Freelance 2011

[faraway]

Well, the mill is a nice model but it does not fit so well into the low profile buildings in southern LA. The mill is a typical Vernon structure. Clean, modern and dominating.
I came back to a structure I got aware of by looking at the maps of the old patch in south LA and following the tracks at that time. That lead to a complex between Mill, Mateo, Conwey and 6.th St. It was very well rail services.
http://maps.google.de/maps?q=vernon+cali...21&vpsrc=6
The semi modern structure at Conway Pl. made of concrete and brick grabbed my attention. I did see that kind of models on lots of layouts but never had one on mine.

This is the current status. I swapped the sides and put the original right curved side with the railroad loading gates on the left side to my track.


ps. The mill is still "at" the layout but instead of being on it is now under the layout

[faraway]

The structure is making nice progress. It fits very well into the scenery.

[Harry]

oh man Reinhard,

[faraway]

I think I need a little help with the loading gates of my new building.
There are seven sections. Each one is closed with an iron construction with glass in the upper half and closed in the lower half. The floor looks like cement or concrete and the edge is iron protected (the iron has some rust).

Is that iron construction the original loading dock gate? How come the gates are so wide? They are much wider than modern loading docks. The iron protected edge of each gate runs over the full length. I take that as an indicator for so unusual wide loading gates.

An alternative might be: The iron construction are windows newly installed for the movie studios. The original gates have been much a) simpler b) smaller.

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@Harry, the mill was simply a foreign object in the south LA neighborhood. If I could do a panorama photo you could see how strange that white block looked between the other buildings. However it was great fun to build it. I do not regret I built it.

[FCIN]

Reinhard;

Sure hated to see the General Mills facility go, but I understand what you mean by it just not fitting in to the area your layout is based upon. Hang on to it though - you never know...

[Tyson Rayles]

Wow, all that work then you take it off? I hope you can use the mill at some future point. That said the new building is looking right at home there.

[faraway]

Here we go. That one fits the neighborhood.


Little more than one week left until my active office season starts again.
This last freelance slab building http://i966.photobucket.com/albums/ae149...1313769269 on my layout should be replaced with some prototypical. This wonderful structure and it's neighbor http://maps.google.de/maps?q=vernon+cali...04,,0,6.49 might be the right replacement It could form a short stub road ending at the tracks.

[Russ Bellinis]

Reinhard, I'm not sure why they have such odd loading gates on that building. Most loading docks would have the roll up doors like you did on your building. The only reason that I can think of is that different size rail cars may have different door spacing, so they made the door wide enough to accommodate different cars.

[lajry]

Reinhard and Russ
It seems that if those kind of doors are on that structure there would be a dock for unloading boxcars. That way door spacing wouldn't matter nor how the boxcar doors match up to to structure doors.

[faraway]

Andy, Russ, is it not very unusual to have the seven loading docks done that way? I assume the doors are folding doors folded to the sides when open. The other unusual thing are all the glass panes in the doors. It is very unusual in the LA area to have so much light in a loading area.
Do you have any idea what has been in that building before the movies studio moved in? It must have been a very special industry.

ps. Do you have a idea how to make a model of that doors (with my hands and eyes!)? Can we get a good photo of a door and put a printout on the model? The yard in front of the doors looks like fenced property.

[Russ Bellinis]

I didn't realize it was a movie studio. They may have extra large doors to get props in. Some of their props are very large. They may have eliminated normal doors and enlarged the doorways to make them bigger. I'm pretty sure the doors to that dock are opened accordion style to the side, but they might be extra large roll up doors.

[faraway]

...Little more than one week left until my active office season starts again....

Well that week is over but it did not run like planned. My wife's Windows PC was dead last Sunday morning. I could only remove the harddisk, attach it temporary to my PC and copy the content to my PC. The first plan was to buy a new one and it would take me one or two days to get it setup again.
Because my wife did learn so fast the new Apple iPad and here new iPhone I got the idea she might be more happy with a iMac. We went to the next Apple retailer on Monday morning and she got a presentation. She agreed to get one but asked me about my PC. If she needs to learn everything new how about me? Ok, I got another iMac. She demanded also a professional data backup solution to ensure her next dead PC can be handled more elegant. So we ordered a Time Capsule online (a backup hard disk, WiFi router and print server nicely integrated into the iMac software to tae an incremental backup hourly).
The Monday , Tuesday and Wednesday went by setting up both iMac. That is a very slow process if you sit the first time in your life in front of a iMac... The Time Capsule arrived on Thursday and the Thursday and Friday were busy with setting up the new network. The IBM Thinkpad gave me a hard time until it was integrated into the Apple WiFi network. The authorization did not match for some time. In parallel did Apple release the IOS Version 5 and a OS X Update on late Wednesday and I had to update the iPod, iPad and two iPhone and both new installed iMac.
Results:
1. All home and mobile computers back to normal work but the layout is totally untouched since one week and I return to work on Monday.
2. Model railroad will progress very slowly over the new six month parallel to my work. But in general that's it for freelance 2011. Let's see how freelance 2012 will be
3. I became an Apple fan. It is a beautiful system (hard and software) with a lot of elegant solutions.



ps. I did not find a way to scale down the photo with the tools supplied with the iMac. Another apple topic I have to look into....
pps. Thanks to Andy. He pointed me to Picasa and I could scale the photo down to 1024*768 pixel. Looks like Photobucket has that feature online too.

[faraway]

I thought it would be a good time to save some "check point" photos. Only the lamps over the layout have been switched on, no flash light was used and all photos are made from my chair as I do usually sit in front of my layout and operate it.

http://s966.photobucket.com/albums/ae149...ct%202011/

[Russ Bellinis]

Reinhard, it looks just like South Central Los Angeles and Vernon!

[SSWUPinSA]

Hey Reinhard,

Man...I've been away and oh boy your stuff is looking good as always... I need to get motivated again... Also I need to start with some poles and details and add some life to the layout. I just learn all the time from you... AWESOME stuff!!