- Madawaska Falls -

Occupying almost 25 square feet, Madawaska Falls is the largest city on the Prescott & Madawaska. If you read Model Railroader magazine, you might be interested to know that this portion of the city was inspired by an article that appeared in the July 1992 edition of Model Railroader although the building names have been changed to reflect those of our family members (mostly our kids).

Here we see a mighty FA-2/B combo rumbing across the Madawaska river bridge in downtown Madawaska Falls:
Downtown Madawaska Falls

As with most of the Prescott and Madawaska, this scene needs finishing but it's almost there. The J. Robert Manufacturing Co. was built from the DPM 301 series of modular components with a few accessories such as the Campbell #255 brass lamp shades and Woodland Scenics dry rub-on transfers. The building name was applied by using 36 point Helvetica Letraset lettering with hand painted Polly S shadows.

"Annies Bar" started life as a DPM Kelly's Saloon kit with various additions such as the exposed staircase (made from Evergreen styrene) and the dry rub-on transfers. Next to the J. Robert building is the L.M. Martin Electrical Co. - another DPM kit, this one is the B. Moores Catalog Showroom.

The hardware store behind "Annies" is a Magnuson kit - again heavily customized. On the extreme right, nearest the camera is "Jan's Diner". As you can see, the owners of the building are renovating right now and hope to have all the window panes in before the snow flies 'cause it get cold here in the winter months!

J. Robert building

The entire city of Madawaska Falls is built on a plywood base (roughly 5ft x 5ft) mounted on top of my L-girder support system with 'Plaster of Paris' streets and sidewalks.

Here is a roof-top view of the J. Robert building. Items of note are the hand-painted Coke sign, the free-lanced skylights made from the roof of a Concor Superior Bakery kit and the roof access structure. I got the idea for the "Shamrock" advertisement from a painted sign on the side of a building I saw while on vacation one year in St. John, New Brunswick, Canada.

The yellow building on the right of the shot has another laser printed sign, but this time I outlined it in red (with a brush and a steady hand) to make it jump out. I tried over 200 fonts before I got one that was close to the one Heinz Co. use. By the way, the yellow building was made from a DPM "Laube's Linen Mill" kit with all four walls stacked on top of one another for the front and Holgate and Reynolds covered styrene for the sides. A scratch built chimney stack and water tower complete this 5-storey brick monster.

This scene really needs finishing with more buildings and a sky.

 

Photograph of the Lion gasoline filling station Here is one of the many scratch built structures that populate the P&M. I sometimes wonder if the P&Ms entire reason for existence is to support my scratch built buildings! The "Lion Gas" filling station was inspired by a similar gem on George Sellios' Franklin and South Manchester. As you will see, I experimented a bit with construction technique on this building. The "wooden" siding is actually Evergreen styrene 1x10" scale strips on top of 0.020" styrene sheet (very painstaking!). The roof material is plain 0.005" photocopy paper cut into strips or diamond shingles as required. The Lion gas sign was cut from a ceramic plate magazine flyer with a laser printed name courtesy of my computer and CorelDraw! 5.0. The "Pears" and "Conoco" signs in the background were made in much the same way. If you have a computer, check out the fonts in CorelDraw - some are really eye-catching. I think that making your own signs is a nice way to combine two hobbies.

Photograph of the Lion gasoline filling station
Here's another shot of the Lion Gas station.

The building has a balsa wood chimney covered with Holgate and Reynolds brick veneer sheet and uses #5060 Grandt line windows with #5152 upper porch trim.

The canopy was constructed from 0.020" Evergreen novelty siding and the gas pumps are from a company called TSC (The Structure Company) Pump Island, #1516. I used a Campbell #255 lamp over the side garage. Also, I used some 0.110" OD styrene for the stove pipe chimney. The deflector was made from a Concor Superior Bakery kit lamp shade. I will let you guess where the lightening arresters came from...

This compact little building took me about three months of evenings and weekends to complete (not every day though). As if that weren't enough, I have two others under construction!

I have kept a complete log of the detailed construction of this and all my buildings so if you would like complete details, feel free to e-mail me. Click on this link to visit the next stop on our guided tour of the Prescott and Madawaska.

I would interested in exchanging a few ideas with you. Feel free to e-mail me at: .

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All photographs and content © copyright 1996-2003, Chris Butler - All Rights Reserved
Last updated: December 2003.