Placerville Garage
September 10, 2023
Here is the finished Garage. A couple of changes were made since the last post. The color of the trim is now a lighter green and the garage door has horizontal instead of verticle boards. The lintels have also been added along with some signage. The "Placerville Garage" sign was created in Word; the Dunlap tire sign was downloaded off the internet. I think it turned out pretty well considering it was created with left over wall sections from the Monster Modelworks Placerville Store kit. It's about an inch deep.
Placerville Town
Here is an overall view of the Placerville townsite with 5 of the proposed 9 major structures. The San Miguel River will run along the edge of the bench work. It should be noted that the store should be behind Warehouse A/B. Unfortunately, there just wasn't enough room so it got shifted to the left. The depth of the scene is 30".
The Residences
September 11, 2023
Just to the north of the store, were two private residences on Front Street. Both will have to be scratch built and their depths reduced due to the available space, about 2 inches. The Sept/Oct 2015 issue of the Gazette has a nice article by Steve Harris on building these two structure in HO Scale. Unfortunately, the article only included a set of Bruce Blazek plans for the smaller of the two.
I decided to start with the more difficult of the two houses. Since I didn't have any plans, I made several drawings and when I got one that looked about right, I transferred the dimensions onto a piece of styrene and cut it to shape. I left a couple of scale feet on the bottom to start with. After I took this photo, I trimmed off a scale foot (first line above the bottom).
The window openings were cut out of the styrene and the clapboard siding was glued in place with ACC. The wall was then turned over and the window and door openings in the clapboard siding were cut out from the back side. The windows are modified Tichy parts and the door is a Grandt Line part.
September 13, 2023
Here is a picture of the finished model. I couldn't find a color picture anywhere so I chose a weathered cream for the siding and a light gray for the trim work. Builders In Scale Silverwood was applied first, allowed to dry, and followed by cream craft paint applied with a really "Dry" brush. The peel and stick shingles are from AMB and chimney is from Rail Scale Models.
The Truck Dump
One of the things I noticed while studying photos of Placerville (Page 178, RGS Story Vol X) was the truck dump that shows up in the following enlargement. The quality is poor, but it appears that it was used to dump ore from small mine operators into gondolas. The photo was taken in 1947. I think the small structure to the left and behind the dump is the scale house. I plan to include the trump dump and scale in my Placerville scene. Any additional info regarding the truck dump and/or the scale, or photos, would be greatly appreciated. sdepolo@outlook.com
Looking For Backdrop Photos
The backdrop for Placerville may turn out to be a problem. The canyon is pretty narrow through Placerville and when I was there, I couldn't find a suitable vantage point to take a series of photographs that could be stitched together in Photoshop to create the backdrop. If anyone has a source of suitable photographs, please let me know. sdepolo@outlook.com
As always, your comment, suggestions and questions are welcome
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