G'day All,
I have just joined `Big Blue' after surfing it for several months. As I begin to build an N scale Industrial Switching Layout I am intending to have both kit built and scratch built structures. I have had a bit of experience with Google Sketch-up and so I can work out most of the dimensions of a building from a photo of it provided I have the dimensions of a particular feature in the photo. One of the most consistent features of the `shoe box' and 'tilt up' style buildings is the rail-car loading dock door. Could someone please provide me the 'typical' dimensions of these doors. I have some "Pike Stuff" kits that have these doors, but I have also learned that it is not always wise to take the dimensions of the prototype from a model.
I am also wanting to thank the many modellers of modern time period industrial switching layouts for sharing their work and techniques, they are truly inspiring.
Thanks in advance,
Andrew G, Australia

Welcome to Big Blue!

I can give you a hand with the dimensions, but you'll have to give me a bit of time to check...

Again, welcome!

I have Pikestuff N scale buildings. They have three types of doors, train,truck and human. I have found all of them to be very accurate.

Welcome to the gauge big blue.

It is always interesting to see what others are modeling around the world.

What prototype are you modeling?

Hi Andrew, welcome!

I do usual start with a truck trailer for truck loading docks and a box car for car loading docks width and height. The model building must fit a model trailer and/or car. Starting from that dimensions I look at the various prototypes and "guess" the dimensions of the building. The second source is google for the overall dimensions and street view for details of a wall. You will end up with pretty correct dimensions If you combine the measured/estimated dimensions from google with the given dimensions of your model trailers and cars.
Smaller buildings at the street front can be easyer estimated if a limousine is parking in front. The limousine is about 4.50 to 5.00m long (in 2011 US limousines got much shorter than in 1970 ). Rotate is 90° and you can measure/estimate the building height.

Good luck!

Don't forget that if the tracks are laid directly on top of the dirt next to your building, that the bottom of the door will be lower than if you have used cork roadbed under your track.

G'day All,
Thanks for the replies and advice so far. In searching around the internet I came across a reference that rail dock doors are frequently 10ft across, which matches up with the Pikestuff doors.
My plans for the ISL is a set of T-TRAK `technology' based modules for an industrial park located in North Carolina and set in a time frame of roughly 1973-83. This is to allow for the variety of rolling stock I have, ie. lots of SCL. The operating company is likely to be a fictional subsidiary of the Aberdeen & Rockfish short-line of North Carolina, as they did with the Pee Dee River Railway and the Dunn Erwin Railway. This will allow me to run both home road locos and A&R motive power.
My first project along the path to the ISL is a set of modules portraying a TROPICANA distribution facility set up as an Inglenook type switching puzzle.
Some of my other modelling can be seen at my BLOG:
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://ttrakandrew.wordpress.com/">http://ttrakandrew.wordpress.com/</a><!-- m -->
which covers my foray into the modelling of local Australian prototype in N scale, plus links to some Australian N scale sites.

Regards,
Andrew G.

Andrew:
for fun, the spacing of loading doors will match the spacing of boxcar doors at the time the building was put up. If there is a platform between the building and the track, the spacing may not have to be that exact.

Andrew,

Nice website, I have heard of T-Trak before, cool concept small modules that fit on a table top. I seen one somewhere that was an O-27 T-Trak setup looked neat but was a single mainline.

Neat trains as well, I myself operate(run in circles) HO on a club layout, On30, O gauge Hirail and S gauge Hirail at home(home layout is still under construction) the layout is based on lionel and American flyer display layouts with a planned Loop of HO/On30 around the outer edge of layout which is 10' x16' 6". I also enjoy building train kits and scratch building trains.

The guys here are a great bunch and a good mix of experience in various scales.

Whoa...did he write "North Carolina?" There's gotta be a story there for why a guy from Australia would be modeling the Carolinas.

Welcome!!!

Neat and interesting website you have. (That was one scary use of a saw in this hobby!)

Yeah he probably wants to have somewhere to hide his home brew moonshine and talk in an outrageously silly Southern accent.

Ok, so you cant fit much more than a hotel mini bar bottle of booze and a small packet of mixed nuts in a N Scale factory .

I dont claim these spur of the moment theories to be perfect, just useful.

Anyway Andrew from one Aussie to another, to Big Blue, its a fun place to hang out, if a little crazy.

Mark

Here are some photos from Houston. The height of a boxcar door above the railtop is around 3 feet 8 inches. I got that by measuring some HO scale boxcars. Using the 3'-8" as a standard, let's see what we get.

The first photo is from Shasta Beverages where they make soda pop, typically in fruit flavors. The industry still gets corn sweetener by rail in tank cars, but as you can see, the rail doors have been bricked up. Each yellow line is around 44 inches long. That puts the door opening to be about 10 feet x 10 feet.



Next is Gulf Winds International, a shipping company. Door dimensions again look to be 10 by 10.



This is Univar Chemicals. Still get chemicals via tank car, but the boxcar doors are no longer used. This opening looks smaller, so maybe 9 feet x 9 feet.



Last is Texatlantic Textiles. No longer get rail service, but the door opening looks like 10 x 10 to me.



Seems the 10 x 10 would be fairly standard, can't go wrong with that.

I think most concrete tilt up construction was probably done since the 1960's, so the door spacing would be set up for 50-60 foot cars or even longer. I mention this because the meat companies like Swift, Armour Star, Rath, etc continued to use 36 foot ice bunker cars long after the railroads went to 40 foot and eventually to 50 foot as standard refrigerator cars because their packing plants were set up with door spacing for 36 foot cars, and they didn't want to change their buildings.

If a modern building has multiple doors and is designed for 89 foot box cars, and they receive loads in 50 foot cars, the car can be uncoupled and spotted to fit the doors. If multiple doors are spaced for 50 foot cars, and they receive a 60-89 foot car, they loose one or more door spots.

I'm basing the warehouse on my ISL on known door size and spacing dimensions of a facility here in town that I used to work in my railroad days. The case house at the Old Grandad distillery. It was constructed in the mid-50's with 10ft x 10ft doors on 70ft centers. All the cars we spotted there were 50ft box cars, but most of them had extended cushion underframes, such as Hydroframe 60, making the car length just a bit more than 60ft. So when cars were spotted, you had a nice little spacing between each of them. Cars with end of car cushioning would have more space between them. It looks great on a model railroad layout when the cars are spotted at individual doors and there is some open space between them and typical of what you see at many such facilities.

G'day Again Folks,
First off, thanks to Gary S for his detailed and dimensioned photos and advice on tilt-up/shoe box buildings. They, plus the other folks words of wisdom, have been of great benefit and encouragement to me. Hopefully they have been of help to others also.
My choice of North Carolina as a locale for my ISL comes from first having an interest in the Seaboard Coast Line RR, which was a conscious move to avoid the masses of BN, ATSF, UP, & SP N scale modelling that was happening in my part of the world back in the 1980's. Secondly it comes from exposure to the Aberdeen and Rockfish RR through the internet and the now aged Kalmbach publication "Railroads that you can model".
To show that my hands as well as my head has been busy these past few days below is photo of the kit-bash of a Pikestuff kit to form the basis of a small Tropicana distribution warehouse. This is a compressed version of the Cincinnati distribution center ( <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.freerails.com/view_topic.php?id=1033&forum_id=43">http://www.freerails.com/view_topic.php ... orum_id=43</a><!-- m --> ) and will use 40ft reefers (old Atlas plug door box cars collected off E-BAY) in an Inglenook style shunting puzzle.
It is placed on a non-T-TRAK table top module that is part of an initial foray into a module based ISL.

[attachment=8726]

If things work well I will start up some posts over the next few weeks on not only the building kit-bash, but also the modules for the industrial switching layout.
Regards,
Andrew G.