A model homage to the WDW TTC

 The Mostly Magic Kingdom has its own Transportation & Ticket Center inspired by the real one at Walt Disney World. The Mostly Magic Kingdom uses a lot of spatial compression to fit so much Disney Parks magic in what is basically the size of a Monorail Playset loop. I made a canopy for  the station provided with the WDW 50th anniversary Monorail Playset. The roof is a recycled piece of packing styrofoam with 3 fruit cup containers I set in it to recall the famous bubble skylights of the real TTC! At the mostly magic kingdom the area below the station is used as the drop off area for our parking trams and a place to board busses. The Station is also where you will find our version of the Walt Disney World entrance arch; which is made from legos, figurines and a souvenir magnet of the iconic sign.

The Mostly Magic Kingdom

I decided to rename my Scottland Kingdom Castle Railroad monorail playset/model railroad layout…introducing “The Mostly Magic Kingdom: A Disney monorail toy & HO scale model railroad layout”…or The Mostly Magic Kingdom for short. This seems to be a slightly less clunky descriptor.  The layout is filled out pretty good and I have been mostly adding landscaping. But I still have a few projects to paint…most notably Star Wars Land and the Epcot Mexico & Canada pavilions. What started out as something to do during the pandemic has just grown and grown.

 

I “fixed” the Cinderella Castle Monorail Toy

A toy of Cinderella Castle was released as part of the accessories for the Walt Disney World Monorail Playsets. It was a variation on a previously released Castle playset that opened up to reveal an interior with furniture and figures. 

But this version is a static prop that does not open and contains no furniture or figurines…it is simply a building for running your monorail around. It has been a mild annoyance of mine that this version of Cinderella Castle does not quite have the majesty of the real thing. For starters the central spire is much too small and located in the center of the Castle instead off to one side.

 As part of my “Scottland Kingdom Castle Railroad” layout I finally decided to modify the Castle to more accurately reflect the real Cinderella Castle…I “fixed” the Cinderella Castle Monorail Toy Accessory!

Cinderella Castle is depicted at heroic scale in many illustrations and I wanted my layout and my version of the Castle to match the spirit of how it towers over Walt Disney World.

Promotional art, and souvenirs over the 50 year history of Walt Disney World portray the central spire at an exaggerated scale; it was very important for my alterations to capture that feeling.

The Castle on my “work bench” after I had mocked up the towers.

I carved additional towers out of styrofoam, added bamboo skewers for detailing and applied a base coat of gesso. I used some scrapbook paper to sheath the picture window tower and drew some roofing pattern over the paper.

I think the original grey and blue paint scheme is classic and elegant and I wasn’t interested in painting the entire castle to match the current 50th anniversary version. I applied gold paint to the spire and and the tips of the turrets. I used hot glue drops, gessoed, and painted to detail the spire and topped it off with a Lego banner.

The real Castle looming over the Magic Kingdom.

From Seven Seas Lagoon the Castle looks enormous.

My modified Cinderella Castle reigning over my “Scottland Kingdom Castle Railroad”!

My version seems to look quite a bit like this portrayal in the guide maps.

“Scottland Kingdom Castle Railroad” is never completed…plenty of imagination at work with several attractions still in process for our enjoyment!

Wildest foam in the wilderness

In my previous post I wrote about my fathers’s life long model building hobby and how his use of found objects for his models inspires me. So lately I have enjoyed as a hobby making Disney attraction models at approximately HO model railroad scale. 

My current medium is carved packing styrofoam; and in tribute to Dad the more I can do with things I repurpose the more successful I consider the model to be. The overall project is my “Scottland Kingdom Castle Railroad” (Note: Scott is my name and SKC are my initials) a slightly larger than a twin bed layout of Disney Parks toys augmented by various little treasures I have acquired along the way. 

This post’s focus is my interpretation of Big Thunder Mountain in the form of a tunnel for the toy train that runs through it. It combines Big Thunder Mountain with the trip through the Primeval World…the Dinosaur display form the 1964 New York Worlds Fair that was relocated to the Disneyland Railroad in California. 

The tunnel is made from corrugated styrofoam packing inserts that are arranged and carved into the shapes reminiscent of Monument Valley and Bryce Canyon that the real Big Thunder Mountains take their inspiration from. 

My Scottland Magical Kingdom Railroad is for the most part more Magic Kingdom than Disneyland, but there are a few mashups here and there. 

The size of the setup were dictated by a Monorail Toy Playset and accessorized by a toy playset of the Contemporary Hotel and EPCOT’s Space Ship Earth. 

So overall the layout will have a very toyetic quality inspired by Post War Lionel layouts and the Tyco Train sets of the 70’s & 80’s. The toys were a fun foundation and they have been accessorized with scratch built styrofoam set pieces and small structures from flea markets and even Dollar Tree! (Well Dollar and a quarter Tree as I like to call it now.). In some of these photos you will see various additions in different states of production ; the carving has been done but it has yet to be painted. To paraphrase Walt Disney: Scottland Kingdom Castle Railroad “will never be completed as long as there is imagination in the world.” 

Future additions to Scottland Kingdom Castle Railroad can be seen in this augmented photo, stay tuned!