AC&Y - Ohio's Road of Service

[CRL]

Dirt & dust wait on no man. 😎

[Bob]

This building is so impressive!  Super work.

[SAH]

General Tire reached a milestone today.  With the exception of the ornamentation crown above the main entrance all the coping, cornice and such is installed.


I'm undecided about which logo to mount at the top of the building.  Here's a great low sun angle photo, morning in this case.  Strikers in 1946, or so the caption said.


Some candidates:  At left is the one in the picture.  The snow tire ad caption says 1957.  The boring GT logo that I remember is at the bottom.  I'm modeling 1960 +/- but I've not seen a photo that verifies the snow tire ad logo was ever on the building.  No rush on this so I'll wait to see what turns up.  I lean toward the one in the photo.


If nothing else this project has proven that I can scratchbuild 3-D models using paper as the building stock, something I've always wanted to try.  Praises to my new best modeling buddy, the computer driven x-y cutter.  And it's nice to know this old dog can still hunt.  Oh, and the DPM parts taped together represent the old admin building.  Ed isn't the only one who got a mini table saw for Christmas.  The bottom row of windows is partially below grade.  The scenery base is 5/8" pink foam.  I have a plan.  We'll see how it turns out.

[Ed Kapuscinski]

That's gorgeous man. Damn.

[CR4100]

Absolutely stunning work. It's a great example of how N scale allows large industries to be modeled without massive compression.

[Cajonpassfan]

Hmmm... I,Ike the older one better.
This, about 1980.
The building looks great! Will there be a trackside dock?
Otto K.

[Chris333]

To be fair the real building was pretty big. That loading dock you see is on the far left.

[Chris333]

Plus Steve is modeling a reverse image of the real building to fit his layout. So these are the 2 buildings he's making.

[Philip H]

I'm always partial to logos associated with scantily clad girls after I fish!

And we will see this written up in RMC when exactly?

[wcfn100]

Some logos here.

https://logos.fandom.com/wiki/General_Tire



Jason

[SAH]

Thanks guys.  Yes there will be a loading dock, but given the temporary nature of the layout (not to mention the temporary nature of our living arrangement) I'll wait on the final building siting before I build it.

I have been trying every search combination I could think of, without luck, to unearth the logo timeline info on the site Jason posted.  Thank you many times over.

My oh my.  WHERE did you find the aerial photo Chris!!!!!!!  It shows the version of the complex I intend to build.  1950's perhaps.  The original plant is to the left of the red outline in the mirrored photo of Chris's second post.  The addition of two levels of smaller windows have not yet been added.  You can see them in the photo Otto attached.  In the last model photo of my post you can see how the original plant will be modeled along the backdrop, then a spur to the original powerhouse.  Beyond the powerhouse spur the last addition will be modeled in a truncated form.  That brick is a buff color.  The original plant is a dirty red/brown.  Some contrivances will be necessary to get the car spots I want but overall it should be recognizable to someone familiar with the prototype.

The photo also shows the best in service view of the Goodyear coal storage yard I have seen to date.  Coal was off loaded and stored to guard against strike action, at the mines I presume.  As it was described to me, the AC&Y would push loaded hoppers onto the storage track.  They'd open the hopper doors and pull the cars out of the yard, emptying them as they went.  Before the tracks were too deeply buried a rail crane would go in, hook onto the the track a section at a time and lift it out of the coal, back up and do it again to the next section until the spur track was exposed.  Push in another string of hoppers and repeat.  By the time they finished, a pile of coal following the track would result.  I'm modeling the operation as a simple spur with non-operating turnouts to suggest more storage tracks.  It's shown in one of my early post photos.

Thanks for the info guys.  The power of The Railwire in action.

[Chris333]

The pic I posted is 1952 from the USGS Earth Explorer. Here is 1957 showing the construction of the freeway:

[Chris333]

BTW these are heavily cropped and reduced photos 

https://earthexplorer.usgs.gov/

You have to create an account to use it. Had to search "east Akron" instead of just Akron.

[SAH]

More progress with the Old Admin building.  Here's the tub that sits in the foam base, simulating a basement level.


Some of the basement windows are not centered in the light wells.  Off by just a bit due to errors in hand cutting the 50 mill board.  It more of less works.  Unless I point the error out it will probably not be noticed considering everything else that will be going on in this scene.


The cutter is useful for making masks for those pesky DPM windows.  Stick glue them in place after painting the window frame color, paint the brick color and poke the masks from the back to pop them out.


And then we come to brick mortar.  A good question raised by @Bob in this thread,  https://www.therailwire.net/forum/index.php?topic=48144.0 , yielded some useful tips before the thread went sideways.  I had the same question:  Are the mortar lines noticeable in N scale?  I liked David's suggestion to use gouache so I started experimenting.


There a lot of different combinations on display, plus some after application treatment resulting in varying degrees of success.  My final judgement is that I don't care for the mortar lines in this setting.  I think the printed brick on the factory spoils the 3-D model mortar line effect.  The Old Admin building would become very white.  The mortar lines are not noticeable at all in the few close in Old Admin building photos I have.  Brushing the brick with shades of gray color chalk to highlight the brick texture might be a better choice.  The two bays on the left side of the sample were done that way.  I need some more practice to hone my technique before I say I'm ready.


I had some guests mark up for the Spur 4 job last Sunday.  One of my Wife's school roommates and her family came over for dinner.  Spur 4 was the entertainment between dinner and dessert.  I gave the guys a pick-up and set-out list, showed them how to uncouple the cars, how to use the run around track and the throttle (DC, so very simple) and let them have at it.  45 minutes later the work was complete with smiles to prove it.  The brothers argued as brothers will do but it was fun to watch the thought process unfold and to see Spur 4 come to life.  The biggest surprise was that it ran pretty well.

[CRL]

Don’t forget to put the model railroad layout in that basement.