Billboards

Kingston arterial streets like Montreal Street and outer Division Street were excellent places for advertising agencies to place billboards. Fill in those vacant lots!

There are several commercially-available billboard kits, and perhaps some of them have changeable signs. But they'll be generic and in some cases, American prototypes. Of course, I'd like to have believable 'Canadian' prototypes. More importantly, just like real billboards, their value is in their constantly-changing messages. And my perpetually short attention span quickly tires of the same ol' billboard message all the time.

I'd tried various ways of changing paper billboards, like glue, tape, and magnets. The method I'm using now is a styrene billboard on posts, one post with an extension to allow the billboard to fit into a hole drilled in the layout itself. I attach two or three strips cut from 4x6-inch Adhesive Magnetic Sheets, available at Staples of your local dollar store (bottom row in photo below):

For the changeable sign, I print out various billboards (various images scanned or found online, sometimes with local messages added in Microsoft Paint or hand-lettered), then use a tape-runner to adhere the sign onto a piece of thin styrene for stability (top left in above photo). Then I attach two or three analogous strips cut from the magnetic sheets to the back (top right in above photo). This is what holds the billboard in place.

 Not all billboards are created equal, and I have two different sizes available. 

There were even large billboards in Kingston's (now) Hub area, shown in this archival photo from 1952 - billboard for local manufacturer Monarch Batteries:

Rosen Fuels signs and modelling

"Don't wait until you're half frozen - Buy your fuel from Harry Rosen" was a slogan commonly seen on advertising and fuel trucks in Kingston. I recently found some very interesting material that seems to have been part of a commemoration not only of Rosen Fuels but also printing newspaper ads? A cornucopia of images:

I've needed a sign directing customers to Rosen from Cataraqui Street to fill a bit of a vacant space on the layout. I liked the Self-Serve Coal sign and made my own version using Microsoft Paint:

Now in place:

I hope to model some local fuel trucks. This is a fine example of a Rosen truck (above). The view from Cataraqui Street:

Rosen trucks were even seen on the Wolfe Islander ferry!

1951 Rosen Fuel Supply ad:

City of Kingston Vehicles

Check out this City of Kingston Ford station wagon parked across from City Hall. This was a standard, utilitarian scheme for city vehicles of all types - cars, pickup trucks, utility trucks and dump trucks. Turquoise on bottom, white on top. Numbers were applied/stencilled in black, three digits. A City of Kingston crest was painted on the door. 

Recently, I picked a couple of cars off the layout that potentially could be seen in city service in this scheme, painted and added small numbers to replicate the prototype.

We're Going to Build a Fence!

After finding a photo of a lettered, advertising wooden fence along Rideau Street, bordering Anglin's oil, coal and wood operations on the Inner Harbour, I thought I would paint a similar fence on the layout. Though Anglin's lumber and oil operations are both served by CP on the layout, they're separated by the CN line, therefore easy to divide and conquer. We're going to build a fence!

First I painted on the letters in grey, then outlined them in tan, using Central Valley fence kits. I placed them bordering the bulk fuel plant - this is on a secret (and entirely non-prototypical) second track under the River Street bridge. That's the 'Davis tannery' backdrop - actually a photo I took while riding the Union Pearson Express in Toronto! The CN is in foreground:

A view from the Imperial Oil spur switch on CN, with the local section men thinking about cutting back those weeds I placed in front of the fence!

Pulling back the focus a bit, here's the fence and area shown in other photos, with KIMCO's scrap yard on Rideau Street in foreground:

 And a concluding view from atop the River Street bridge!

And a caboose hop coming down the spur past the fence:

Cataraqui Street Crossing Views

First there was the woolen mill, then the Bailey broom factory, and finally the National Grocers warehouse. Since I've added all three signature buildings (no room for the setback Rosen Fuels operation, but stay tuned) along Cataraqui Street, I can complete the scene. I have two railways' tracks in the scene, CN closest to the aisle and CP closest to the backdrop. At right foreground is the National Grocers spur stopblock. Here's an updated view along the CP:

The road is grey cardstock. The backdrop is a calendar photo, with scenery and roadside poles bridging the gap, crossing timbers and clay comprising the crossing. Total depth of the scene is 2 feet.

CN 3120, my Rapido Trains RS-18 is heading downtown at the crossing.

Compare the model view (above) to the prototype (below) in this City of Kingston photo taken in 1977.

CP-Served Industry Structure Flats

On a limited-space layout, I've found that structure flats can be used to effectively portray an industry. The key is making them not 'look like' structure flats by blending colours into printed backdrops, sky and nearby buildings. One of the last I had to build is the Weldwood Canada warehouse at the east end of Railway Street. The prototype is still there, and I really like the 1950's look of the loading dock. Mine is a three-sided structure flat, as are the other two that CP served along Railway Street.

Two photos of the prototype in use as a furniture outlet in 2019 (above) and Gamble-Robinson (with trucks lettered for Snoboy and Standby in 1952 (below - George Lilley photo/Queen's Archives). In building my flat, I really wanted to feature the loading dock, so flipped the building 90 degrees but left off the covered garage section.

Next up the spur was the MacCosham Van Lines warehouse. This flat started its life as a McCain Foods structure on a previous layout iteration. It's no longer Orange! and Grey, instead painted a grey colour to blend with the blue-painted wall to make its lack of depth less noticeable:

Though these spurs were all served by reasonably long, curving spurs off the CP Kingston Subdivision (lead) between Elliott Avenue and Railway Street, on my layout they line the wall to which the lead is parallel and the spurs necessarily short. Same flat, with cars spotted. In all cases, cars that I spot here have the same lading - household effects.

Next up is Weston's Bakeries. A bit of a question-mark here...though I believe the bakery only received flour in bags, I have a surfeit of cylindricals and can justify a few on this spur. Also, probably no big silos, though these two are from a previous iteration feed mill so are doing the job for now! Employees always wear white coveralls when dealing with flour.

Along the Inner Harbour, the Hield Bros. woolen mill is represented by this flat made of Revell roundhouse walls, an actual printed photo of the upper storeys and a cool Sylvan Models brick square chimney purchased from ARK member Bob Farquhar at the November 2019 Railfair. I enjoyed painting the stack to represent aged brick. Boxcars are loaded with 'garments'.

At the northern end of the CP trackage, there is this Non-Descript 1.0 flat. A tranche of the office of the Walthers O.L King Coal Co., I added it to some printed backdrops to represent any number of such buildings in the area.

Nearby is Presland Iron & Steel, here served by CP (Soo Line gon) and CN (BN boxcar) since both railways served joint trackage here.

Let's lose the colour! Black & white hides some sins. Weldwood:

Lead at left, MacCosham and Weston's at right:

Weldwood, MacCosham and Weston's, viewed from the opposite end of this wall.

Presland, from the CP end of the joint trackage:

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: