Modelling the Woolen Mill

The Woolen Mill on Cataraqui Street remains a well-known Kingston building, largely because it has always been owned, had tenants, not allowed to fall into disrepair, and eventually extensively renovated. As an anchor scene at the end of my layout's Cataraqui Street, so far it's been a placeholder. But the time has come to renovate this structural flat!

Adding a spur off the CP, albeit entering plant property from timetable-south rather than the prototype's timetable-north based on my track layout, makes the Woolen Mill an industry my Hanley Spur layout can serve. The Woolen Mill has a good history page on its website, including the following two pre-redevelopment photos. This office area would later become the home of the Kingston Whig-Standard newspaper:

Based on the fire insurance map below, the part of the mill in the foreground (above) would have been the cotton warehouse, separated by a breezeway from the cloth room, in the background. Note the shipping platform in yellow, and access door to the interior. This would appear to be where freight cars were spotted. I'm still figuring out what was shipped and what was received. Currently, I ship garments out in CP boxcars.

The flat started out with two sections of Revell enginehouse walls stuck together, backed by a Detail Associates backrop and a stand-in spindly stack salvaged from a brewery:

I added a printed backdrop of a photo of the Woolen Mill I took from the NGB Studio building. I also acquired a cast Sylvan Scale Models square smokestack from fellow ARK member Bob Farquhar which I painted and added along the backdrop. But those roundhouse arches, and windows made from needlepoint plastic canvas! They had to go:

As of April 9, I covered the arches with styrene brick sheet. I also added a new warehouse area, replacing the earlier enginehouse wall, using a brick wall in my scrapbox, adding some window and door openings reminiscent of the prototype. Windows were assembled, also from spares in the scrapbox. I re-did the painting job I'd done on the brick. First I painted it all a cream colour to represent the mortar. Then I dry-brushed three shades of red-brown to paint the slightly-raised bricks and temporarily placed the segments together:

I removed the scenery, added new end walls, rooftop details, a permanent roof including an opening for the smokestack, and divisions between the cloth room and warehouse, where CP boxcars are spotted. I painted the rails and added some more fencing, reminiscent of the hoarding that once encircled this area on the prototype. Additional trees -  printed background also added:

Aerial photo showing the area I'm modelling at left. Notice the white hoarding, with an opening for the spur:

A view from the warehouse end: