Stanislaus Milling & Faire Coal

From left to right, the mill is made of the boiler house, mill building and warehouse. Stanislaus flour was popular in the area. See my post of August 6, 2012 for a picture of one of their advertising signs.

Two prototype businesses in Oakdale were A. Faire who was a coal dealer and the Stanislaus Milling and Power Company. In reality, Faire was at the south end of Oakdale while Stanislaus was at the north end. To fit everything in on the model, I made some compromises and moved the industries around.

The Faire coal yard is across C Street from the Stanislaus Mill.

 I did not have any information on Faire beyond knowing of his existence so his coal yard is completely freelanced based on other photos I had of nineteenth century coal yards. On the other hand, I had two photos of Stanislaus, one from each side. Of course, the higher resolution shot was on the side that faced away from the aisle. With the help of insurance maps, though, I was able to build a full-size model of the company and fit it in on the siding.

 The Stanislaus building is entirely constructed of styrene except for the roof which is Campbell's corrugated aluminum. This was correct according to the photos and insurance map. Although corrugated iron was just beginning to be widely used, it had been around in California since the 1870s when the Central Pacific started making it in their Sacramento shops. Building the structure in three pieces (warehouse, mill and boiler room) made it a bit easier to put together and certainly to carry around.
 

The coal yard consists of piles of various grades of coal, a small coal shed and an office adjacent to the scale.

 Faire's coal yard did not have much to do. I had a Walthers stock yard shelter left over from the stock yard project. I put a fourth wall on the building along with some loading doors and it looked just like some coal sheds I had photographed in Massachusetts. Some Walthers fencing around the property and an office building made by someone I have forgotten completed the scene or so I thought. I looked closer at one of my photos and saw a small sign on the office noting the manufacturer of the scale.

Mr. Faire waves goodbye to one of his customers after checking his weight
on the Howe Scale. Although you can't see it in this photo, the Howe sign
is posted next to the office door.

Of course! Coal was sold by the ton and there had to be some means of weighing the wagons before and after loading. Now, what does a nineteenth century wagon scale look like? Some internet research yielded several photos including ads with dimensions. I opted for a Howe Scale measuring 8x14 feet and built that up with some scribed wood and styrene. The actual scale mechanism would be in the office so it is not seen. I found out that a great number of them were outside in waterproof boxes which would make a great model for the future.
   When I started scenicking the scene, it became obvious that more structures, residential this time, were needed. The north end of Oakdale was sparsely settled with few dwellings so I am copying that on the model. It also saves on structure building time. The two smaller homes were built from Grandt Line kits and the larger building was also kit-built but I don't recall whose. It was constructed quite a while ago and was just waiting for a place to be sited.

Living across from a coal yard is not the best location in the world but neither
is the house the best. Even small houses had a modicum of decoration in the
1890s.

Another not-so-prime location but small houses were the norm at this end

of town.

The milling superintendent's house is across E. Railroad Avenue from the
mill so it's an easy commute to work.

 There's one more signature structure to be done: the Mouton Soda Company. There was actually soda water and soft drinks made here and the building was rail-served.

Fooling with Photoshop

Train Number 16 rolls by a small pond just west of Waverly on the Milton branch. Gopher Ridge is in the background.

Today, I was preparing a presentation for the upcoming NMRA Mid-Continent Region convention which will be held here in Kansas City. Being asked to do a presentation on period railroading, I have been making new photographs of the railroad to illustrate it. While using Adobe Photoshop to make slight corrections such as cropping and image size, I decided to try something different.
 

The original photo is all right but a bit bland in the background.

The original photograph looked like the above  with the background being just the blue-painted backdrop on my railroad. I decided to add some mountains to the picture. Using a photo I had taken near the modeled location, I inserted it into the background followed by another photo of clouds. You can see the result. This was the first time I have tried to alter a photo and I was pleased with the results. Now, all I have to do is to brush up on my painting skills so I can make the backdrop look as good as the photo.

Stock Yards and a Finished Warehouse

Howe & Smallwood have opened for business and are employing a number of Oakdale's citizens.

  At last, with all the delays, the Howe & Smallwood warehouse is finally finished. Alongside of it is a new corral so that the ranchers around Oakdale can ship their cattle on the Stockton & Copperopolis. As has been seen in previous posts, I cut one wall away from the building due to lack of benchwork space. This made cutting the roof trusses very interesting and necessitated all of the grain sacks but I think the effort was worth it.
 

These steers will have a while to wait to be loaded as there are presently no stock cars available for shipment.

 The corral was put together with pieces from a Walthers corral kit. If you look at the layout plan, you can see that the loading chute is just about right at a track switch. For corrals, that is not that bad. Corrals can be located on odd sections of track because cars are not usually spotted there long enough to matter. You can't load a carload of steers and let them set so the train has to be ready to leave town when the cars are loaded. How long does it take to load a car? I will be setting up a sound module with a recording of mooing steers. When the sound stops, one car is loaded. Spot the next car and do it again. Right now, I don't have any stock cars on the railroad so that traffic will have to wait a bit.
 

Jake, the foreman is exerting his authority to impress Mr. Howe, lounging in
the background.

Quite a number of figures were needed to complete this scene. The cows were prepainted by Woodland Scenics while the cowboys started out as unpainted Preiser figures. The boys in the warehouse were a combination of old cast metal Lytler & Lytler and Gandy Dancer figures that I have had forever. It was time to use them.
   Of course, wagons full of grain sacks had to be brought in my the farmers so I built up a couple of kits that I had in stock. The green wagon is a Lindsey which is made in the United Kingdom while the brown wagon was made by Imagine That Laser Art (www.imaginethatlaserart.com). It is laser-cut wood and very easy to assemble.

Farmers delivering grain are guided into position by warehouse workers.

New Warehouse Nears Completion

The white substance is unpainted Sculptamold which will eventually be covered with dirt and growing things.

Running out of shingles can sure put a damper on a model's progress. I thought I had enough to finish the new Howe and Smallwood grain warehouse but I did not. Even though I ordered more, it took a few weeks to get them made and in my hands. The material I use is from Minuteman Scale Models (www.minutemanscalemodels.com) and is a very good product. I have used them on several of the buildings in Oakdale and elsewhere. They come in strips and have a peel-off backing so the strip can just be stuck down on the roof of the model. I highly recommend them.
 

 Casting the grain sacks to populate the warehouse took a bit of time as well. I used up the last of my casting resin which, fortunately, was enough to finish the job. In the 1890s, before forklifts, warehouses generally only stacked things about eight feet high. That was as high as a man could reach. A few hand trucks completed the interior.
   The terrain on the warehouse site was not quite level so I used some Sculptamold to fill in the low spots. It still needs to be painted and have dirt, etc. applied. There's still a bit of scenery work need plus a wagon or two delivering grain to the building.
 

An 1885 bird's-eye map of Oakdale yielded this view of the warehouse. With the side of my model cut off, I could only show one door and one window.

 The prototype of this warehouse was built in the early 1870s and was a brick building like the model. It was 400 feet long while my model was cut back to 200 feet. They must have moved a lot of grain in those days! By 1895, the building was gone, probably due to fire although I have found no confirmation of that. I would probably have to go to Oakdale and read through the Oakdale papers to see if there was any mention of a fire. Although the prototype building at this site was one of the Stanislaus Warehouses, I used the name of another warehouse in town just to give some variety to the scene.

Sound Effects Come to the S&C

Pushing the "Water" button will start the sound

of a tender being filled with water.

One of the things that I have been toying with over the years is adding sound to the railroad. I don't mean in the locomotives but in other areas. For example, if a rule is established that all locomotives take water at Peters, then how long does that take? How long does it take to load a stock car? Why doesn't the band ever play anything? Those problems have now been solved.
   Recently, a friend of mine, Keith Robinson, turned me on to some sound modules on ebay. They used mini SD memory cards to hold the sound files and could play back up to 500+ separate files. I purchased a couple and tried them out. They work great! The memory card makes it very easy to record the sound(s) you need but it does take some playing with the sound files. Although the modules are new, the technology appears to be a bit old. They will only work with memory cards with less than 1 gigabyte capacity. Try to find one of those at your local store. I did find some 128 megabyte cards on line which is more than enough capacity for any sound I will ever use.
   Also, the sound has to fit within some fairly old parameters. The free program, Audacity, allows these modifications to be made but not with the current version. I had to download an earlier version of Audacity (V. 1.2.6) that could save the files in the older format. In spite of this, the end result still sounds good.

The power supply (right) and sound module (left) are mounted on a wood block for ease in attaching to the layout. The SD mini memory card fits into the slot on the sound module. A Radio Shack amplifier stands beyond.

 To implement all this fun, I built some 9V power supplies. These take 12V DC power from an accessory bus I have running about the layout and drop it down to 9V DC to power the module and the Radio Shack amplifier I use to deliver the sound. A push button on the fascia completes the installation and now S&C engineers know how long it takes to fill the tender tank. A similar recording will eventually go by the stock pens to tell operators how long it takes to load a stock car. I even have a recording for the bandstand at Oakdale. The band has a 5 or 6 song repertoire and each push of the button will start a new Sousa march.
   The possibilities are high but I have to keep the volume low enough so that all the cows mooing, water running and band songs won't send my operators marching away.

Another Grain Warehouse

The Howe and Smallwood warehouse sits at the south end of the town. Adjustments to the ground level will have to be made before the building can be permanently installed.

Oakdale was a town with several warehouses for grain. After all, that was the major commodity carried by the S&C in the '90s. The Howe and Smallwood warehouse sat on the west side of the main line at the south end of town. On my model, that puts it across the tracks from the Oakdale Lumber Company. The prototype structure measured 50 x 400 feet which is way too big for the space I have. I cut the length down to 200 feet but left the width the same. This posed a dilemma since the benchwork was not wide enough to accommodate this width. I decided to slice off part of one side which would result in a model with one wall open. Of course, this meant that I had to provide an interior for the building which was pretty simple since it would be more stacks of grain sacks.

A trackside view shows the loading door and a window. The office door and window are on the building's end at the right of the photo.

   The open side also meant that I would have to construct roof trusses. Yesterday, I spent the afternoon building these trusses using a jig I built. It was not difficult except for the time spent waiting for the glue to dry so I could take it out of the jig. Thirteen trusses later, I was done and assembled them to the building and the way oversized ridge. On half the trusses, part of them would be cut off where the wall didn't exist and they would be supported by this ridge which wouldn't be visible once the roof was on anyway.

The partial roof trusses can be seen in this view. Now I need to fill up the place with grain.

   Today, I'm spending a lot of time casting up more grain sacks to fill up the warehouse. Some workers and hand trucks will be added to complete the scene and then I will attach the roof, shingle it and add exterior details.

Pocahontas Comes to Oakdale

Dr. Borkon extolls the wonders of Pocahontas to the snappy tune of the hurdy-gurdy while one of Oakdale's finest looks on the background to ensure there will be no flim-flam.

Folks of the nineteenth century wanted entertainment as much as any of us in the twenty-first century. Concerts in the park, theater shows and the traveling medicine show provided much gaiety. Oakdale now plays host to Dr. Borkon's show, complete with jokes, stories, trained monkeys and songs accompanied by concert quality music played on a genuine hurdy-gurdy. Of course, if you are feeble, lethargic, asthmatic, bothered by heart palpitations or have aches and pains, you can buy a bottle of Pocahontas Remedies guaranteed to cure or, at least, make you forget your ailments.

Capturing the spectacle is more important to Oakdale's
photographist than sampling the Remedy.

Pocahontas seems to be very popular with the male population of Oakdale.

   Dr. Borkon's wagon was built from a Jordan kit with custom decals and added curtains and stage drapes made from a single ply of facial tissue. The audience is composed of several cast metal figures while the hurdy-gurdy and Dr. Borkon are by Presier. The photographer is from Lindsey, a British company. The bottles and cases are from Presiser.
  Incidentally, the name Pocahontas Remedies is from a brew that Will Rogers sold in his film Steamboat 'Round the Bend made in 1935. The name Dr. Borkon, however, is completely made up and any resemblance to any Kansas City model railroaders, living or dead, is purely coincidental.