Winter Valley Regional Railroad

November 2007

On a day in mid September we pulled into Landis Saskatchewan and asked about Canadian National’s continuing impact on their small part of the Wainwright Subdivision. The station was long gone of course, leaving an empty, unkempt grassy field and a steam era tool and speeder shed but the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool maintained two elevators here and United Grain Growers had another. There was an oil and chemical facility and two fertilizer distributors. At trackside the town wasn’t booming but it sure wasn’t dying either.

Never-the-less the big hotel on Main St was in serious condition. Some attempt had been made to board it up but much of the building was simply open to the cold, the wet, and the wind. Grid road 656 just didn’t pull them in like it used to and no one lived here any more. Fact is, we arrived a short week before it would be torn down. A safety hazard.

While John was talking to a CN work crew I couldn’t resist a walk around the hotel. The front was a nondescript affair but “Wow!” The back was another matter. I knew right away that I needed this building on the layout back in Peachland. The colour was odd but outstanding, clearly a 60’s fix up, and the seven smaller additions added plenty of character. There were lean-tos and sheds and doghouses and doors at every level. There were stairs and decks and ladders galore. And I had just the location for this little treasure in 1/29 th scale.

Where to begin?

There was a hard to get to corner on the layout and I knew a full-scale model wouldn’t fit. This could be an imposing structure and I wanted to maintain all the novelty of the original. It was time for some ‘selective compression’ on this project.

I had to reduce the length of the main building and still keep an interesting window arrangement. I chose to delete the door to nowhere (who would believe that anyway) and only build six windows - unevenly spaced. I also planned to shorten the lower 1 st floor extension on the left. Karaoki nights would just be a lot more crowded. Everything else would stay. In some form or another. I had no exact measurements so I would have to rely on known door and window sizes to help me out.

As I was building for indoors I could use my favourate building material. !/4 inch Medium Density Fiber board of MDF. Wonderful to work with and cheap like borsh. I also needed white glue. I rely on Weld Bond at my place but I expect your favourate product would do. See www.weldbond.com I also had some old ¼ round molding out in the garage so I found a use for that in the corners.

After the basic building was put together I painted it with a good quality interior latex paint that I had matched using one of the attached photos. I painted lengths of square styrene channel and framed the window openings to cover the rough edges and used square white strips for the windows. I made no attempt to correct the smallest alignment errors because I wanted that rough look evident in the prototype. Shades behind the clear Plexiglas windows were installed at random heights and photo board and fine sandpaper were used as roofing material.

The original Landis Hotel sign was painted on the south wall overlooking the station. My ‘south wall’ would be unseen and so the masking and painting were moved around to the north side of the main building and replaced with PEARSON HOTEL.

A few of the details were added and the building was weathered using chalks. Still to go on were the deck rails and steps. No point in adding those right now and then knock everything off while installing the lights.

The two main roofs are removable. A rough frame was built on the inside to support small 12V lights that would run off my DC buss under the layout. A whole is cut into the back of the main building to let a smaller amount of light into the annexes and sheds out back.

The building was set into its place and I fitted the stairs. You may be able to see my main line passing in front (the back?) of the hotel so I had to be sure nothing on the building interfered with operation. This will be the future location for some well-used lawn chairs, a few faded umbrellas and a BBQ. Maybe even a horseshoe pit. After all, it’s home away from home for a hundred travelling salesmen.

Back on the work bench/desk for some details I can reach.

The fire escape on the south wall had to be installed where it could be seen. Some brass rods and solder did the trick. There’s a broken hockey stick or two in the trashcan but they’re still available for shinny. Someone put their towels out to dry. It’s late summer and the Coke machine is still outside on the sun deck. It’s either TU again or there just aren’t enough quarters around.

I think this is pretty much what the hotel must have looked like in the mid-seventies. It would have been full of short and long term guests back then. There would be room for sales people all year, farm workers at harvest time and visitors during the country fair. Railway workers would have stayed here when crews passed through and I’m sure some of the local citizens opted to find a room there after a long Friday night in the bar.

I’m looking forward to finishing that corner now and the Pearson Hotel will be sure to shed a little light on the scene.

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