This scene had its Genesis on a trip to the Lowell National Historical Park in Massachusetts. This park features some of the old mill buildings of the Industrial Revolution, when Lowell, MA, was the most important industrial center in the world. I wanted to model these old brick buildings, which is a breeze with DPM modular sections, and a canal like those used to provide water power for the mills. After a while, it looked like this: All the time, the driving image was the narrow, stone-walled canal running by the mill, flanked by brick buildings on either side. The cardstock mockups translated pretty directly to DPM models. My wife got the ends of some large paper rolls from a printer, who was throwing them away, so I have a supply of large paper sheets that I can use to make full-sized drawings of areas like this. That really helped in the final placement of the canal, structures and the street-running track that crosses behind the buildings and comes out on the right side of the scene. I'll try to post another picture of the scene as it is now when my wife gets back with the camera.
The camera came home, and I made some more progress on Mooseport. Just to compare with the cardstock models a couple of posts up... Another inspiration in this scene came from Candy, who posted some signs a while back. The beer sign on the building at the right came from that post. The canal still lacks water, but I'm a lot closer to that now. I like to get all the ground cover down, though, before pouring the Envirotex.
At the risk of playing "Too Much Information", I'll share some of my planning process here. Things progress slowly on the Huron Central, so I Have lots of time to think about them. These photos show the transition between the upper and lower flats (lower flats on a leaf not yet attached) in my city of Greenriver, Michigan. Greenriver is a gritty factory town. Given my scrolling era concept, I try to use many structures that could have been there for 100 years or more. ) The left hand photo shows this area as it is taking shape. The next three photos show the inspirartion for this scene. The structures along 4th Street in Imlay city, Michigan occupy the space between the street and the old Grand trunk Western (now CN) main. The center structure in the second photo, once a dairy, has a spur and dock on the second floor, shown in the second photo from right, along with a "coal hole" down on the lower level, supplied from the upper level spur. The third photo shows the Grand Trunk overpass crossing M-53, a nice art deco structure but slightly too new for the earliest portion of my operating era. Obviously, I'm not doing a literal interpretation of Imlay City, but borrowed the track on a higher level, the second floor spur (I chose a woolen mill instead of the dairy- the woolen mil being inspired by one in the small town where I grew up and another in the town where my dad grew up), and the overpass. I'll also model the coal hole, essentially a tunnel back from the retaining wall to a grating under the spur.
