One of the more interesting scenes on the layout, both visually and operationally, is where the switchback makes a totally blind crossing of a very heavily traveled 12th Avenue into The Miami Produce Center. Switching the industry is particularly challenging because the view northward up the street is totally obscured by a business called Kiko’s Wholesale, a mom and pop version of 7-11. The model of this structure was one of the first I took on when I started the layout in 2008. I had what I thought was a great idea at the time to represent the rough stucco walls. Some digging on the net turned up a rough textured paper used by water color artists. Off I went, producing the images for the laminate and printing them on the artists paper. Unfortunately, it didn’t handle ink over the long term at all and became severely faded. The good news is that I only used this paper once. Thirteen years after the fact it’s time to give Kiko’s a facelift with new laminates and more surface relief. That’s the project on the work bench now.

I spent the better part of a day finishing the artwork for the photo wallpaper and printing out three copies of each wall. Next up is producing the laminates.