Spruce Caboose Hobby & Craft

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Spruce Caboose
Hobby & Craft
"Planes • Trains • Automobiles"

(Catch the movie reference?)


Every year in December, we set up a small Department 56-esque village that has the usual 2-3 buildings. When the thought of adding a new building came up, I thought it would be more fun to BUILD one, rather than BUY one. Thus, the creation of the "Spruce Caboose Hobby & Craft" shop.

The initial elevation drawings for the hobby shop
I designed this building completely from the ground up, drawing architectural details and color scheme ideas from Disneyland's Main Street, in order to compliment the other buildings with the Department 56 design and feel.
Plan view drawing mainly done to figure out the placement of the two working layouts

One of many color elevations to figure out the color scheme for the building. The color scheme for the Spruce Caboose was mainly inspired from Disneyland's "Disney Clothiers" store on Main Street.

The idea of a miniature hobby shop came from a Lionel item that I saw in a catalog more than ten years ago; a hobby shop with working model layouts. Keeping up with that inspiration, I added two working model layouts to this project-- both small enough to fit into the palm of your hand.

The building with the outer shell removed to reveal the interior exposed. The mechanics to run the two tiny layouts are located on the top floor of the building. As with many projects, good ol' K'Nex gears and parts went to work. 
A penny shows how tiny these layouts really are



 The mechanics for the two layouts, one a rendition of the Super Chief, the other reminiscent of the Polar express, is contained in the top portion of the building. The entire build was constructed from scratch out of sheet and strip styrene.

The building is approx. 6"W 7"H 5.5"L

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