I recently built an N Scale diorama for a local museum. It depicts the antebellum Alexandria waterfront in 1855. This is an overall view of the diorama. The diorama includes a locomotive factory on the left, a coal wharf in the center, and a grain elevator-flour mill with a schooner on the right. There will be more coverage about this diorama and the building techniques in my next book for Kalmbach Publishing.
Bernard Kempinski
What museum is it ending up in?
I live in Alexandria and know enough local history know that the diorama is the foot of Duke St (more or less).
It will be in the Lyceum.
Yes, you have a good eye. It depicts the block from Duke to Wolfe Street. None of the buildings in this diorama survived to the current date.
Congrats. This is really cool. I’ve often thought the City Point area would be neat to model, but I’m not really into the old timey era. Here are a few pics of City Point…
https://www.archives.gov/research/military/civil-war/photos/images/civil-war-084.jpg
http://civilwarintheeast.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/City_Point_Turntable-lg.jpg
http://www.shorpy.com/files/images/01856a_0.jpg
Steve S
Steve,
Yes, I agree with you on City Point. In fact I designed two layouts based on City Point. They are in my first Kalmbach book, “Mid-Sized Track Plans for Realistic Layouts.” It is available from the Kalmbach Bookstore. You can order signed copies from my website too, www.alkemscalemodels.com
Bernard Kempinski
Beautiful work. This may sound odd but it could be very effective to reproduce the very same photo … in black and white greytones just to get the viewer in the right frame of mind. I know that clouds do not often reproduce in those old photographs with their long exposure times.
Dave Nelson