Thursday, October 26, 2006

Changes in Bryson City


Nothing like trying to back-date a town. AS you may know I have this penchant for the good old days. Yes, I know they weren't that good. As Warren Buffett suggested the other day on tv, teenagers are living better than John D. Rockefeller. After all we have central heat and air (for the most part) and television not to mention fast food.

But back to Bryson City.

I'd say the hey day was when Fontana Dam was being built. THat puts us into the early 1940's. Gee, I wonder why I model that period? The real reason is because Southern Railway still moved with steam power and there was this really neat little crossroads called "Bushnell" where there was a small hotel. THat was all flooded by Fontana but I digress, as usual.

So I'm working on Bryson City. I've tracked down USGS topo maps from 1941 and Sanborn Insurance maps from before that. Along with a few pictures and maps in railroad books I have a vague idea about Bryson. There was a wholesale Grocer named "Slayden Fakes and Co." That name makes me smile. There was a standard oil Co. facility. And a coal trestle and coal yard not to mention a Building Materials place.

But the more I have researched, the more I've decided that my scene needs to change. The horror of learning.

So, I've started ripping up a siding. It needs to have a very steep incline up to the coaling trestle. And Slayden Fakes will move across the street which means I have to once more HAND LETTER the name on the OTHER side of the building. And mountainsides have been ripped up and redesigned.

Will it be correct? NOPE! But it will be closer to the actual. Besides, by the time I'm finished there won't be a living soul who ever saw Bryson City in June 1942. How do I know that? Easy, by the time I'm done they'd have to be about two hundred years old.