My father is an amazing craftsman. Give the man some Styrofoam, drill, a few wooden dowel rods and some glue and amazing things begin to emerge.
I am not going to mention each and every shot I have taken of this project but this one gives a good over view of the size of the town. (I reckon it takes up about 30 square feet at present.) This photo of the modeler standing amidst his project also puts it into perspective.
I first became aware of this project when I went to visit this Easter. I have been fortunate enough to spend some time on the weekends out at my folks of the late. I thought it might be interesting to share some of the photos that my father, mother and I have taken of this model town. I also though it would be a good opportunity to experiment with my mother's camera.
I took most of these photos with a Kodak EasyShare C360
There are two features I particularly like about this little camera. The first is that it has a close up mode for images less than 29 inches from the camera. The second is that it has a bracketing mode which allows one to automatically get exposures above and below what would be the normal exposure. Having three images shot in rapid succession only varying by exposure is a very good thing to have for this type of detailed, close up work.
More on the camera in another blog posting to follow, for now... back to the model town. As early as Easter, the town was already beginning to take form and one could easily see the level of detail in the bridge. Using pieces of flower flats, (you know those flat plastic containers that you buy outdoor flowers in) Styrofoam, and cut lumber, my father assembled the bridge to "O Scale". This means that each 1/4 inch in the model represents one foot in the real world. In my humble opinion, the detail is amazing. Look at the carving and painting in the Styrofoam to make it look like cut stone!
The storefront was also mostly complete by Easter and shows the same level of detail. The stone wall behind the building is actually Styrofoam with pebbles glued to the face of it. I can see three things that are clearly needed for this project; attention to detail, much patience regarding labor and some creative thinking.
This model Fire House is the work of over 8 hours of tedious labor. Add some sawdust, a purchased model of a steam fire pump (still horse drawn) and another model I am calling The Candle House and you will end up with a real early west mock up. To date, my father estimates that he has about a total of over 36 hours invested in the building mentioned here for this project. As far as an estimate on the time to complete... I am not even going to ask. I know my father well enough to know that will depend on whatever creative idea he has next. Speaking of creativity, the reason I called the one model "the Candle House" is because of what it originally was. Look over this photo showing the candle holder on the right and the modified creation on the left.
Well, as usual, thanks for reading. I hope you found this post interesting and if you enjoyed the photos, check out the entire Flickr Set. I currently have 25 decent to good photos in the set. Also if you have any suggestions, resources or information on scale model building from scratch, leave a comment here it will be greatly appreciated. Likely I will have a few more post on this topic as the project evolves. I may even take advantage of this situation and use it as a platform to experiment with the Arduino Micro Controller to control the lights as he wires the town.
