Winter 2020 Self Isolation 1:25 Scale Diorama Project with some Fort William and Port Arthur History

Finally after many months I've put together a completely different kind of post.  This is my COVID-19 isolation project....no I don't have it, just being careful and smart.  We all know we're in this together and are trying to occupy our time doing what we enjoy the most.

Before I show you the project photos, there is a little history I want to talk about here.

Years back there used to be an oil refinery on McKellar Island that some of us may remember as The Husky Oil Refinery, but before that, and one of the photos will explain, the refinery was called Riverlake Oil Refinery.  There is history about that on the Internet, but the name that I was drawn to was Riverlake Oil, or "RO".  In the 1950's there was a sign in the pit area at the old Canadian Lakehead Exhibition race track that just read "RO".  Riverlake Oil was run by McEwen Fuels Petroleum Distributors in the 1950s until Riverlake was taken over by Husky.
This peaked my interest, and so I began a research project which culminated in building an old service station model in 1:25 scale of a Riverlake Oil station which actually never existed.
Interested yet?  Well, to add to the fictitious service station I also added a "What If" to the project.  "What if" the Lakehead Stock Car Club would have bought that old station and converted it into a LSCC Clubhouse.
So that's it.  Over the last 5 months I built the scale building and as many of the local race cars from the 1950s that would fit on the diorama.  There are quite a few photos and at the end there are pictures of the models by themselves with a corresponding photo of the real jalopy that raced here at the CLE in the 1950's.  I tried to create as much realism as possible.  A neighbor and good friend of mine Karl Schmidt supplied me with all the scale lumber that I needed, as he used to have a similar scale outside model railroad.

We start off with what I think are the most realistic two photos in the group, and the others photos are how the project was put together.  Also you can click on each picture in this entire post to enlarge screen size.

 All the posters and wall hangings are computer generated and miniaturized, and all the license plates are Ontario plates and all before 1956.

Here is a little write-up on the Riverlake - Husky thing that may be interesting to you, as well as all the appropriate logos.

 

This first photo shows the front of the RO service station with worn signage, including a nice old Ford V8 sign, some beat up old gas pumps, a coke machine and one guy carrying an old fuel container and another guy changing the tire on Tom Dow's car, as well as a local Bourke's Drug Store sign on the side of the building which looks painted and aged.  I tried to make everything look very busy.

Now back to basics - The initial construction was done using scale rough ceder lumber such as 2 x 4's,  2 x 6's, beams and ship lap lumber.  The building was finished first, then mounted on a base to do the scenery, using screened beach sand and other model railroad greenery, flowers weeds etc.

The first thing I totally completed right up to weathering was the outhouse.  It was a practice project that I started before I began the initial garage building.  To get the wood to instantly look old, I used a bottle of water with 1 tbsp of India ink.  after it dried it look just like barn board.

Here it's starting to look old.  The tiny hinges about 1/2 the size of my baby finger I found on Amazon and they actually came from Holland....free shipped and about $5. for more than I needed.
This is the rear of the building with a little hatch to access the attic, and scrap-booking corrugated paper painted silver and weathered to look like a tin roof overhang.

Here's how the front looked with the weathered RO signs and the "new" Lakehead Stock Car Club sign.  No gas pumps were done yet.

 

The weathering was almost completed here and the wooden flooring is computer generated from real old flooring then printed out on satin photo paper.

Many things can't be bought or are too costly...so making this little pepsi cooler was the best way.  3 sides computer generated printed on photo paper then glued to a wooden block...pretty convincing I think.  LOL


Here, a two inch long Go Kart on a working stand....many of the stock car jockeys from the 1950s also raced their Go Karts at the Intercity Parking lot
Also I'm making little shelving, workbenches etc out of light balsa wood and trying to be creative with old paint cans and oil cans.  Also, a junkyard for the rear of the building made up of many old model car parts, glued together, rusted out and weathered.  You will see more when everything is installed in the Clubhouse.                                       

Tiny Go Kart on a work stand with a full size pencil beside it.

Here's a model of Don Marsh's car with a compressor and the finished shelf at the broken window.

Bench Detail is shown in these two next photos.  Much of the detail is available in different model kits but adding your own finer detail such as signage, fan belts, oil cans extra engines adds more and more to the detail.








Everything in model kits are basically just white, so everything has to be painted.  I use a huge lighted magnifying glass to the detail.
The Oxy-Acetylene tanks come in kits but have to be painted and detailed.  Fine red and green wire make the hoses.  The wood stove is made from a wooden ball and a pop cap plus small wood pieces and the chimney is a bendy straw.





This is the more detailed back of the building with everything now installed including the outhouse, signs, pop crates, trees bushes and even some racoons in the garbage cans.

These next two photos show the detail local Coca Cola sign...computer generated and thinned out to tissue paper consistency.  Then glued to the shiplap.

This one shows some outside detail including a hydro meter and tap and garden hose.  The next few shows the interior in its final stages with everything in place.  Everything is glued in except the vehicles.  They can easily be changed around.

 There are a number of Ontario era perfect license plates on both of the doors that swing out like barn doors.








Here's a full overhead shot....

 These last three collage photographs show each of the models in 1:25 scale on either side of an actual photo of the real cars

I hope you enjoyed all the photographs.
Before ending this post, Rosemary and I would like to thank all our front line workers including both my daughters-in-law doing their best looking after all of us during these difficult times.  We must keep our social distancing to protect us and our loved ones during the COVID-19 Pandemic.
Take good care of yourselves and anyone else that you can.  We WILL get through this together.  Dave

Old Cars, A Great Find, Go Karts, and Some Surprises in Our Home Towns of Fort William and Port Arthur

   We'll start off this post in Kam Motors used car lot in about 1939.  Here is my father Jonnie Cano in the front trying to look cool sitting on the fender of a who knows what, with a couple of co-workers taking a break from filling oil bottles or replacing a windshield on an old Chevy or Oldsmobile.  It looks to be a mild winter day.
   The "Kam Motors" proof is the portion of the sign in red and shown close up after.  Obviously the houses are no longer there as that whole area to the lane way ended up being a car lot in the day.
I always say it, but it is a reminder to click on every photo once or twice to enlarge.

 

Here's an old circa 1950 Kam Motors brochure showing where the lettering was at the top of the building front, and a fairly current photo of the same building on Leith St. today.

We've talked about Dinty's many times in the past on this blog site and of course you know by now if you are a reader of this blog how Gordie Crompton came to use the word Dinty's.
Below we have more to add to the story beginning with Dinty's Sea View Motel....The Sea View still exists as shown in the following photo but not called Dinty's.

We talked about how Gordie was offered a neon sign from a sign company left over from an unpaid customer.  It didn't have Gordie's name on it but had the word "Dinty's" on it and he ended up taking it, then obviously making some of his future business ventures called Dinty's.
Below is a photo of #57 Jalopy Stock Car built by the Provincial Paper Mill who actually hired a guy named Barry Kettering to drive it.....pay attention now because many of HR&J's stories are inter-twined.  The race car is parked on Cumberland St., right in front of the first Dinty's (red square around the sign).....and you know later that Gordie ran a few KFC's (Kentucky Fried Chicken) places after the Dinty's ones finally closed.
Today's KFC is two properties just to the left of the original one.  When you do research you have to look hard at old photos....the backgrounds tell many other stories.
There are two different photos here to see the original neon Dinty's sign.  The person standing and the kid in the car are unknown.  If anyone recognizes them, please let me know.

 

Here you can read Dinty's very well....

 In this photo...car U2 with well known American driver Dean Harrington in the foreground, Dinty's is the building on the left with the upright facade, and the building on the right was a McEwen Husky Fuel depot then.  That building still exists today and the original Dinty's is now an empty lot.

This is how the property looks today...the empty lot was Dinty's and as previosly noted, the KFC is two properties to the north of the original.

.....the building on the right was Ron Wilson's Lakehead Speed and Custom shop in the 1960s.

Here's a truly historic then and now.  The then photo of course are those great jalopy stock cars that we write about from the 1950's kicking up dirt along the backstretch of the old CLE racetrack.(I can name them all.)  Behind the race cars is a tall fence to keep out freebee onlookers.  Behind that is the old bus turn around between Fort William and Port Arthur remembering at one time one would have to change buses to go to Port Arthur or back to Fort William.....
At that same time the Electric brill buses existed which powered themselves from the overhead trolley lines.
The bottom photo is taken basically in the same location as the one above it.....that corner of the CLE grounds of course is paved now and is to the east of the now damaged golf dome....all at the corner of Northern Ave and Fort William Road.

Here is some 1950's memorabilia from the Lakehead Stock Car Club days(human and other..LOL)...The handsome guy on the left is Merv Dove and if you remember, he ran the famous white #31 Maple Leaf Service car in the 1950's, was more than once or twice voted The Most Gentlemanly Driver at the CLE and later became one of the top flagmen at Riverview Raceways....A guy that could jump higher than a car while waving the checkered flag.  Merv is wearing his original jacket from the day...and to the right is a closeup of the Lakehead Stock Car Club logo and a closeup of Merv's crest.

Below are samples of the club cards from the actual Lakehead Stock Car Racing Association from 1957...the white card being the driver's card and the red being the pit crew's card.  The first card is circa 1953 and actually called the event a Jalopy Race.  The light blue one is from 1963 and was likely one of the last racing cards from the CLE days.

GO KARTS....those little 4 wheel powerhouses that started something which was considered a fad in the late 1950s and has continued over time to be an important tool in race car driver training.
Well, yes we did have go karts in those days and yours truly had one too...already written about in this blog, but most people don't remember guys racing them in the Sears parking lot in the day.  Parking lot racing ended with businesses having to kick everyone off their property because of insurance issues....they didn't want the liability of someone getting seriously hurt and making a claim against the businesses or company's that had large paved parking areas.  After that, specific Go Kart tracks had to be built designed for their type of racing and had to carry some serious liability insurance.  The last parking lot organized racing was in the late 1970's at K-Mart on Arthur St.

I don't know the source of these following photos, but they are truly incredible.  In the Go Kart below is none other than Ross "Pappy" Fowler well known in the 1950's for his #10 Jalopy Stock Car and racing at the old CLE grounds.  These photos were all taken at the Intercity Plaza parking lot in the early 1960's.  Most of the faces I don't recognize, so if you know anyone else in the photos please let me know.

Ross "Pappy" Fowler #10 CLE

I don't know for sure but it looks like it could be Barry Kettering on the far left....he used to wear that type of hat.  Here the photo faces north and you can see the northern end of the Intercity Plaza property showing the bank and the life insurance company....to the left would have been Loblaws Grocery Store where I worked in high school.

My son Darren at K-Mart 1980

Pappy Fowler here again....and also the south end of the plaza...

The last part of this post is a memory of Red Top Cabs.  I've had a large door decal around my house for years and here it is along side one of their business cards

Here is where Red Top Cabs was in the day on Simpson Street......Hope you enjoyed this post and always remember you can make comments....it's easier than you think.  Thanks for watching....Dave