With the movie theater (walk in or drive in) you can set the era by selecting what movie is on the marquee. On my theater, the movie is “The Quiet Man” with John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara. That would set the date to sometime in 1952 or early 1953. You could have a gas station with a full service crew working on a 1950’s car. Since I was not around then, I am not positive, but I believe many homes were heated with coal, so there should be some sort of storage facility for it. You could build woodsheds for the homes that were heated with wood, too. Either of those would depend upon climate and region. If in a region where coal was used for heating, you could also have a coal dealer on your layout.
When I was a small kid around 1950, I remember sitting beside the railroad track and watching a group of black men, all with long metal poles. And they would come to a section of track, line up on one side… place the ends of the poles under the track and while one sang out a song, the others would at first tap the metal poles against the rail in rythm to the song and then really put their back into it, all at one time, to shove the rail into place.
Were these crews given any special name at that time (such as Gandy Dancers), or were they just known as railroad maintanece crews?
I always wanted to model them.
JaRRell
How about a sign in front of a gas station showing Hi-Test for 19 cents a gallon?
Remember when there were “SERVICE” stations rather than just convenience stores where you could “buy grub and get gas”.
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Both the (uniformed!) gas pump attendant AND the grease monkey came out to help when a tu-tone Chevy Bel-Aire convertible with three young women and the chaperon aunt stopped to ask for directions. But the boss came out to tell them to get back to work, HE would help the ladies.
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Back in those days, you bought cold drinks from a drink box that had bottles sitting in chilled water. You maneuvered one bottle into the delivery space, put in a nickle and it unlocked the thing so you could take out only one bottle by hand. I thought a Doctor Pepper machine would have more East Texas flavor in the 1950s than Coca Cola.
By the back corner of the lot are the old cut-out Flying Red Horse signs that have been replaced by the new enameled sign.
Nice!