Wombat Creek is a H0 (1:87) scale model of a fictional town situated somewhere in the Victorian Goldfields, Australia.
The time is 1963. Geelong wins the VFL Championship against Hawthorn (109– 60). John F. Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas. ValentinaTeresjkova is the first woman in Space. The men behind The Great Train Robbery get £2.6 million from a Royal Mail train heading from Glasgow to London. The town consists of several buildings. The “Wombat Creek Bank and Gold Exchange” is a prominent building in the town centre. You will also find several other commercial buildings; among them the daily newspaper“W.C. Chronicle”(colloquial known as the "Toilet Paper") and “Wombat Creek Brewing Company” (Famous for the “Wombat Bitter”). “The Big Nugget Gold Mine” is situated at the Western outskirts of town near the small Chinatown. The War Memorial is in a small park along East Street. The town’s mayor Alfred Campbell together with his son David Campbell owns several businesses, including the bank, the pub and the newspaper. AC/DC basically run the town and make most decisions on behalf of the rest of Wombat Creek’s residents, who, on the other hand, are too busy with their own businesses. The mayor’s latest initiative is Wombat Creek Tramways. Wombat Creek doesn’t really need a tram system, but AC reckons tramways will improve the town’s reputation. Partly because of limited funds the tramways' construction and rolling stock depend heavily on second-hand requirements from other Australian and overseas tramways.
The car maker ‘Holden’ has opened a new dealership in Wombat Creek. They a selling their latest model EH. According to my neighbour, who is a car enthusiast (and model railway modeller), puts the time into late 1963. The shop front still needs an awning. Also, the exhibited cars appears to be out of scale compared to the family in the shop. At a later stage I will try to generate a more suitable background. The building to the right of ‘Holden’ is the last building to fill out the space along the backboard.
With the ‘Royal Arcade’ relocated Bridge Road now consists of three buildings. The Toole’s Buildings houses the Italian restaurant ‘Pasta la Vista’ and ‘Bradman’s Foodland’. The inspiration for ‘Bradman’s Foodland’ come from a photo of the namesake in 1960’s Footscray.
The overall photo shows how far back of the layout the buildings are. Very hard to reach, unfortunately. The black cord to the left is a temporary connection between two sections of track. It will eventually be replaced by soldering a cord to the track at towards the left. Not sure how to reach! The buildings will be set into a footpath/pavement, which will stretch all the way out of the photo to the right. This can be finished before a wye set of points is replaced by a right hand set of points resulting in a smooth curve behind the bank. Again, an area very hard to reach.
Instead of the hair salon, which has moved next door, an Italian restaurant will soon open in the Toole’s Buildings. The interior has been made using chatGPT. You are limited to generate five pictures a day for free. I try to make the first prompt as descriptive as possible and edit along the way. Generating a picture takes quite a few seconds. Enough time to make you excited about the result. The final prompt for the interior of the Italian restaurant is:
1963 vintage Italian restaurant Melbourne front on view deep perspective bar sign at the back entrance to the left tables to the right with people dining waiter chianti wine bottles hanging from the ceiling no windows Italian posters on walls red checked table cloths width greater than height
chatGPT isn’t perfect. You will get spelling mistakes in signs. In this case, I couldn’t prompt chatGPT to leave the pictures without tables to the left. That is the reason the restaurant will move into the Toole’s Buildings. Here the entrance is in the middle lining up with the restaurant interior.
I have finished the front of The Toole’s Buildings (yes, plural even it is just one building) with some detailing. Once in place, the building will be viewed from a distance of at least 1 m, so I haven’t gone into the the fine details. The model is based on a photo I took sort of front on. Until you start the construction you don’t know the details of the facade. They may not be determined from your photos. Instead of going back to do more photos, I have used Google Street View. The position of the pediment is quite interesting. Instead of being centred, it is ‘pushed’ to a position above the right column. The right section of the front is also wider than the left and middle section.
I haven’t decided how the painting should go. Do I do a ‘nice’ job on the full front, or do I leave the right back with peeling paint. I don’t know how the building looked like in 1963.
The shop to the left will be a supermarket and the one to the right a ladies’ hair salon. I tried to find some appropriate images of the interiors on the net without success. Instead I tried my hand on AI. Here are prompts and the results.
A 1963 vintage women’s hair salon interior with customers, mid-century décor, linoleum floor, retro salon chairs and hooded dryers, bouffant and beehive hairstyles on female clients, hairdressers in classic mid-60s uniforms cutting and styling hair, women wearing dresses and skirts typical of early 60s fashion, magazines on side tables, warm natural light through windows, nostalgic 1960s atmosphere seen front on no windows at the back (I forgot to prompt ‘no windows’)
1963 Australian supermarket 4 aisles cash register to the left customer at the cash register employee at the register fluorescent lighting front on view a few consumers along the aisles cigarettes tinned goods soft drink juice deli fruit
The first of four buildings for Bridge Road is under its way. As templates for measurements I use printouts of the actual buildings scaled down to the right size.
Not much vacant land is left in Wombat Creek. Bridge Road is the exception. Recently my wife and I went to Bridge Road, Melbourne, to photograph a few shop fronts. The ‘mock-up’ buildings are not next to each other in real life. Also, they do not have a green tint (the printer needs a new cartridge). Next step is construction!
