Kingston Centenary Whig Ads, 1946

A selection of advertisements from the special commemorative edition of the Whig marking Kingston's centenary in 1946,

 

Switching Sowards Coal Trestle

When I modelled the Sowards coal yard on Place d'Armes for a second time I didn't even photograph the track leading to the unloading trestle. Mainly because I wanted to do a better job on it. Now it's more camera-ready! The challenge to modelling this unique structure effectively is to deal with the height of the track, its curvature, what it's built on, and the dearth of prototype photos. (Gordon Smithson's book includes two, taken in 1973 and 1979.) Also, the dynamics of a full-sized locomotive pushing a loaded hopper car up the trestle do not match the space available on my layout. Compromises!

I'm pleased with the results so far. Smithson's photos show the piers quite well: poured concrete. So, I used the Atlas trestle set and covered in the wooden detail to represent concrete. But there was still the track. I had simply shoved some lichen pieces under it to fill it in visually and look like some modicum of support underneath. A little more effort was expended on the 'inside' of the curved track - it's more reachable and more visible.

I picked up a pack of plasticene at Dollarama, filling in the embankment with it, then adding scenic material. I also painted the rails brown, and touched up the ties as well. My arrangement differs from the prototype location, but it abuts Anglin's yard here:

Finishing off the track, I filled in the spaces between ties with loose ballast - it's actually real Kingston gravel, collected at the VIA station parking lot! A loaded car is visible inside the shed:

It's challenging to correlate just what part of the track was covered. It seems that loaded cars were tied down with their handbrake on a grade. The track seems to go past Sowards office on the level, so it's likely that most of the grade was covered. In either case, some of the cars were level, up on the trestle, and my HO-scale hoppers need to be. That's because they don't have handbrakes, of course! The prototype shed was also longer - of course the layout is space-challenged.

Pickup Pick-me-up

 

Today I learned more in five minutes than I would have in 30 minutes doing my own research. Tom T. stopped by in his pickup to pick up both books on Kingston's waterfront. Of course we socially-distanced, but our chat on social history was not distant.

He worked at Anglin's on that same waterfront for 38 years! He mentioned that 100 men were on the union rolls at the height of the Anglin operation. He raced his soapbox car down the the front of North Street. He remembers the houses that stood and the ones that were knocked down, around North and Rideau Streets. He mentioned that Anglin's worked cheek-by-jowl with Shell Oil and of course, 'The Dredge'! That Shell tankers partly unloaded at Millhaven before negotiating the sharp turn and silty bottom of the Inner Harbour. That some of Anglin's tanks ended up storing road oil for a firm from Breslau, ON for summer application. That's all I can remember.

Once again, I'm amazed and humbled at the connections of which this process is chock-full!

Serendipitous Skeleton Press

 

The connections made through my research/blog/layout/books on Kingston's waterfront just keep on coming. YGKNews and Kingstonist have kindly come calling, and today it was The Skeleton Press. I'd seen their newsy, free local publication, and frankly was unaware it was in print, too. Not distributed in my part of town, but I enjoy reading it online. Issue Eight is out now, and I'll be proud to be in Issue Nine.

The Skeleton Press grew out of the Skeleton Park Arts Festival. I had the opportunity to meet Lawrence Scanlan, a well-known local writer and editor. I've read his byline before, as far back as his eight-year tenure at the Whig. Though I don't hear from the Whig, I am happy to hear from local, grassroots and increasingly online media presence truly interested in profiling local people. Lawrence suggested meeting at the Juniper Cafe - a location I'd often walked by during my last few years at work, but never sampled. The coffee was good, the baked good selection interesting and the view, unparallelled. A constant stream of tomorrow's young minds stopped in while Lawrence and I chatted lakeside.

I did my best to explain what the heck I'm doing on the Hanley Spur. Since I'm one of the few people in town doing what I do, I just do it and don't really ever think about it. Until today! Lawrence's questions were perceptive and I trust my answers were...helpful.

Adirondack chairs, paper and pen, hot coffee (and my former place of employment in the distance, and in the past) and conversation? Priceless!

Ellerbeck Street parking - free and proximal. A North Roast Coffee hybrid vehicle stopped by to do a curbside dropoff. But first, coffee! The city of watchtowers:

Thanks to Lawrence, Vince and Laura, and The Skeleton Press. I can't wait to see the results in print and in pixels!

New Houses on Wellington Street

Second-storey view of both houses

Having placed my two new 'dollar store' houses nominally at Wellington Street and Place d'Armes, I used two cameras to show them in place. These first few are taken with my Nikon point-and-shoot. It has so-so depth-of-field and is nice and small so it actually fits into the streetscape.

Anglin coal truck heading out for a delivery

Rooftop view with Bajus Brewery in background

Looking along Wellington Street

The other side of Wellington Street

The photos below are taken with the iPhone's camera. The iPhone is a little longer and more difficult to fit into some tight spots. However...a big bonus is that with every placement, you can get up to four 'views' due to the corner location of the camera lens.

The new houses sit cheek-by-jowl with fuel dealers

The Bajus Brewery still stands today

Place d'Armes coal unloading trestle

Coal delivery time

Wellington Street leading to Canadian Dredge & Dock

It's a workaday neighbourhood

Ladies run some errands as coal rolls

The lowest possible angle with the iPhone camera.

Well-Housed Wellington Street

Limestone foundations and painted details

A recent trip to Dollar Tree just about sleighed me. There on the North Pole end of one shelf were a few little houses. Should I tree-t myself? And my layout? A whole sh-Elf for a dollar-and-a-half each! So I put two of them into my sack and I bought them - two all a good night! It was out into the rain, dear.

Having kitbashed two Swamp Ward houses, I had a few residential holes to fill in the streetscape. Much like the current City of Kingston residential in-fill policy! Thinking these two hundred-cent-ury structures might fit the bill, I tried to find some prototypes. I soon realized they were a little too uptown for my waterfront neighbourhood. No matter, perhaps too professorial and not pedestrian enough, but OK or the transition between industry and downtown along Wellington Street.

A fine home on King Street

Fine homes on University Avenue

                                     

Fine homes on my mantle.

The progression can be tracked through the above photos. I made the decision to leave each structure intact, relying on painting and a few details to set them in Kingston. The models are meant to accommodate an LED tea-light, so they have half-open window panes. I painted the panes black, the frames grey. The stone house got a coat of grey paint, the other a weathered brick exterior. Roofs were darkened. Bits of snow on the roofs were painted over. The Dremel took care of the snow surrounding the foundations. The founcations were covered with limestone-printed paper. A few railing and roof-top details were added. 

Now, to place them into the model Wellington Street....

The Lilley Letter

Today I received a most welcome letter via the staff of the Queen's University Archives. The letter was from a member of the family of prolific photographer George Lilley. I first took the opportunity to pore over the George Lilley fonds in 2019. I am pleased to be able to feature George Lilley's fine photography in both of my books on Kingston's waterfront history -  Smoke on the Waterfront and Stories on the Waterfront. 

"Thank you so very much for the copies of your 'Waterfront' books which I received this week. I have enjoyed viewing the pictures and am looking forward to reading your research. George passed away 18 years ago this month. If he were alive, I know he would have enjoyed talking with you, especially about his beloved Kingston. He would be so pleased to know that his pictures have been helpful in the 'telling' of Kingston. I am so glad to have your books and thank you again. 

Upon publication, I provided a copy of each book to the Archives, as well as a copy to their Lilley family contact. The Archives staff told me that they do not put researchers in direct contact with copyright holders, though they do convey permission to researchers to use material, in this case from the Lilley family to use the photographs. It seemed to be the right thing to do to provide them with a copy, to show how George Lilley's photos live on!

From the 1940’s to the 1970’s, photographer George Lilley recorded a layer of Kingston’s history that no-one else did. A photographer who freelanced for the Kingston Whig-Standard, Lilley covered accidents, fires, weather events and train wrecks. He was also called out to document the results of car collisions for insurance cases, as well as crime scenes and the trials of local criminals and prisoners. He employed a sense of drama and adventure in his photography – life’s triumphs and tragedies. Lilley donated over 20,000 of his negatives to the Queen’s University Archives, where they are stored in a climate-controlled vault. He was a ‘road man’. When a deer got trapped in a Princess Street store window, he was there. When the Wolfe Island ferry caught fire, he was there. It was all part of his record of the city at the time. If George Lilley had not been such a prolific photographer, there would be a lot less Kingston history to see and to share.

Wandering Wellington Street - In Scale

What good is a model if we can't imagine ourselves in it? This often takes the form of photos taken from helicopter or drone height. Using a point and shoot camera, I'm able to 'get down' to layout surface height. Getting back into the modelling season of fall to spring, I am operating the layout most nights, combined with maintenance, building or photography. It was photography this night, and here are the results. Rideau Street (top photo) and Wellington Street (below):

The rear of the Bajus Brewery buildings:

Garage at Place d'Armes coal yard:

Rear of the City Steam Laundry on Wellington Street:

Another view near the coal yard:

Mileboard for CP's station, telltales, and the River Street bridge, under which CN and CP cross. Pay no attention to that secondary track at right. More heavily camouflaged seen from the layout edge, it provides (nearly) hidden track access to a (nominally Anglin) bulk fuel tank spur. Just because I could!

 

Photographing Work on the Waterfront

In an earlier post called "Watching Work on the Waterfront", I was inspired to build a scene of several workers at Canadian Dredge & Dock, on Wellington Street, working on an unspecified project. Returning to the layout room after a long, enjoyable summer, I did some layout-level photography. Specifically, exploring several angles around this scene. 

Kingston's Hanley Spur is most definitely a model railway, but it also comprises a compendium of discrete scenes. These scenes are built around trackside industries, or portray life in Kingston's Swamp Ward neighbourhoods, as well as those from Wellington to Montreal Streets. 

I like the perspective that actually placing my point & shoot camera (hey, should try with a smartphone - note to self!) on the layout and manoeuvring it around to various angles. This not only lets us view these scenes not from the traditional drone/helicopter height, but helps us sharpen our modelling and scenery skills. 

These guys are working on Canadian Dredge & Dock tugboat Traveller in the drydock, that unnamed project and also show the company's stores buildings and heavy industrial equipment.