Modeling Lawrence & Houseworth Photos

An Homage to Will Dunniway

Holy smokes time has flown. It has been a few weeks since I have posted, but in all honesty, I have not done much work on the layout. I did get to spend a great weekend with fellow narrow gauge enthusiasts in Harrisburg. The hobby brings some great fellowship, and it always fires me up to do more.

Because I haven’t done anything on the railroad, I will cover the 5x5 that I built for the contest. I really wanted to do all that I could to support the event especially since the passing of Al Judy, the founder. I do an ongoing clinic on figures and animals, I really enjoy chatting with people and describing what I am doing. I would say it was successful.

Lawrence & Houseworth image. Library of Congress Collection.

I have always been fascinated by old photographs. Those who have followed me know that I almost always lead off my posts with a historic image. Like the one above. I used this when I helped to put together an Images of America book for the park that I worked at… dang, almost 20 years ago. To say it captivated me would be an understatement. There are so many details to be seen here that I won’t bore you by listing them all.

The Lawrence and Houseworth Collection is incredibly valuable to historical research, as they operated in California during the Gold Rush. The collection of western stereographic views is huge. It is worth a peek if you model the west into about the 1880s. California towns often had their citizens “working” the streets for gold after heavy rains. This image depicts a young man doing just that with a rocker or cradle, same thing, different names. Aspen Modeling Company has a great casting of a miner with a rocker and I picked it up years ago just for this scene.

Setting the stage, this is the street, Parrots Ferry Road, or Main Street then.

Recreating this scene was the easy part. Limiting it to 5x5 inches would be the hard part. Making it interesting to the casual observer might be a bigger challenge yet. It caused me to think about how would this photo have been done? Who might have taken it. There were a number in the series from Columbia circa 1866. The mining operations were well documented because of this photographer.

When I worked at the park, I was blessed to work with Will Dunniway. Will learned the wet plate collodian process and became well known for his images and his knowledge of this process, both modern and historical, of photography in general. He was widely regarded as a specialist. Unfortunately Will passed in 2021 and when Berkshire Valley came out with the photographers wagon, well, the rest as they say, is history.

While I will move all of this onto a scene on the layout, it was good to get it out.

The Aspen miner has a beard, unlike the young man in the photo. Works for me though.

It was fun to do and Richard Rands of Berkshire like it enough to photograph it, thanks!

I scratch built the rocker. The one that came with the dude was somewhat clunky. I don’t know if Aspen really is familiar with the rocker. But, oh I am. I’ve operated one many times for demos, and yes, I have found gold with it. All the parts are there for this model and, the box comes off so that my miner man can clean the riffles. That box on top, it is really perforated and there is a slope sheet under it, yep, it would work in O scale too!

The tree represents a locust tree. Black locusts were planted along the streets of town to try and provide some shade. It is represented by sagebrush and Super Tree armatures. The fence was scratch built. The horse was one from Aspen, as was Will himself.

Getting the horse right was something that was not an option. My son runs a horse team. I DO NOT want to embarrass myself. It is a single tree with a collar, pretty simple. I had to add chains and reigns and paint it right. Whew. I had a lot of questions in Harrisburg on painting the horses. I will cover that probably in the next post, after the Fourth of July. I have much to do before that, and two fireworks shows to do as well. But I will do an in-depth break down of my process as a review for anyone who saw my clinic, and a class for those who want to paint some equine critters.

Over all, I did not expect to win or whatever (there were some GREAT 5x5s), I just wanted an entry to help support the effort. Besides, who in PA would even know any of the fun history behind my mania and model? No one. I had fun with it anyway and recreated (sorta) a favorite photo.