Oakland, CA Westinghouse plant in the 1950s

[Charles Smiley]

This is my Oakland, CA Westinghouse plant in the 1950s. I'm working out the interior and lighting effects to get the right levels and color-temp for night scenes.

 

[santafewillie]

Excellent modeling and photography.
Willie

 

[Motley]

Wow! The lighting looks terrirific! Really looks cool with the greenish tint like that. Are those LEDs you're using?

 

[Charles Smiley]

You can buy a 15 foot long string of surface mount LEDS in "warm" white for about 30 bucks at Micro Mark tool company. They are on flex circuit strips you can cut with scissors and they have built in resistors. I at first used them in overhead valances in several areas in the home. They are also perfect for lighting large multi floor factories. If you want to make light like fluorescent lamps use the cool white ones. These things are very bright so a series resistor can make them more dim. I run all lights on regulated 12 Volts DC bused around the layout.

The lights are behind paper with factory looking patterns printed on the sections. I colored some areas with "factory" green walls in PhotoShop. I used about 15 LEDs per floor.


These things are a great bargain and it beats spending over a Dollar each for little LEDs when you have a massive project.


link:
http://www.micromark.com/neutral-an...-led-flexible-light-strip-5-meters,10880.html

 

[Charles Smiley]

Here's a factory (about a yard long!) with the "cool" LEDs to look like hanging fluorescent tube lighting. More of a blue tint.

 

[jwb]

The Westinghouse plant sort of reminds me of a plant you can see from BART near Fruitvale. Is that the one, still there? How did you do the model?

 

[Charles Smiley]

The Westinghouse plant shows up in the youtube video linked below. I discovered this old movie film on Oakland a few years after making the model. I was just guessing from some sketchy memories as a kid. I used a pair of Walthers American Hardware supply buildings to make this one.


youtube link

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxQjr2Le1bA

The paint factory shows in the film at 12:40

I used a pair of Walthers Railroad Shop kits and radically altered them to make a 36-inch long factory. Something about the look of the kits suggested a paint factory. I changed every window dimension to use Tichey windows because the Walthers windows are always really gross looking with heavy thick mullions.

Go to the corner of 45th St. and Horton St. (goggle earth) and look west using street level views. That is one of the SW Paint buildings still remaining. It sits on a large lot that has been striped of all the other buildings. I found this building on goggle earth after I built the model from childhood memories of the place back in the 1950s.


The really ambitious project -- I might do someday-- is the old Montgomery Wards building. Since the family came down from the upper Montclair hills only once a year on Christmas season runs it was the place for Lionel trains and Marx too. Too bad they couldn't safe and re-purpose that beautiful huge building. Here's a link to the MW building

https://localwiki.org/oakland/Montgomery_Ward_&_Company_Building

 

[montanan]

Fantastic modeling and photos. Excellent work.

 

[Charles Smiley]

thanks Montanan.

 

[wombat457]

Charles,

Agree with Chet, great modelling and photography. How do you get your photo's of night scenes with lights do crisp and clear? Seems whenever I take (or try to take) pictures of my lights at night, the light washes everything out and they look lousy

 

[Charles Smiley]

A little Sony DSC WX220 point and shoot camera I bought at BestBuy. The secret is to bring the ambient lights up a bit so the camera has some light in the whole scene to work with. I use the "night scene" setting on the camera. It lacks manual exposure and aperture but it seems to figure out what to do fairly well.

I have expensive SLR digital cameras that can't compete in night scenes with 159 Dollar pocket cameras or even an I-pad! The smaller CCD chips seem to work better and have a larger depth of field than big, bulky, expensive SLR digital cameras. Maybe this will open up a discussion on shooting night scenes without a lot of grainy looking noise. If you have someone in the family with an I-pad or I-phone get them to try a few shots for you.

 

[Charles Smiley]

I just added LEDs to this box and pallet company. Same Sony camera used but the long exposures need a tripod - or at least rest the camera on a level surface like the track and use delay shutter so you don't shake the camera with wiggling around. when you push the button. You need hands like a marksman on that button.

 

[wombat457]

Charles,

Thanks for your explanation. Think I will have to abandon my Canon EOS for either my Canon Camcorder OR my wife's little Canon and see how they go.