Made my morning!

Tom,

You made my morning with your beautiful pictures!  Not only are the company houses great, the entire scenes are beautiful.  Great photography, too!  I like the way you framed the houses through the trestle in the first picture.  And, since we're model railroaders I like that you have a train in every picture.

I like your work to the point that I've downloaded your pictures and using them as my slide show screen saver.  More pictures, please!

Rick

Wow!

Lovely pictures!  I especially love the paths of dirt.

Filed

Those pics went straight into my Inspiration folder. Beautiful.

Nice

I especially like how the structures are built into the sloping terrain and how each one has somewhat different weathering.  Very well done.

Yep, feel like I'm right there

Nicely done, Tom. I'm curious - the front sloping roof on the left hand of the pair of houses appears different from the others, although everything else is somewhat uniform. What is the explanation for the difference ?

Very nice!

I would have known they were company houses even if there had been no text. The photography is excellent too, Tom. Just very nice work all around.

Ken Glover

Chief Engineer, Kansas Pacific Railway

Comments

Thanks, all, for the comments. Rick- glad you enjoyed the pictures. I've been following your alcove expansion blog and your experiences with cloud painting have helped me with some thoughts on revising my backdrop.

Bill- I'm not sure why the roof on the house on the left of the pair appears different in the photo. It's identical to the others. Perhaps the light weathering didn't highlight the break between the porch roof and the main roof as it does on the other two.

Tom

Excellent

I remember seeing many of these in the years I worked in W.Va. As time went by and the companies sold them off to individuals, the cookie-cutter designs started to show more individuality. Under company maintenance, they tended to stay in pretty decent condition.

Roof difference

Tom,

In the third picture down (above the two hooper cars) the front portion of the roof on the left house does not show the tarpaper seams as well as on the right house. Perhaps it is just the light and camera angles that seem to hide the seams. Aside from that very minor difference, those houses look so very real.

Nicely done

Looks like a great layout.

Nicely Built Tom

One Question ! Where is the company Store they get their I.O.U.s from?

Company Houses

I really like the brick piers that one house has. One thing I noticed over the years is most structure kits (and even a lot of scratchbuilt structures) sit right on the ground. That may be fine for structures on a concrete or other foundation, but in much of the South, at least until around the middle of the last century, were built raised. The other houses show an enclosed foundation, appropriate for mountain areas, as well.

I too am attempting to build my structures RAISED where appropriate and avoid that "sunken in the ground" look.

Good job and thanks for sharing the pix with us.

Company House

Found this on the web. Looks like they offer a kit for these houses. As I recall I saw them in Springfield and their models were superb.

http://www.chrstructures.com

Your models are wonderful and I love the raised look.

Paul

Company House from chrstructures

That is one nice looking kit from Chrstructures; however, at $64 a pop Tom has over $192 worth of company houses that I'll bet cost him much less.

Rick

Gorgeous

Tom's done it again. NEVER get tired of looking at his photographs of his beautiful layout.  Really like how you've situated the structures on the sloping terrain. So reminds me of Clinchfield photographs I have seen over the years. Well done Tom!

Very nice

I would like to echo Rich. Beautiful modeling and pictures. Did you build from plans or do you have an amazing eye for scale? Could you start another thread to explain how the dirt road and paths by the house were done? I would certainly like to know 'cause I need to build some too.

Plans

Thanks for the comments, Bob. To the extent possible, I always rely on plans. The two that I relied on most for the houses were Gary Burdette's drawings of the restored company house at Sprague, West Virginia, which appeared in the C&O Historical Society's magazine in June of 1993, and Robert Hundman's C&O Four-Room Cottage article that appeared in the January, 1988 Mainline Modeler. I used Gary's drawings for the overall dimensions and got some construction tips from Bob's article. Once I had the basic dimensions I made cardboard mock-ups and inserted the Grandt Line doors and windows. From there I made some slight changes to get what I thought was the "right" look. As for the dirt paths and roads, I'll try and put something together on that in the near future.  

Abandoned company houses...

...in North Carolina, if somebody wants to take a look:

http://www.pbase.com/picnic/abandoned