"Girl at the top of the stairs" a rebuilt pola building

[ttrigg]

Nice job. Thanks for the share.

[chocho willy]

One of my first rebuilds I started after gathering all the broken building parts in the yard from the hurricane was my old Johnson Dry Goods pola building. From the factory the building was blue but I was making it something that I knew which was Dunn Hardware. It was a local store in town that had roots back to 1905. Dunn Hardware also had a toy section in it and was the first place I became exposed to G scale, I wound up doing displays, buildings and repairing g scale trains for them. So with that being said I painted the building green which you can see with blue peaking through from underneath. The hurricane came and went in 2004 and I was just getting around to this 2 years ago, so the weathering is by nature. Looking at the building and the green paint pealing, windows missing or broken I decided to make the build into a much needed hotel. On the top floor where there was 2 windows in the front I made 1 into a door, and having broken parts from Wells Fargo building added a porch with railing. With 1 end missing the railing I added a piece of new styrene to it and painted it to look like new unpainted wood, think some one was fighting over the young lady, that is how it got broken. As a matter of fact the old guy up there (I like to call him the colonel) is trying to explain why he was talking to the girl on the stairs to his wife.  Now having looks of a pretty run down place I decided to add a little money maker in the rear upstairs. It has long been rumored that red light districts came into being with early trains. Kind of like sailors and girls in every port and with trains having to stop every 10 to 15 miles to take on water there was a lot of ports. In order to find these missing conductors, etc. it was required that they carry their lantern and hang it outside the door so they could be found when time to leave. Guess the whistles weren't very loud, I think this is sounding like an old wives tail, but if you doubt it just Google it. I lit every thing with LED's off of 2 dry cell batteries with a switch under the roof edge. Lasts for ever. lettering was from a sign shop and lights were hand made. Since making this and a few others I have gotten more into outdoor solar yard lights and now use them to light my buildings.