A New Freight House...

[doctorwayne]

...for South Cayuga.

For some time now, the town of South Cayuga has languished in a mostly unfinished state. I've never been totally happy with the Walthers Railway Express building that's situated here, and as a result, the rest of the town has been difficult to populate with rail-served industries.
It's difficult to get a clear shot of the Walthers structure, seen here behind some heavy traffic:



Even this aerial view (Courtesy of Secord Air Services) shows only part of it:



Because South Cayuga is where the Erie Northshore line to Lowbanks and Port Maitland diverges from the north/south tracks of the Grand Valley, the freight house will be an important part of operations, with LCL shipments arriving from- and departing to three different destinations.
I recently visited a nearby hobby shop, and was pleased to see that their department of "used" stuff had grown considerably. Among the treasures there was this freight house, a little the worse for wear, with a few broken or missing pieces, but reasonably priced at twenty bucks. Something about it seemed to suggest NYC's St. Thomas, Ontario station, although the styles aren't all that similar.

Here's the structure, pretty-much as I found it. According to my seven year old Walthers catalogue, its by Kibri and, at that time, was advertised at seventy bucks:





The unseen side is similar, also with a loading dock. Most of it wasn't too difficult to take apart, and I cannibalised one end to make an additional bay to tie together the front and rear walls into one long wall which will face the tracks. The new, unseen, rear wall is .060" sheet styrene, as is the new roof, and loading dock/foundation/floor assembly.
I made the loading dock deeper than the original, necessitating that the one on the rear of the building be eliminated. There's a siding there on which to spot cars for across-the-dock transfer of LCL, but it's also an access track to another industry at its far end.
Here's the re-assembled structure on its new base. The original interior bracing, which also supported the roof, consisted of only two parts (the orange-ish ones visible in the photo below), but for this longer structure, I added vertical bracing at each pilaster location, then cut five- or six-sided shapes from more .060" sheet material to tie the front and rear walls together and to act as roof supports across the building. Below, the cannibalised end wall is also visible, the original brick replaced with a piece of Walthers brick wall material.





The office area, seen below, was moved closer to the track which serves the loading dock, requiring brick detail to be carved into part of the newly-exposed end wall of the warehouse.



Here's a look at the underside of the roof, which I plan to leave removeable. After the photo was taken, I tapered-back the front and rear edges of the stiffeners attached to the underside of the roof, the narrowed leading edges permitting an easy-fitting and self-aligning method for re-installing the roof.



I made some support pedestals for the eave bracing, matching them to the existing ones, and the next task will be to cut and install the braces, both on the front and rear tracks. I also plan to add triangular supports to the top of the wall pilasters, at the point where they meet the underside of the roof overhang. This should help to minimise drooping of the eaves, and their presence not be too noticeable.



One of the new support pedestals can be better-seen here. Access steps to the loading dock are yet to be added, plus under-eave details.



I haven't yet decided whether or not to add a clerestory to the roof. I was going to shingle it with Tichy's slate shingles (moulded in styrene), but I'd need 7 packages, as the main roof is about 225 square inches. That would put this "bargain" well over a hundred bucks. I'd better contact Pete (Sumpter250), as he seems to be the shingle guy around here.


Wayne