P5se Camelback's 2010 Summer Structure Challenge GERN Plant

[P5se Camelback]

The time has come for an update on my 2010 Summer Structure Challenge Project ...

The first building to be constructed for this Northeastern Pennsylvania GERN Campus, situated along the Lehigh River in the small upstate town of Lehighton, will be the "Packaged Product Shipping" building. It will back up to the LS&W's Weissport-to-Scranton Branch and the existing multi-story stone industrial stucture across the tracks, which was purchased as part of the real estate package referred to in the Lehighton Evening Leader article (posted earlier) and will be included as a part of the industrial campus. The Packaged Goods Shipping Building will provide temporary storage as well as a loading facility for bagged and boxed GERN product. The following images will begin to document the construction process of this building as well as the other structures which will comprise the Lehighton, Pennsylvania GERN Industrial Campus.

Replacement walls for the unseen rear and "far side" walls are fabricated ...


The first corner is given a liberal dose of Plastruct Plastic Weld to soften the mating surfaces and the two pieces are pressed together and held at 90 degrees with my thirty year old "chamfered-cornered all-90's 1"x1-1/4"x2" plexiglas corner block" ...


The first corner is evaluated ... and reinforcements and braces are prescribed ...


Four walls a structure make ...


All walls are reinforced and braced ...


Two "kit" walls and two fabricated replacement walls ...


The loading dock wall, along with the unviewed rear wall ...


The paint is scraped from the inside of the loading dock wall to insure a good bond for the "shadow box" interior walls ...


I didn't have a great feeling about the joint between these two large sheets of molded plastic roof, joined at an angle, so reinforcements were added along the ridge, leaving spaces for supporting "roof trusses" ...


The roof is painted and the first rows of Campbell shingles stream off a twenty-eight year old roll and onto the roof, using the molded shingles as a guide ... it felt good!


It became apparent that the roof, intended to fit into another structure at the rear, needed the "notch" filled in ...


The first filler is glued in place and mitered to accept its twin ...


The roof fillers are glued in place, scraped and filed flush with the existing roof, prepared for paint and the applied shingles masked off ...


The gap fillers get painted ...


And so ... the first half of the roof is fully shingled ... done, except for the ridge cap shingles, which will have to wait for the other side of the roof and a lesson from Sumpter250 on cutting and gluing individual shingles ...


I've got to admit, three-dimensional roofing shingles are a mighty big improvement over the molded-in-place kind, even if I DID design molded plastic parts for thirty-five years!


But wait ... there's more ...

... just not right now!