons I decided to shift the street track closer to the crescent, to lend its mass to that shape.  The other is for ease of pole-planning, locating the trolley wire on one side of the street hanging from single-arm poles.  There's prototype precedent for this offset arrangement in Ybor City, Tampa, by the way. 

Enough chatter, here's the photocopied foam-core mock-up:

I've left the roof off, for now.  Walls are enough to determine the footprint and rough size overall.  The arcade is built from that kitmingler's darling, the Revell Engine House.  The station building itself is the Model Power (Pola) Station.  (No, really, that's what it's called, simply "Station".  Ugh.  Might as well throw "vintage" and "brick" on there too.  Technically correct but really useless descriptors.) 

Here are a couple more angles to locate the scene on the larger layout:

Note the Ensminger Building in the foreground.

You may have noticed that both of the donor structures are entirely brick.  Should I go ahead with this plan, I'd be trying something with this kitbash that I've wanted to try for some time now.  I'm going to stucco the walls, hiding unwanted windows in the process, leaving the brick detail exposed like window arches and the cornice detail.  This isn't so common in real life but I have seen a few examples out there and I think it will look great.  I could just build the whole thing from scratch but for now I'll keep the kitbash option in the forefront.  I'm really happy with this idea, far more than the other possibilities for this plot.  Up next, Ensminger progress. 

 

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.