Southern California '20s and '30s Modular Group.

Nice pictures and good to see a layout from that era that is not a caricature.

Fantastic pictures of a fantastic model. The street trackage is particularly good. Do you know how they got the pavement between the rails to look so prototypical?

No. I don't. But the guy who did those modules is a friend of mine and I can ask him if you'd like -and post his answer (if any) here.

That individual is an outstanding modeler, BTW, and his Packard Dealership model has an interesting backstory: Several years ago he found an old building in Claremont CA (his home town) which was being rebuilt into a frou-frou botique and thought to himself "That's an original 1930s California Art Deco building if ever I've seen one" and decided to model it on the spot. He had no idea what the building had been used for back then, but thought it looked as if it might have been a car dealership of some kind, and chose to make it a Packard dealership at random.

In chapter two, a couple of years later on, his town was holding an anniversary (?) celebration and asked him to display his module there. He did so, and one guy observing the module said "Oh, wow! I remember that building from back when I was a kid!"

"Was it by any chance a car dealership?" asked our protagonist.

"Why yes!" says the guy.

"And do you remember what kind of cars they sold?" says our boy.

"No", comes the answer; but I'll bet my dad does. He grew up in this town."

So a couple of days later there comes a phone call from a very elderly gent who says "My son told me that you wanted to know what sort of car dealership used to be in that building. That was the local Packard dealership."

Serendipity.

~Pete

On 02/11/2011 8:37 PM, Special Agent Melvin Purvis wrote: [...]

Agreed, the roads are very well done. Just looking at them, I'd say the main trick is the colour. Asphalt roads aren't black. The gravel roads by the farm and the grain elevator are superb: looks like there was recent rain!

Studying at the pictures again, two things stand out. First, the arrangement and relative sizes of the buildings, the roads, the open spaces. Everything is in proportion, you have to make a conscious effort to realise that pretty well everything selectively compressed.

Second, the overall colour scheme. There are few pure bright colours (on a few vehicles, etc), the buildings and the landscape share the same subdued palette, there are no shiny surfaces in strange places, saturation (colour intensity) is low, textures are subtle.

Very well done, worth careful study. Pete, kindly convey my compliments to the builder(s).

HTH Wolf K.

I was particularly taken by the fallen branch across the dirt road near the grain elevator.

Note that you can tell it's been down for several days because the leaves are starting to turn brown...

Somebody put some thought into that, and it's something I've never seen modeled before.

~Pete