North Fork Trading Co.

Another building in the Amargosa business district will be the North Fork Trading Company. I worked for a dozen summers on staff at Camp Three Falls, a Scout camp located in Lockwood Valley. One of the camp's features was a replica western style log fort, and at the fort some years we operated a trading post called North Fork Trading Co, after the nearby North Fork of Lockwood Creek. So that's where the name came from.

The design is based loosely on the general store at Stauffer, which also served as the post office.

Here's a kitchen table shot, pretty much finished.

This is the Stauffer store and post office, as it appeared in 1925. Photo from the collection of Lorinda Poole, published on David Stillman's web site.

Here's another photo, this one from the California State Library's online photo archives. The web site gives a date of 1920, but I suspect it may be earlier.

From the amount of activity, and the presence of both a buckboard and what appears to be a very early truck, I think this may have been taken when the mines were still in operation, in the early teens. Also, the tree to the left of the building, possibly a cottonwood, is quite a bit larger in the 1925 photo -- more than 5 years of growth, it seems to me.

If you zoom in, this shows some detail the other one doesn't. The siding appears to be board and batten. There is a small sign on the left, not legible in the other picture, that clearly reads "STAUFFER P.O." It looks to me like there is a door next to that, then two multi-pane casement windows, another door, then one more window at the far right.

I originally planned to use a heavily modified version of the Clever Models Bunkhouse, but I wasn't happy with the results. About that time I came across the Blair Line Company House, and ordered one from Hobbylinc for under $30. I'll build it pretty much as designed and add some signage for the store. The kit comes with tarpaper roofing, but I'll probably substitute either shingles or  corrugated instead, to make it look a little more squared-away. The roof in the earlier photo of the Shaffer store looks like shingles to me.

Update, 4/3/23: Here it is, close to finished, with signs. The kit design is on wood posts, but I've left those off so far, since I'm not sure about the terrain where it will be installed.

I painted the walls using a technique suggested in the instructions for a couple of Grandt Line H.O. scale buildings I put together a few years back. I first gave the walls a coat of rattlecan light grey spray paint (both sides, to reduce warping). A couple of days later, when they were dry, I brush-painted them with Poly-S Earth, let the paint dry just a minute or so, them wiped with a paper towel. This lets some of the grey undercoat show through, producing a weathered effect. The window frames and trim were painted similarly, but with roof brown.

The signs were made in Microsoft Word. I used the photo background option to give the text boxes a wood grain appearance. They're printed on light cardstock and glued to scrap wood, and framed with cardstock a la Clever Models.

The Amargosa PO sign is a nod to the Stauffer PO sign on the prototype building that inspired this one.

It needs a couple more signs, Coke machine, a chair or two on the porch, a stovepipe, and a few other details, plus some touchup paint and weathering. The "tarpaper" roof doesn't look bad, but as I said before, I feel like tarpaper roofs are overused, probably because it's a cheap, easy material to include in moderately priced kit. I'm still thinking I'll install shingles or corrugated roofing over the tarpaper at some point.

I'm planning to cut a sheet of foam on a slight grade to match the road, and build a foundation on that. I'm currently leaning toward wood posts with horizontal planking between them, but we'll see.

Update 4/12/23: I ordered a Coke machine from Dave's Decals, along with a 3D printed figure of a guy drinking what could be a Coke. I'm going to use a bench from the Clever Models Greezy Gus' kit, and maybe design a rocking chair in Inkscape. A wall-mounted mail box would be good, too.