Modelling the Frontenac Floor & Wall Tile Factory

The long, low, skylit factory buildings of the Frontenac Floor & Wall Tile Company Limited plant just north of CN's Outer Station were sprawling and single-storied. To model two of them, I used some surplus harbourfront buildings with the correct peaked roof and good window spacing:

Rather than purchasing window castings to get the proper multi-pane windows, I used the two-pane castings that came with this structure. Cutting strips of grey paper, I glued these in place:

Adding the skylights and gluing the two walls together, the resulting long, low structure got brick skylight ends added, and door openings have been moved down to ground level:

To limit my structure palette and blend in this structural flat with the background, I chose a base of dark grey:

This spur will not only be jointly-served by CN and CP, as was the prototype, but it will also host multiple car types at various car spots: boxcars, open hoppers and the occasional tank car:

The 'foundation' is applied to the low side of the building:

Then weathering with a light white mortar wash. Brightly-lit interior photos cut from a magazine enliven the interior which was otherwise either too dark or too wall-like!

Time to apply some of the neat hand-painted black-and-white lettering of the prototype. I used prototype photos that were copied-pasted to a Word document then hand-enhanced with fine black and white markers. A better result than my attempt at hand-lettering at top left:

A finished sign, laid on a surplus brick wall from an Ole King Coal kit (above) and glued on and embossed (below):

The kilns are an interesting shape, and though I would like to have them sticking up behind the structural flat, from the roofline, I haven't quite figured out the proper arrangement. When casting around in the junk box for some kiln-shaped items, I came across this vintage nylon spool that I've had for decades. With the Dremel tool, I cut it in half, painted and weathered, and now it makes two stand-in kilns:

One potential location, TBD:

The earliest photo I've seen of the factory shows an elaborate set of lettering, built on top of the roof, no doubt to give greater visibility for the low-slung buildings to the townspeople who lived south of here. I used Slater's lettering to produce this sign:

With some yard trackage in the foreground, here's a 'vintage' view of the Frontenac factory. That building in foreground is a repurposed Sherritt/United Grain Growers fertilizer elevator, now serving as a grinding building for the feldspar. More weathering, piles of coal, details and DIRT needs to be added to the factory, but it is currently in service!

Frontenac finally fills a fallow corner of the layout, provides three more car spots switchable by both CN and CP. For all your tile needs!

Final arrangement of the office building. I used a POLA pickle factory end, with its unique roofline, moving the bottle kilns toward the corner of the layout.

Trackside view. Office closest to camera, then boxcar loading, followed by feldspar unloading and oil/coal unloading. Piles of coal, oil unloading equipment and a small platform added trackside, plus some scenery. Not a lot of vegetation around the prototype!

Feldspar crusher, with piles of feldspar made from plasticene. I ground up some pink brick mortar with pliers to form powder. Two of the four bottle kilns are at the left. They might eventually be replaced by a printed photo of similar kilns.

Drone view of the spur, served by both CN and CP:

The Frontenac Floor & Wall Tile Co. Ltd.

Located just north of CN's Outer Station, this feldspar-receiving tile plant; a single spur, was served by both CN and CP. An early-20th century stock photo of the Frontenac Floor & Wall plant, from a booklet highlighting the local commercial scene (top photo). Note long sign with the name of the plant. This south-side spur appears in other photos, such as this earlier one published in the Whig in 1913: 

In 1913, the city accepted Charles Warwick's request to organize the tile manufacturing company. The company requested a site near the Outer Harbour (the Elliott or Nicholson properties) and a railway spur. The company planned a 300x100-foot building costing $30,000. Planned employment was 60 workers, with completion by July 15, 1913. The city was prepared to give the land to the firm, "beyond GTR Junction", though its value was $3,100 and cost of siding construction would be $2,500. Frontenac finally settled on the Outer Station site, just outside city limit, and another company (Reliance Moulding) was expected in the area soon. At the time, this was the first and only manufacturer of its kind in Canada!

It hosted hopper cars, tank cars and boxcars, perhaps for inbound feldspar and coal, inbound oil or liquid chemicals, and supplies or outbound product, respectively.

At time of 1952 strike, a worker lets CN (and CP, on the joint trackage) know that their presence is not welcome right now! (Three photos - Queen’s University Archives):

More views from the strike. It's not all grim picketing on the line. Sometimes, a square dance spontaneously broke out!

The square dancer with the fatigue jacket is back on picket duty, with Gould Battery in the left background:

It was a cold day, and the strikers huddle around a makeshift stove, sheltered from the wind:

Close-up view of tank car GATX 51374:

An interesting history of the Frontenac plant and Richardson family connection, originally written for the Kingston Historical Society's Limelight newsletter, March 2008 issue, by Jennifer McKendry: 

Via Neil Patterson: When driving from Chaffeys to Kingston on the Opinicon Road one passes over a small one-lane cement bridge at the head of Upper Rock Lake. This is not just a bridge over a winding creek, but a dug canal to Stonehouse Lake and the Railway Siding beside the lake. Between 1913 and 1951, over 228, 000 tons of feldspar went up this Canal to be loaded onto rail cars for Frontenac Floor and Wall Tile in Kingston. Frontenac Floor and Wall Tile opened in Kingston by James Richardson and Company who also owned the Rock Lake Feldspar Mine. The mine was opened in 1900 and shipped feldspar to tile plants in Trenton New Jersey. When the tile plant opened in Kingston, the canal was dug to get the ore to the Canadian Northern Railway Line. Prior to the railway, the ore was taken by horse and wagon to the dock on Opinicon Lake at Opinicon Village. Feldspar is used as the glaze on tile and Rock Lake’s blue feldspar made the large tile squares look like marble.  In the first 12 years of the mines operation, about 22,000 tons of ore was transported for shipment out through the Rideau. 

A major fire beset the factory in 1950. (Three photos - Queen's University Archives, George Lilley Fonds V25.5-11-162):

Whig clipping about a fire at the plant on November 25, 1952:

Front office, east-side views:

Aerial view. Note tank car at left on spur.

The plant employed 150 workers and was listed as a division of United Ceramics Lrd. in 1967. It was operated by German interests in 1971. The plant was operated as a branch of distribution company D.A.White from 1972-1979 and beset by a 1977 strike of the 46 workers. At the time, this was the only plant manufacturing ceramic floor and wall tiles in Canada. Reputedly never operating at a profit, the strike was over wages, with union members suggesting the plant operated as a convenient tax write-off for its owners. Now competing with Japan, German and English manufacturers with lower costs. 

In June,1981 the plant was operating as Clinton Ceramic Tile Inc., in conjunction with Pilkington Tiles (Bermuda) Limited. Employing 90 workers, unglazed floor tiles for industrial use were in production, though a new product to be manufactured in a part of the plant not used for 10 years, employing 10-15 new hires. Closing a very few years later, a closing sale was publicized from Augus (Whig ad - below) to December 1989, becoming a demolition sale in February, 1990.

Insurance map views show the expansion of the plant over the decades as new product lines were added and the kilns replaced:

1929 insurance map floorplan

1947 insurance map floorplan

1963 insurance map floorplan

Watch for an upcoming post on modelling this unique operation.

Manuscript! Update! Update! Update!

Time for a quarterly update! I don't think that's overdoing it - an update every three months? The work on my Kingston history manuscript lasted throughout July, wrapping up at the end of that month. Summer  weather and a family wedding intervened. The pace has again picked up. 

I'm pleased to have the valued participation of 'Diesel' Don McQueen, a prolific researcher, author, railfan, historian and photographer who has unique knowledge of the Kingston area. Co-author of Constructed in Kingston, and Canadian National Steam!, Don has contributed photos and a lead-off foreword to this project, and just completed a proofread of my manuscript.

UPDATE to the Update:

Going to the printer for graphic design next week!

THIRD UPDATE:

Proof pdf received from Allan Graphics.  Looks great!

FOURTH UPDATE:

Proofing done. Waiting for a printed proof copy from graphic designer!

Eric

Watching Work on the Waterfront

Taking a look at some of the work that took place at Kingston's shipbuilders, there are a few observations to make about the men who did the work. Depending on the era, that is. In my modelled era ca. 1970, modern occupational health and safety was starting to enter the workplace. 

Before that, there was no protective equipment in use. There may have been more, or fewer, workplace incidents. There may have been better, or worse, treatment of workers and incidents. What these undated photos do show us is the non-descript appearance of the workers' attire and the conditions they worked in. Managers of CD&D (top photo). Note the signage above the building:

In the above photo, note the workers' heavy winter attire, toolbox and wooden 'workbench' being worked on.  Look at the amount of material around this worker:

These three are working together. Cigarettes, again! Caps and gloves are the only protective equipment in view:

There is nothing glitzy or glamorous about the workplaces - muddy, dirty and cramped. Perhaps this speaks to the era, the businesses' fortunes, and what the workers tolerated at that time. It was always close to the water. A scow is being worked on (and watched over) at the Kingston Shipyards in 1951:

(Photos from Queen's University Archives)

I wanted to replicate these workers in scale. My conclusions from the photos were that their appearance needed to be more non-descript, that they needed to be working on something, and that that work needed to be more co-operative due to the large size and nature of the shipbuilding work being performed.

Rounding up some existing painted worker figures, and raiding my military NATO aircrew figures by Esci and Airfix, I was able to find several candidates for my Canadian Dredge & Dock yard. First, I removed their cumbersome bases - always in the way for photos! I've tried different techniques for base-less figures - thin paper bases, small styrene bases, transparent bases, even installing cut-off straight pins into their legs that can be stuck into the layout. All techniques to enable the figures to be moved from scene to scene.

In painting the figures, I used blue, green, black, grey and brown. The colours were sometimes mixed to show shadows. Overalls were dirtied and sometimes the results were very non-descript. 

To save unsightly bases, I decided to give these workers something to do. They are semi-permanently glued to whatever they are building (below and top photo):