Cornering the Scene

 It has taken me over 6 months to finally complete the far corner section of the layout where the Newtown road bridge stands and leads out to King street. 

Above: Looking south along the Newtown bridge. Early afternoon on a cloudy day

Concept and ideas

I basically started with a blank canvas but needed tall buildings or structures to fill in as much as the sky as possible. 

As this was a retail strip a set of shops rather than a factory or industry was needed and I wanted the illusion of the tram going out towards the horizon.

Right: This is a photo of the area to be modelled with the tram tracks along the street yet to be paved.

Buildings used:

I had a couple of buildings that I had built and used from my previous layout Bilby beach, a pub and I thought I could use that instead of selling it or discarding it. Rather than use the front I placed it with the rear facing towards the front of the layout so that I could include a painted advertising (homemade decal) on the rear. 

The other building I had was the Heljan drug store. I really like the Heljan Court House Square Series. These buildings although aimed for the US market are really good as early century Australian city buildings with a few modifications such as excluding the external fire stairs and repainting as well as changing the store type. Mine will be a typical corner store. 

I found ideas from Trove to search for corner stores that were typically seen around inner city Sydney before the advent of supermarkets. 

Other buildings used was to make another art deco apartments which I purchased from the Epping Swap and Sell meet some years back. I had used part of the building for another section of the layout so this was the remaining section. I really like the use of the bay windows so I wanted to have this feature stand out in the layout. 

 

The final touches to the scene was to add lights and billboards. To Australianise the signs I used the Blairline "Make your own sign"to make a Penfolds Wine sign. The same that use to sit on top of the buildings across from Taylor Square along Oxford street https://www.flickr.com/photos/29029178@N03/31052122238 

And Finally to give it more attention I decided to purchase one of the Miller Engineering animated billboards and try to choose a billboard that would of appeared in Australian cities. I chose the ESSO "Tiger in your tank" 

Here is the animated night scene