Goodwin & Wolfe Distillery

[Mkrailway]

Hi,

I've had to step back and re-group on how to build my background distillery. This was due to pressure from the powers and their valuable content and advice. So first some history about the diorama I am building.

The diorama is 10 feet wide by 30 inches deep and is set in the early 1970's. It is loosely designed on areas from the East to the West coast with some elements from the some cities I have seen. Blending these design elements altogether into one large diorama is and will continue to be a big challenge. For example, only 5 feet of the width has track and the left side is still just foam. I made the commitment to finish the right hand side of the diorama before worrying about the left 5 feet. (I sorta know what I want there.)

The front part of the right side is decided and concrete plans are in place. However, I needed to design the background flat buildings to complement and contrast the front sections. (BTW: the back board is temporary until I decide how I want it all to look like. I know it is contrary to most advice, but I am confident I can generate a photo backdrop the will fit into the diorama nicely.)

One element I do not have in the diorama is a large brick or stone structure and I have some visually empty space to create a dominating structure. After looking around I came upon the perfect prototype - the Gooderham & Worts Distillery (circa 1830). This is a four storey building made from Kingston Limestone hand carved by prisoners residing in Kingston Prisons. 



The following photographs show that building overtime and represent the effect I am trying to re-create for my background structure.

The drawing is the oldest rendition and if you notice it is very close to Lake Ontario and there are rail lines and a dock area.



In this image You can see that dormers have been added and the freight cars are quite close to the building. The rest of the building is the same.



In this image some fencing has been added, but the building is still untouched.



This seems like an aerial photograph, but it is from the top of a huge dock warehouse jutting into Lake Ontario. It gives perspective on how big this complex was/is. The building is huge (~300 feet wide) and trying to replicate this in HO scale for my small diorama would be too much for me.



This is how it looks to-day. It is offices, apartments, stores, galleries, etc. You can see the colours of the Kingston Limestone, which they say is light grey, but I think it is sandy with hints of grey.



In the next post I will explain on how I plan to fit this into my diorama.

Until next time.

Marty

[ACL1504]

Marty,

Welcome to the forum. This will be quit the project and I'm looking forward to seeing what you end up with and how you get there.

That is one great looking structure and I like the weather vane on the old building - Photo no.68.

Tom

[cuse]

Wow. What an ambitious and worthy project. I'm looking forward to watching you tackle it.


(I would suggest Mr. Van Gelder and Mr. Sellios be on your advisory board for this one )


John

[GPdemayo]

Welcome to the forum Marty.....looking forward to seeing your work. 

[deemery]

Great prototype, great history, great photos.  I love large 19th century factory buildings, and I'm looking forward to seeing how you reproduce this.


dave

[ak-milw]

This should be a great build, I will be watching!

[EricQuebec]

This should be a great build, I will be watching!

DItto
Eric Quebec

[Mark Dalrymple]

You've sparked my interest, Marty.  Looks like a great project and I'll be watching as you progress.

Cheers, Mark.

[Janbouli]

Following along, this should be good.

[Mkrailway]

Wow, I have an audience! I hope I can do justice to the prototype.

When I pass the building on the train, the building looks more grey than sandy color. So I decided to see how Google sees the building. It looks more little grey with undertones of yellow.



Something to think about.

[Mkrailway]

I did some more research into the building to see if I could find anything more about it. To my surprise I found a complete set of elevations and floor plans for all the structures in the complex. The one that was most interesting for me to creat a background building was this one.



It has a rough scale that I used to build a ruler so I could measure the elements of the wall. This gave me the rough dimensions to label the original building. With that I could see if it would fit into the space I needed to fill (~13"). There was no way it would fit. So I need to do some compression while maintaining the look and feel of the building. There was no way I was going to be able to do the whole building.

I eliminated the left part of the building as it had too low of a profile for a background. Also, the left four window section had to be dropped and I eliminated one set of windows from both sides of the tower.

One of the challenges was to find out what size the windows were and if they were commercially available. I went out to find windows and doors that would replicate the prototype. The smaller curved windows are/were not available, the rounded doors also did not exist. And when it came to the larger rounded windows it was even more difficult to find. So another compromise was needed.

I found some Ticthy windows that fit the bill for the smaller windows, however were only square at the top and only available locally as non-masonry windows. So I decided to make all the windows from these. As for the doors, I chose a standard Ticthy door size.

To capture the feel of the early 1900's railroad operations behind the building I made the larger entrance door a rounded freight door. I will have to scratch build this door and a dock for accepting goods from the freight cars. The two other doors will just be back entrance doors to the building with landings and stairs coming up to them. Remember this is close to the siding and occasional access would be needed.

To properly scale and draw a plan I found a photograph of the wall and did some scaling and perspective corrections so when printed it has windows that were 3 feet x 5 feet. From this I could confirm my initial measurements and get a HO scale picture of what I was trying to build.



So here is what I came up with, (Ignore the two rounded top doors. I changed my mind after taking this picture.)



I bet this will change when I get into the production.

See you at the next post.

[Mkrailway]

I will be carving all the walls using some Utility wax. It is nice and soft, yet firm to carve. I got this from a sculpture supply house here in town.



I will use the plan to score the openings and floors and then get into carving. It is going to take a few days to do this as there are hundreds of blocks to carve.

Until the next post.

[Jerry]

Looks to be a very interesting build.

Jerry

[S&S RR]

Marty


What a great project.  I will be following along.

[ACL1504]

Marty,

This will be a fantastic structure when finished. Looking forward to the journey.

Tom