Modelling the National Grocers Warehouse

At what I call 'Ground Zero' of the Hanley Spur, at Cataraqui and Rideau Streets, stands the National Grocers warehouse. This venerable building holds down a prominent location as one drives down Cataraqui Street toward the Inner Harbour. On one side, the Bailey broom factory and on the other, the Woolen Mill and right there, the rights-of-way of CN and CP waterfront trackage. If the Bailey was the building I built last for my HO scale layout, I guess this is the absolute last. I thinnk part of the reason for that is that it's still there. Intimidating in its immediacy. But, press on! I traced out the footprint available on the layout (top photo). 

A trip to the Frontenac Mall's Antique and Artisan Marketplace netted a Walthers Cornerstone Brook Hill Farm dairy kit for a whole eight bucks! Deciding this would be the feedstock for my kitsmash, I cut the walls of the sprues (above) then decided where I'd cut out the large windows. I bisected the fourth wall to add to the two long walls paralleling the tracks:

The openings cut out, with smaller windows and some doors added from the kit - I was ready to paint. Interestingly, the brick surface of the dairy kit was unwanted on this voyage. The National Grocers building had a patchy, stucco look to it. So, I turned the walls inside out, with the brick now on the interior. Some of the small windows are filled in as on the prototype.

That patchy exterior also has a patchy paint job. I used three different colours to paint the patches:

Patchy paint, and varying pilaster spacing due to the window openings. Oh, also, the prototype has seven pilasters, not six. 

For the large windows, I printed off a paper backdrop from the Internet showing multi-pane windows which I reformatted, printed and cut out, gluing to styrene backing to fill in the spaces. Adding some signs created with Microsoft Word and Paint.

Look up, look way up!

A piece or two of styrene for the roof, though the fourth wall remains invisible until I add the Whig-Standard paper warehouse later.

Time to get downstairs. Here is National Grocers placed on my HO scale Ground Zero. More scenicking and detail should follow. In the distance is the Woolen Mill:

 And just to the left, the Bailey broom factory, with Cataraqui Street in between.

 Colour version:

Trying some roof details. It's covered with a pavement printed piece of paper. Note those multi-coloured multi-pane windows!

 Another look down Cataraqui Street: