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):