Lucky 7?

Planning work continues on the Trinidad project. It's hard to believe it has already been three months since my visit to there on my first exploratory site vist where we talked about all of the possibilities. The plan drawn on the plane ride home was chock full of ideas but still very sketchy.

As these things always work, the ideas have come and gone and changed many times. Thngs have been moved and then moved once more. The plans have gone through countless revisions, with the master plan now in it's seventh (and hopefully final) iteration and all the elements now coming together nicely. We're starting to work with the engineers and planners to work up the final building plans. 

The planning work will continue on our next project as we work with all of our might on the current one. It's all going to be a great deal of fun!

-grampa dan

Detail doesn't come easy.

As we work through each piece of the large project, we take great delight in addling layer after layer of detail. I'm quite sure that most guests will not see it all, not even after repeat visits. Even so the detail is important. Detail does two things. It helps tell the story and it makes the story  believeable, no matter how fanciful the story may be. It is important that the detail be consistent. Guests may not purposefully take notice but they will feel the difference.

We are building six operator booths for the park. We could have built them all the same of course but that would have been a shortcut and would have short-changed the story in the process. Instead we looked at the story we were telling and then designed the ticket booths around it. The booths are all to be the same size, and constructed in similar styles with subtle differences. The roof shapes and styles are the largest difference, along with the colors of paint we will apply to each of them.

One of them has a 'pieced tin roof' held together with oversized rivets. It is timber framed with heavy planks for walls. Like the rest of our pieces for the park it is slightly cartoon and actually built from hand sculpted concrete. Look close at the picture and you will see thick planks, cut of different lengths. This kind of detail does not come easy. The welding takes more time, as does the wiring. The concrete work and carving is also much more labor intensive. Painting too will take more time I'm sure. But the end result is pure magic!

The second style of operator's booth features a steep pitched roof. It too is made from sculpted concrete. The thick shakes are all hand carved and each one is different from it's neighbors.

Even though the detail comes difficult it is well worth the effort!

-grampa dan

Ready to sail!

I snuck a few minutes at my desk to whip out the finished concept rendering for the little train engine. Doug had suggested a sail which worked well if I slimmed down the smokestack a tad. It will have to stay furled to keep visibility at the maximum for the engineer - in the interest of safety.  Some climbing ropes on the stack also worked out pretty cool.

I think this thing is ready to set sail!

-grampa dan