Re: Speaking of the Arkansas Valley Smelter

Posted by John Greenly on Oct 24, 2017; 6:00pm
URL: http://c-sng-discussion-forum.254.s1.nabble.com/Speaking-of-the-Arkansas-Valley-Smelter-tp9823p9840.html

Thanks, SP for your knowledgeable perspective on this.  It certainly seemed to me that those giant false fronts were a brave architectural Statement- with a capital S!  

Getting this back to South Park or C&S modeling, I really appreciate Keith's little building, because in pictures of layouts I have seen there doesn't seem to be very much of this taming-the-wilderness aesthetic being featured.  Of course the early locomotives were a statement of this sort as well, with their majestic stacks, clean lines, shiny fittings and beaded domes.  I'd love to see more of the Victorian building decorations as well, though modeling a house such as Chris showed would be a virtuoso project!  

That reminds me, if I have a layout someday it will probably not have a town big enough to have an Opera House, but somewhere there will certainly be posted a playbill for visiting performers, like a Shakespearean actor to declaim Hamlet's soliloquy, or a recital by the great tenor Enrico Caruso, who  did tour the West- he was in San Francisco in 1906 and lived through the great earthquake and fire.

That would be a great scene to model- a special train with the fanciest parlor car for the great man, crowds waving along the way.

Cheers,
John