Monday, July 21, 2014

Shelf Rot

It's only been 18 months since my last update about/or any work done on the WP 3rd street freight house model. On a geologic time scale, I'm blazing along with blinding speed!

The time spent on the shelf of my cluttered office/man-cave/workshop has taken its toll on the model though. Specifically the delicate handrails on the stairs and deck that lead to the office doors. One wouldn't have needed to be Nostradamus (1503-1566) to predict that any such wear and tear would have worn and torn in that particular area. And since this model is intended for a module (a drop-in module at that) the decision to fabricate the handrails in ultra small diameter plastic rod was probably pure folly from the start.

So I've broken my R Street modeling fast by attending to rebuilding the handrails, this time in brass. My soldering skills are merely at the neophyte level, so it took me longer then most modelers to fiddle, tack and solder all the brass together and then bend it where needed and then clip and file away the excess solder till it looked half way decent. Still, it was a fun Sunday evening project to while away the hours until the final episode of the second season Endeavor came on Masterpiece.

I'm hoping it whetted my appetite for more modeling soon. And we can hope this will be 'soon' measured on more of a Julian calendar, something that measures mere weeks rather than epochs and eons.
It's a sad state of affairs... the plastic rod, it's not so strong. 
 
Laying things out. 


Tacked down and ready for solder... 


But maybe not _that_ much solder... 
Eventually it cleaned up somewhat. 

Monday, February 10, 2014

Thomson-Diggs Billhead

A few months ago, I purchased an eBay offering of a Thomson Diggs bill-head from 1924; they seem to crop up fairly regularly. The bill-head includes an illustration of the original portion of the Thomson Diggs building on R Street. The current building is much bigger than this early nucleus. It later included a first floor expansion on the West side (to the right of the building in the illustration) and then later still additional floors were added on top of that expansion. This illustration was one Thomson Diggs used in their 1920s catalogs that I've seen down at the Center for Sacramento History. Also of note is warehouse to the left of the main building. I think either this is an earlier and smaller version of the warehouse that I've seen later pictures of, or the picture is keeping this corrugated warehouse shorter than it was in reality. Perhaps this was done on purpose to not block the view of the main building.