Scratch built freight house


B

brad.p

Lost between ATSF & BNSF
I am new to the whole scratchbuilding scene and have, with lots of advice and some help from a very good friend, been working on this HO Scale freight house which measures 60 x 80 ft. The original inspiration came from a picture in an old Model Railroader magazine, but the building design has undergone many changes as it has progressed.

The whole structure is scratchbuilt using 0.5 and 1mm styrene sheeting and some Evergreen angle and square rod. It is still not completed, but I will post some pics as it goes along. The wall sections were built out of sheet 1mm sheet styrene with 1mm strips of 0.5mm styrene stuck on to resemble board and batten.
 
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A few days later, after some further fiddling, the freight house was starting to look good. Here the platform and balcony have been added as a temporary measure to see how it will look.
 
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A few days later and the freight house is really starting to get character. The detail under the loading dock and the roof over the office entrance are all shown in these pics.
 
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Coming along nicely , I know that it takes alot of time to produce something like that. Patience with ourselves is important.
 
Very nice building and excellent work for never having done this before. Do you know what you're going to use for roofing yet? Campbell's wood shingles would be my choice.
 
Very nice brad. The detail under the loading dock is great. I look forward to seeing it finished.
 
As a fellow scratchbuilder/kitbasher, I can appreciate the work you've put into that. It's a masterpiece! Did you use a NWSL "chopper" to mass-produce the angle braces under the loading dock?
 
Thanks for all the comments and suggestions - I have really enjoyed building this structure so far and will definitely be tackling some others in the future.

UP2CSX, I have not decided what roofing material to use yet, but was considering some emery cloth strips which I have seen used on other buildings and it looks great. I had also considered shingles, but do not have a local source of supply for these so will have to wait for my next Walthers order to get some - but I also don't see the Campbell shingles at Walthers.

CSX_road_slug, the loading dock was made as follows:
1. a strip of Evergreen #294 angle was cemented along the length of the loading dock about 0.5mm back from the front edge. The top deck of the dock was made out of 1mm sheet styrene scored to resemble planking.
2. The legs were each individually cut from Evergreen #175 and cemented in place using MEK (I use MEK for all my styrene work)
3. The angle braces were each individually cut from 3mm wide (0.5mm styrene) strips and cemented in place.
4. The 2.5mm wide (0.5mm styrene) strip was glued along the length of the loading dock

The construction of the whole loading dock took me about 6hrs.

As you can see, I think the work was really worth the effort cos without the loading dock, the building would look quite plain.
_______________________________
Brad
 
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Brad,
Forget the shingles. While hunting around for Campbell wood shinges, I found these corrugated steel roofing panels at http://www.hobbylinc.com/htm/cam/cam801.htm. They are also made by Campbell but look like they would be a lot easier to install than the wood shingles and you can give the building anything from a brand new look to just before collapse depending on how you weather the sheet metal.
 
Been fiddling with different colours and some weathering and would appreciate comments or suggestions on it. I think there is still some work to be done on this aspect, but as mentioned I am new to this so will see what you guys (and my mate locally) says this weekend.

I could not find any roofing material locally so will have to order it when I place my next order from Walthers. I found that Plastruct make shingles in sheets large enough to avoid joining sheets on each side of the roof. I will probably go for those this time round and look at the aluminium sheets for the next building I am planning. The shingles can be viewed at http://www.plastruct.com/Pages/OnlineProductDetail.lasso?-op='eq'&CCode=PS-131
 
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Have now added the windows and doors but not weathered those yet. Again, comments/suggestions on the window colours would be appreciated. Also just added the few hand painted figures and bench for some life.
 
Brad,
Maybe it's the camera and the images not reproducing the color correctly but that blue looks awfully dark to me. I'm not saying that's bad but I don't recall eve having seen a freight house painted in dark blue. Most were gray or mineral red with a few in a yellow ochre type color with brown trim. What you've done looks fine but that color just doesn't strike me as "railroady" for some reason.
 
Nice work. I really like the weathering you did on the loading dock, it looks like stained wood rather than plastic. The building it self could use a little more blending in the weathering. Not sure what you are using or have, but I would recommend some weathering powders or chalk to help blend the drybrushing into the blue more. I'd try for more subtlety in the weathering. For more weathering advice than I could ever give, try modeltrainsweathered.com, their forum has a section dedicated to weathering buildings.

As for the windows, they could be anything you want. I like the tan colour they are now, but a white, light grey or even dark brown to match the loading dock would work well.
 
UP2CSX said:
Brad,
Maybe it's the camera and the images not reproducing the color correctly but that blue looks awfully dark to me. I'm not saying that's bad but I don't recall eve having seen a freight house painted in dark blue. Most were gray or mineral red with a few in a yellow ochre type color with brown trim. What you've done looks fine but that color just doesn't strike me as "railroady" for some reason.
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Jim,
I agree about the colour - the photos do not do it justice as they make it look very blue. I was in 2 minds whether to actually even post the pics due to that. The photos were taken indoors with a flash so will try and take some during daylight with natural light. The building is acutally painted with Tamiya Light Grey which may be a tad dark but was the lightest gray I had. I will look around for a lighter gray and experiment with the lighter walls, etc.
 
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