The Centerpiece. The Real Life Model. A Contest.

He's been away from his family for two years+ and is returning home from the First World War to a small town in west/northwest Illinois on the Chicago Great Western line. It is 1919. Three days before Christmas. The scene will be... a soldier with his bags facing the station from the tracks, and his family jumping up from a bench to run to him. A house somewhere in town will be decorated in bunting - home.

Did you know that in the old days railroad companies tried to have all their depots look the same, or at least carry similar features one to the other? For someone trying to accurately recreate a certain place, era and feeling, this could present a problem difficult to overcome.

Except in the world of model trains, if you look hard enough, ye shall find.

This kit is an exact model of the train station once part of the Chicago Great Western line in Elmhurst, Illinois. You can search for pictures on the web or buy the big reference book (the train-lovers sub-culture in America is almost frightening) and check it out. This model is accurate down to the directions of the wood on the panels of the structure. They change from panel to panel.

The picture below left is a semi-finished product, still needing a few details and some weathering. The flash-picture on the right below just gives you an idea of the scale. That's a quarter there.

A bench, some mud, a little highlight here and there (also can't see it, but fixed the loose board from the picture above left). And... OH LOOKEE HERE!... a black and white photo from the steam era of a Chicago Great Western station in what is now West Chicago (aka Ingalton 1900), Illinois. Take a good look at that - go ahead and de-smallify that for a second & look again. Then come back here and look at the last picture. I'll wait here...

Houston, we have a problem. Notice the board at the top center of the wall in the black and white? The one with the name of the town? Now... what's wrong with this picture below...?

Dude. We're building a town with no name!

So I had an idea. I'm going to let one of you name the town. And the chosen name will get a $25 gift certificate from Amazon (once I figure out how I do that, but let's not talk about that just now). OR - if you'd rather not have that, I will give $25 TO A CHARITY YOU CHOOSE. There's no reason for people not to play now, k?

Here's the RULES

First of all, this whole thing is possible reality. So I don't want any Tittowns and Dicktowns and MEvilles. If you want a shot at this I would suggest giving the idea as much of a nod to possible reality as I am doing for the rest of it. Go to a map of western/northwestern Illinois and look what things are named. Which native American language is used in some of the towns of the area? Are they Algonquin languages? Is there a word in that language that would work? Are there historic figures from the era or from the time the town was founded (you tell me) that don't have a town named for them already? Geography? Anything... so long as it is PLAUSIBLE. Submit it with your name to obrtre at hotmail dot com with the story. If you have more than one... send them all. Give me a story for each - 10 words or something, nothing big.

If you want to delve deeper into what this project is all about before you make an entry, go ahead and click the Christmas train label below this post. Refresh yourself as to what this is and why I'm doing it.

I will pick three of the best, and then put it to a vote. I will try to explain why they were chosen above others. But that's my only call. Whichever name gets the most votes in a period of voting time (manner and length to be determined) wins!

You have to get an email to the above addy before my midnight timestamp (US/ Central) on April 6th 2009 with your entry. Then I'll select three, and we vote.

Just think... not only a prize, but a shot at immortality! Or... close anyhow.

Sort of.

Now, there's been a lot of people who've bailed on this blog in the last month or so. Mostly my own fault because I read but don't participate much and... oh OK I'm also hardly reading but I'm doing THIS! If you would be so kind as to send a note to some of our old readers here and let them in on the contest that would be cool of you. I'd hate to have just three entries. In fact, I'll have to add a rule here - if I don't get more than 10 entries (11, officially then) I will pick a winner from the existing submissions. All judge's decisions are final.

Junkyard Gets A Neighbor, Becomes A District

I am the worst photographer in the universe. But it all passes the "squint test" Sorry.

The idea is to create "modules." Imagine each section of the town as a diorama. Make parts of the town up independently, then fit together for the set up. This does three things; It makes storage + "put away" simpler, it simplifies the set-up, and intensifies the whole production.

So I bought this factory-type building from Piko, a German model maker. It's a kit like we used to get with plastic airplanes and tanks and cars. The model is beautiful, but the paint job and weathering are mine.

You're seeing it before the snow is added. My detail is pretty intense, to the point where the snow will become actual ground cover on top of actual ground. It's like, if you do an archeology project on this thing you'll get layers of activity. I know that seems odd, but effects wear away. If, in time, snow falls off in parts it will reveal "real" stuff undernesth. Plus it all adds texture. I'm not snowing the dioramas until the very last step.

Here's where my photography could use a little help. The sign says "Spryszak's Harness & Tractor." We have no idea who that guy is. Heh.

Let There Be Light! And... Also TOYS!

OK what's Christmas, even in a small Midwestern town, without at least one store selling toys for the holiday? Not right, that's what. So let's make a toy store.

I showed you this building before, with sticky-tacky-crazy snow that adheres to buildings out here in the prairie (I don't have to explain that to people from the upper Midwest, you foreigners will just have to trust me). This thing is like 3" x 2 1/2".

The first trick is to get the windows frosted. A fact of life. The snow that you see on the outside of this building is going to crumble off over time and have to be renewed. The thought of scrunching down and also treating the window frost as well is just way too much, so we need a permanent effect. What you see below is simple Scotch tape, the unclear kind, just set across the windows from the INSIDE that has only been pushed down in spots which leaves bubbles in the tape that look like... you know... frost.

There's no way to get around it. If I want to have a display seen through the windows I have to miniaturize real life to some degree. This means making a shelf for the toys to be on in the windows. A small sliver of balsa wood keeps it light and functional. Now you may notice in this picture that another, larger bit of balsa has been added just above the windows, wall-to-wall. What's that you say? That's the ceiling of the first floor. A ceiling. What did you expect?

OK before you start wondering if I've completely gone off the deep end - think about it. If I light this building from the inside and DON'T do that the whole building - all the windows on every floor and even the side-entrance doors - is going to light up. I don't know about you, but I've never seen a second story that lit up when the light went on downstairs. So I need to separate the floors. Otherwise it just looks like somebody just stuck a random light up a model. That would be inexcusable! You'll see better later.

Now, it's possible to buy a whole bunch of small trinkets (just look at the junkyard) and fill up the space with scale-size toys and such; but the budget isn't totally limitless and - besides - I need to further defuse the inside light. So I go to the trusty interwebs and download little Christmas toy gifs, shrink them down and print them out.

I'm using an extra piece of balsa in this picture to demonstrate what happens next, but after cutting out the re-sized toy gif I edge-glue it to the balsa shelf I made inside.

And with the printed side facing the window, the rest of the paper acting as sort of a screen so you can't completely see inside the store, a wreath set inside the door (also a printed gif), and the top floor obviously separated from the first, a small "squint test" gives the perfect illusion of a toy store at night during the Christmas season.

Plus an unintended benefit is that - somewhere - there's a crack in the balsa, making the turret look like there's a tiny night-light in there... which is pretty damn cool.

So, what do you want for Christmas this year?

Do you see the part of the building under the windows sort of "glowing"? Yeah no building does that. I don't have a picture of it but after the windows dried I painted the inside of those areas black to stop the glowing. I think this piece is pretty much ready except for some anal things that I'm sure will happen to it before Thanksgiving. Not that I'm anal but... you know.

They're Stars!

My very good friend(s) Kiefer and Emo got his/their very first blog review!

I'm very proud of that(those) boy(s), except I hope this doesn't mean that he/they are going to spend more time outside of that deep dark hole he/they live in.

THAT would be scary.

How To Make A Junkyard ~and~ Losing The Blogging Bug

I'm not that interested in blogs any more. I like you and I'm very satisfied when I think about all the hilarious and/or talented people I've met since I started blogging, and I DO keep reading & visiting, but I find I not only have less and less to originate here but I also have less and less to contribute to your blog. Now when a person cuts down on their contributions to other blogs the natural thing is that suddenly you lose a lot of readers who were nothing more than "I'll post to you only if you post to me" and that kills about 90% of blogland, I think. So I don't know. What's it for again?

So as we ponder what's Real Life and What Isn't there's a kit I found that takes the "Oh goody goody happy day" toy train engineer and turns him into a fanatic. A raiser. It's a junkyard. And I added a few touches of my own.

First, you remember, our story takes place in 1919. A returning soldier comes home just in time for Christmas. Well so OK, this is America so you know all the posters aren't down yet. I went to the web and found World War One posters, copied and shrunk them down to various sizes.

But no when I say shrink I mean SHRINK.

I kind of hate this next picture because I took it one handed. So it's blurry. But what's happening here is I'm taking a soft board nail file and sanding the BACK of the poster. The reason you do this is because - think - the posters have been out there in Midwestern winters and summers and get weathered. If you took full-color fresh-as-a-daisy posters and plastered them all over your town you get shiny new posters everywhere. But, sorry, it just ain't that-a-way.

So you've got the paper sanded down so you can see through it, and holes have even developed. You go to the fence (btw, this is a fence that came with the kit, but the painting is mine - brown, rust, black and an occasional salty white = a weathered corrugated iron fence. You get the idea). Dab some Elmer's down and then smear it flat just like wallpaper paste. Put your pre-tattered poster up and rub it GENTLY with the edge of a hobby paint brush so that the super-thin thing adhears to the contours of the fence.

Comes up like this. Well no, it comes up exactly like this. A period-correct ad for smoking tobacco...

Now pick the ones you want - including the WWI recruitment poster - and wash/rinse/repeat.

Plan what goes where around a piece of balsa-wood, then glue the fences to the wood to form the floor of the junkyard.

Looks like this, before and after you paint the balsa wood...

After the paint dries (which happens in like three seconds on balsa) coat the "floor" with a liquid adhesive (hobby store guys), and sprinkle a granulated "scenic effect" sand to form... well... you know... dirt.

Add junk, weeds, drip paint by turned-over oil cans, throw stuff on top of dead foliage, and release your inner slob...

Don't worry about the part by the gate. Remember, in this scene we're still going to add a covering of snow over everything during the set-up. The exposed balsa by the gate will be covered with a slight snow drift (see, always thinking) and - if you look above - you will notice pegs on the bottom of the fences... which will be used to stick into the white Styrofoam base that everything will be set on to help make it as snowy ground as possible.

A detail...

Depending how you're viewing, you can make these bigger by clicking on them. Perhaps.

Anyway... moving right along!

You'd Be Surprised...

...how much shit and junk is out there waiting to steal your money. Or maybe you wouldn't. But here's a public service announcement from a crabby old man because I still wuv you. All six of you.

I'll get back to the train stuff in a day or so, but for now let me rave a bit about real benefits and fake ones.

At the top of my list lately has been (and I'm not going to give them a free link) that specifically inane and insane commercial with the guy in the green tights who also bobble-heads in his car while hawking what is supposed to be a Free Credit Report. You've seen it. You've probably thrown a shoe at it. Of course you realize that not only is the commercial offensive and obnoxious and stupid - it is also borderline FRAUD. After the first month there's nothing FREE about it. You can get a free credit report after you give them your credit card information... which they need to bill you $19.95 a month thereafter for their "service", which basically is to send you a reminder after 12 months that you can once again view your credit report for "free". It's pure bullshit. The fact of the matter is that there is ONLY ONE legitimate website where you can view your credit report for actually free without a pre-payment or subscription to anything. You can only do it once a year but you don't need a service with a butt-ugly scam-artist pasty faced son of a bitch no-talent actor bobbling his head back and forth looking cute and funny and trustworthy. But don't take my word for it, check out the government's view, and how to do this without paying anybody anything. And then we can hope and pray that whoever that asshole bastard moron singing the scam song is, never finds a way back in front of a camera again and ends up working in some factory in Mexico. Or jail.

And did you ever get an email or a search result telling you how you can purchase a list of people the government owes money to? I haven't but I've heard the complaint. The fact is (as the link will tell you) "there is no governmentwide, centralized information service or database on how unclaimed government assets may be obtained. Each individual federal agency maintains its own records." But the larger point is that you don't have to engage a service to send you the information. Each state runs it's own website for unclaimed property and/or funds. Here's some general info from the government. On a related note, you also don't have to pay anybody to get a list of available government grants. I don't have the website right now, but you can get that info - free - from the government itself.

You should maybe think about making a permanent bookmark for these guys. I WUV these guys even more than I wuv you. Everything that's out there trying to steal your money - even stuff your sophisticated know-it-all brother-in-law never heard of - is listed here. And if it isn't it will be. This is a website worthy of your time!

Here's a link to find out how safe your bank is. In fact, while your at it, that whole website is a gold mine of information to help you make the most of your money.

And then, after you've made or saved or didn't waste a million because of me just now and send me 10%, you can go here and figure your dollars and cents income from your investments or calculate your margin for your business or any host of other financial figures you had no idea how to do before I just showed you. Just now.

I await your free-will offering for all this work. The preceding announcement is made in the name of the Bernard L. Madoff Benevolent Society.

Next post is about junkyards. Go figure.

Just A Moment

I don't know why it's important for me to save old things. I don't know why it's equally important to me that old things aren't forgotten. You could put it all off to the aging process but that's not really it. If that was all it was then anything I would care about saving would be things that happened only in my life. But that's not it. I wasn't alive in 1898, yet I have ten actual copies of the Chicago Tribune from that year among the things in my closet. It's bigger than just nostalgia for things inside the parameters of my little life. I have this obsessive need to have YOU appreciate old stuff. And to not forget it.

I'm not going to bother you with links, but around the time of 9/11 The Smithsonian or the Library of Congress started something called "The American Memory." If ever you want to hear and see some neat stuff there's something to browse at one rainy day. Anyway there's that.

I worry sometimes that we are so into all the new things, so curious about what's next, so enamored of what you can tell me now, that we forget that there were actual legitimate lives and times before us. I guess in the mix and rush of things, that's what I think about. It's probably stupid.

But for those of you who were with me on the Vincenzo blog, you may remember a thing I used to say about "being nostalgic for a time you didn't live in." I'm there tonight. Don't know why. But I also don't want to forget anything.

I don't want to forget anything. I mean from ever.

The Death Of Falstaff - Henry 5

Count the Black Dots

Quiz

Don't let the fact that Putin looks like he's two vodkas away from being that toothless foreigner begging for change on the corner influence you. We already know Rush is working on his buzz.

But one of these guys is sure we're finished. One of them is happy to see the country stumble. Ah but which one am I talking about? This is your challenge today.

Which is actually the yammering pustule?

Actually it's both.

Vladimir Putin's guy is convinced that because there are so many gays in America we are facing the end of our era of power and prestige.

Rush Limbaugh sees the same thing, if for different purposes.

Limbaugh is convinced we're heading down the path to Marxism, so Putin should shut up since he's about ready to win the game. Amiright?

Strange days indeed.

Raising A Fallen Flag

In the sometimes ultra-geeky nomenclature of train people (not model train people but real live train people) railroad companies that no longer exist are called "fallen flags". That's actually a pretty cool term for defunct railroads, now that I think about it. Anyway the thing is - getting back to the Christmas train - I've placed the scene in a specific era (post WWI, 1919 to be exact) and in a specific place (small town Midwest, ostensibly west or north western Illinois). So there's no Amtrak and the passenger cars would have to probably be early 20th century Pullmans.

Just a basic search on the inter-tubes revealed a tantalizing option which I grabbed right from the tick. We will be using a "fallen flag" known as the Chicago Great Western railroad company. Here's the route. Are miniaturists and model train people crazy/obsessed? Why yes... yes we are.

Now that we have that all we have to figure out is what a passenger train from what was known as the "Corn Belt Route" would look like. What KIND - and more specifically what year's model - of passenger car would they have and what color would they be? For that (are you ready for this?) you need to go here and also get this.

Well you can get Pullman cars from the era. Trouble is in real life they were mostly repainted for whatever line they were used by. So a Pullman car that comes out of the box looking like this...

Has to first be painted over (yes they have bottles of paint called "Pullman Green" - no kidding) so you have a blank slate...

And since you've got the thing dismantled you may as well paint and populate the inside no? Of course they had maroon carpets... I mean you knew that right?

But then comes the ultimate. There's actually a guy in Kansas who will do custom decals of "fallen flags" for people as crazy as me. For $13 I got a whole sheet of authentic lettering and logos from the era. And it ends up looking like this (including all the painting and interior stuff added in)...

Bingo. A repainted Pullman circa 1919 as part of the Chicago Great Western railway. Complete with stuff inside to good detail even though people aren't going to but barely notice when it is operational. And so voila!

Anybody see a quarter I lost?