Placing Rail Served Industries On Layout Edge

[FCIN]

Below was my attempt to model this railroad deadend, that was situated near the end of my shelf layout.

Very nicely done! Did you stay with this structure arrangement?

Love the look of it and it really captures the look of the prototype!

[faraway]

@Fast Car
That buildings look really good! Is that your fist time posting photos of that buildings? Can't remember to have them seen before.
Anyhow, you solved the situation with a little trick. You shifted everything to the background to have the space for full buildings in the foreground. I think that worked very well. While looking at your pictures and imagine to sit in front of the first row of your building fronts give me a better feeling than sitting in front of my cut building. You got both worlds, a concrete canyon and a beautiful building front.

[fast car]

Below was my attempt to model this railroad deadend, that was situated near the end of my shelf layout.

Very nicely done! Did you stay with this structure arrangement?

Love the look of it and it really captures the look of the prototype!

FCIN,

Thank you for the nice comments. I moved this arrangement to fit on a penninsula, since I need to place to put a runaround track. This will allow me to increase the size of both structures and both will be complete with access to three sides with streets on both edges as well as a five lane 54th street on tip of the penninsula. This will also let me to have a few peripheral warehousing structures and a runaround track. I was attempting to capture the general look of the Archives America and the Seaboard Warehouse at 54th Street and 35th Avenue.

[fast car]

@Fast Car
That buildings look really good! Is that your fist time posting photos of that buildings? Can't remember to have them seen before.
Anyhow, you solved the situation with a little trick. You shifted everything to the background to have the space for full buildings in the foreground. I think that worked very well. While looking at your pictures and imagine to sit in front of the first row of your building fronts give me a better feeling than sitting in front of my cut building. You got both worlds, a concrete canyon and a beautiful building front.

Reinhard,

Thank you for you nice comments. The benchwork started out as 18" bi-fold doors (Lance Mindheim suggestion), but I ended up adding several additional 1"x 2" pine boards to the edge to bring it out to 22" wide. This allowed me the extra room to place a two lane road in the foreground next to the structure. I have attempted to utilize ideas from your layout as well as Lance and Kurts. If I was to do it again, I would have settled for a 24" wide by 96" long bi-fold door and made both structures slightly wider. There is more than enough room for three tracks between the two buildings. The four track is fed the back warehouse from a separate turnout. Below is a Bing photo of the actual complex.

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.bing.com/maps/?v=2&cp=n93qyd89c3bz&lvl=19.647281581665314&dir=92.50114610382997&sty=b">http://www.bing.com/maps/?v=2&cp=n93qyd ... 2997&sty=b</a><!-- m -->

Larry

[Brakie]

Larry,
I like you buildings..

Did you use mattboard?

The reason I am asking I would like to make 2 or 3 for my modern N Scale Slate Creek ISL.

[tetters]

Nice work on those buildings Larry! I love that breezeway too very neat detail for the buildings to have.

[FCIN]

I was attempting to capture the general look of the Archives America and the Seaboard Warehouse at 54th Street and 35th Avenue.

You not only captured the look, you made a trophy out of it!

Beautiful job! Hope I can come remotely close to doing something like this.

[fast car]

Larry,
I like you buildings..

Did you use mattboard?

The reason I am asking I would like to make 2 or 3 for my modern N Scale Slate Creek ISL.

Brakie,

Thank you. The structures are constructed from .060 sheet plastic. The Plastics Store near where I live, sells .060 styrene in 4' x 8' sheets for about $30.00. Everything I have constructed comes from larger sheets since it is too costly to purchase Plastruct or Evergreen. I cut using a large utility knife and a 3" x 36" metal straight edge.

I cut the window openings and either use Tichy or Rix Products windows inserted into the openings. The louvered vents and doors are from either Tichy or Rix. Other details such as conduit are made from scratch using methods described by Kurt and Reinhard.

[fast car]

Nice work on those buildings Larry! I love that breezeway too very neat detail for the buildings to have.

Tetters,

Thank you. I needed something to break up the straight line look. I am presently working with anchor bolt cement and attempting to construct loading docks outlinedusing a method outlined by Lance Mindheim. It works fine and I am pleased with the color. However, when pouring into a one-half inch thick form, it is necessary to add a couple of lengths of metal re-rod to keep it from warping.

[shortliner]

I heard back from my contact, and he thinks the idea of vinyl overlays for clear acrylic or styrene may work well, however he would appreciate some examples of the sort of thing that would be needed, along with approximate dimensions. Can any of you guys on the left hand side of the pond, help out with some flat on photos and dimensions? Even something like a flat on building photo, and the dimensions of a laoding door or window on it will help to provide a size. of the building itself. Also some idea of how many people might be interested in the resulting semi-transparent see through building - mobviously we understand that it would depend in part on the cost of the vinyl print. Cheers, and compliments of the season to you all
Jack

[Brakie]

Fast Car,Thanks for the modeling information.I don't know of any local source that sells 4x8' sheets of plastic so,I will use mattboard.

[MasonJar]

Larry,

I sometimes can get 2x8 sheets of styrene from local transit - they are used as the backer for bus-side advertising. After a good scrub, they come out pretty nice, and are ready to take paint as their months on the side of the bus usually knocks of any "shiny-ness". Best of all, they are free.

Andrew

[fast car]

Fast Car,Thanks for the modeling information.I don't know of any local source that sells 4x8' sheets of plastic so,I will use mattboard.

Brakie,

I was paying about $7.00 for about 3 sheets of 11 "x 7" 0.60 styrene from Plastruct and was becoming cost prohibitive. I was using it for roads as well as structures. Large sheets can be purchased on-lin

Everyone have a peaceful and happy holiday season.


Larry

[Mr Fixit]

This topic is particularly appropriate for me as I am modelling the EFRR and I particularly want to model the TQW warehouse from an inside view [in condensed form] as the whole railroad lends itself to being modelled froman East facing point of view.
Ed's photo is of EFRR 2716 inside the Total Quality Warehouse [TQW] in Effingham, Illinois
As far as the interior of the warehouse is concerned, the white material is I assume some sort of insulation wrap material with probably fibreglass insulation blanket behind. I base this on my knowledge of industrial type buildings here in Australia and I am assuming that given how cold Illinois winters can get and that TQW is a 24/7/365 concern, keeping some warmth in and stopping cold winds is important.
With regard to switching moves inside the warehouse; it is a through track with a run track around outside on the other side of the concrete and sheet metal wall behind EFRR 2716. Engine drags cut of cars into warehouse, and if no other switching is to be done, shuts down and cut of railcars are unloaded by forklift trucks and the loads are either positioned for rapid reload onto trucks or storage within the warehouse. Items stored at TQW include rolls of printing paper, large sheets of chipboard for a large cabinetmaker, billets of aluminium, food stuffs and I believe frozen foods. They have also handled coils of sheet steel. Basically TQW will provide third party logistics for just about anyone within a days drive of Effingham.
Mark

[FCIN]

Mark;

Having visited the EFRR several times over the years, I can tell you this much about the TQW warehouse. The building is constructed of what I call typical corrugated sheet metal, attached to steel H and I beams. A fairly common method of constructing large facilities like this one. When I worked for the F&C Railroad, we switched a very similar facility, the case house at Schenley Distillers that spotted 5 cars inside.
   
I want to have such a facility on the edge of my layout with a detailed interior and have been experimenting with having the track on the outside, but am now thinking more of having the track enter the building since you'd be able to see the cars spotted in the structure. The track entering the warehouse from both ends like the Effingham TQW warehouse is also an interesting feature.

Biggest problem I see with having the cars inside the structure is a practical way of uncoupling cars so that you wouldn't have to pull the whole track just to switch out one or two cars. Track magnets are out of the question (don't like them or the un-prototypical moves you often have to make when using them). I have thought about modifying a Rix uncoupling tool http://www.rixproducts.com/6280014.htm so that you could stick it inside the structure over the warehouse floor and be able to magnetically uncouple the cars. I have a couple of the Rix tools that I don't use, so may well test that idea out.

My current mockup for my warehouse has the track outside the structure which works fine except for not being to see what is spotted at the warehouse. I'm able to uncouple cars over the proposed structure which will scale about 30 feet high, with no problem. Just don't like the fact that you can't see what is spotted there.

I think that having such a structure with a detailed interior would be a nice feature on an ISL. Rolls of paper, large boxes, drums and a couple of fork lifts and personnel in the structure would really look nice.