Birthing the fishing village

I have just about finished work on the three buildings which will be part of the small fishing fishing operation on the outskirts of town on my train layout.

This makes the full row of buildings which will constitute the small fishing operation.

Situated to the left on the dock will be "Dockside Fish." This is a kitbashed version of the Bar Mills "Waterfront Willys" kit. The small building to the left rear is a FOS Scale models crossing shed kit, and serves as a small storage shed, and serves as a rear marker for the scene while adding some depth. The fish boxes in front of the shed were scratch built - five small pieces of basswood to build each.

MacFarland's Fish is a completely scratch built structure. Those of you who are familiar with the area may recognize this as a replica of one of the fish shacks at Fishtown in Michigan's Leelenaw Peninsula . The pair of net drying racks to the right were also scratch built and were featured in closeup in the prior post.

The "Fish Basket" snack bar was built from the FOS Scale "free Kit" offered to anyone who purchased more than $50 in the last month. The large sign on the roof was made from commercial sign letters of the type that push into plastic sheets with grooves. Before installing it on its place on the layout I will detail the interior of the large service window.

Next I will be working on a typical Great Lakes "fish tug" which will be tied up at the dock, and maybe a small nondescript fishing boat to fill out the dock.

The "joy" of shingling

Well, I started with good intentions of replicating the "Fishtown" structure accurately, and including all three of its gables. However, as I progressed on the structure, I decided that it would be too long in comparison to adjacent structures I plan for the fishing village, so I lopped off one of the gables and relocated one of the windows and doors in order to get everything to fit properly.

As you can see, the walls have all been shingled, and I am making my way up to the roof. The gable roofs have bee cut, and will be installed after the final strips of shingle have been installed to the left of the leftmost gable. Adding this many shingles in HO is quite a challenge, and I can't wait to be finished and to give them a final trimming along all the gables. Weathering will be a fun challenge, As I have noticed that untreated shingles weather in interesting patterns dependent on water runoff, which I hope to replicate.

Fishing village details as a diversion

As I have mentioned previously, I almost always have a few modeling projects underway at any one time. This allows my to switch back and forth between them in order to prevent burnout from spending a lot of concentrated time on a single task. To this end, after a couple of workings sessions on the  "Fishtown" replica, I switched to a few quick detail projects to place around the finished structure.

Here we see three details which will be installed at one end of the main "Fishtown"Structure. From left to right, we see a pile of fish boxes, which were used to carry the fish from the docked fish tug to the smoker. These were built of coffee stirrer lumber cut down to size, assembled and painted. Next, we see the smoker, into which the fish were placed and hung on racks while they were smoked over a hardwood fire. Finally, on the right, we see a pile of hardwood lumber cut ready to feed the fire.

Here we see my interpretation of the fish net drying racks which will be placed in the area of the smoker at the end of the main building. The nets themselves were made of "nut bags" which I found on Amazon, and I believe are usually used for straining the nuts from the milk after nuts have been compressed to obtain "nut milk." Of course, their normal use was irrelevant to me, as I only purchased them because they appeared to have the smallest mesh I could find to represent the net material. The floats are made of plastic insulation cut from the finest wire I could find in my stash, and the line onto which they are threaded consist of but a single strand of the copper from within the same wires.

Here is a small storage building that will also be located in the area near the fish nets and smoker.
Now, after this break  .... back to structure building. 

The first fishing structure

For the first fishing village structure, I decided to create my interpretation of the gabled building which can still be found at Fishtown.

I have always appreciated this structure because of its multiple gables and the fact that it is completely shingled. While fully shingled buildings are relatively common on the eastern seaboard, they are relatively uncommon here in the Great Lakes, and since I have never modeled such a structure, I thought it would represent somewhat of a challenge.

Here, front and side walls for the structure have been cut fro, Crescent board. This material is my go-to material in such situations. It cuts easily with a No. 11 Exacto blade, is stiff and strong, not prone to warping and is glued easily using Matte Medium, which is my favorite paper, card and wood adhesive for modeling.

One challenge in interpreting the prototype is that none of the doors or windows have frame boards around them, as is normally the case. Instead, the shingles are merely butted up against the inner frame of the windows and doors. To replicate this, I was forced to cut off the frame boards on all the windows and doors and then add a thin piece of styrene around the outer edges to replicate the prototype, as shown above.

Preparing to go fishing

While I still have a lot to do on my copper smelter module, I need to start work on the next module which will lead from the smelter to the nearest town, because the lake water level will extend onto a least part of this second module. However, being that scratch building structures is my favorite part of the hobby, I have decided to start work of a small commercial operation which will be located on the outskirts of the small town.Digging into my research files, I started to put together a group of "must have" elements for inclusions in my interpretation.

As shown in this photo of an unidentified fishing operation on the Canadian side of the Great Lakes, fishing villages consisted of a rag-tag assembly of structures loosely arranged around the dock at which the fish tugs would tie up to discharge and process their huge catches..

I have been visiting historic "Fishtown" in Leland, Michigan ever since I moved to the US in 1973, and have always really enjoyed the ambiance there. This building with its three gables has always piqued my interest, and I inclusion of such a structure was critical to add a true sense of reality to my scene, even if space confinements ended up forcing me to take some steps to compress the structure on my interpretation.

As shown here, net drying racks have always been an integral part of Great Lakes fishing villages, with all of them seemingly being built to the same plan all around the lakes. These particular large array of racks was located on the Canadian side of the lakes.

This net drying rack can be found in Michigan's Fishtown, mentioned in the caption of a prior photo. The similarity of construction to the Canadian drying racks in the prior photo is immediately evident. Including at least a couple of these drying racks will be a must to properly set the stage in my village interpretation, and this photo gives a good idea of how they were built..

Because the fish was sold fresh, salted and smoked, the inclusion of at least one smoke house would be vital. This small concrete block smoke house which is still in use in Fishtown could serve as a good guide as to how to put one together for my village.  This photo also gives a hint of how tall such a structure would be when compared with the adjoining structure and the net drying rack behind it.

Fish Tugs have served as the go-to vessel for commercial fishing operations since the early 1900's, with their design changing very little over the years. They all feature enclosed superstructures and openings for letting out and retrieving the fishing nets without the men being washed off the decks in doing so.

Frequently equipped with the reliable Kahlenberg diesel engines, the stalwart fish tugs fished Great Lakes waters throughout the year, their heavy iron hulls allowing them to smash their way through all but the thickest ice, as shown here.  Including a model of at least one of these vessels tied up at the dock would be a real necessity.

OK! - so now I have decided somewhat of an idea as to how my fishing village would look,it's time to get to the workbench and start bringing it to reality!