05-28-2012, 07:46 AM
The OL King Coal building is very nice. While originally a small coal dealer (the passageway would have housed a covered scale for trucks or wagons) I can see it evolving into a "main office" type building for some other business as coal fell out of use as a heating fuel in the 1950s. Some ideas include:
1) Other bulk seller (gravel, sand, salt) but this would be unlikely in modern era, unless there was some huge storage modeled (or implied) behind. Not likely to have the real estate to do that, as a lot of these types of coal dealers were in urban areas. But that is not to say it's not possible.
2) HQ for some sort of transshipment. There is a place in Montreal that is near the VIA tracks, and it is headquartered in an old brick building. The site itself has a siding running along one side through an open "quonset" for covered unloading. They use a front-end loader with a coupler welded to the bucket to move the cars. They seem to have everything in their yard, from intermodal containers to bulk unloading and even some boxcars.
3) Local distributor for GERN
. If you've read up on the GERN threads here, you'll know you can make it anything you want, so the sky's the limit in this case. Any era cars, doing anything you like can be justified.
4) Car repair/rebuild shop. Since it is just of the main, perhaps it has become a place to park one or two cars "out back" for more extensive repairs that cannot be completed on a RIP track. A building that size could house the offices, washrooms, change rooms, breakrooms and a small shop that would be required. There is probably enough room in the former coal yard to house a few steel buildings to store spare parts.
5) As suggested above ^^^ maybe the building has simply become something that is not rail served. You could take out the turnout/switch, but leave the tracks buried in dirt and debris out back of the offices. Or maybe the whole thing has been abandoned.
Hope that helps.
Andrew
1) Other bulk seller (gravel, sand, salt) but this would be unlikely in modern era, unless there was some huge storage modeled (or implied) behind. Not likely to have the real estate to do that, as a lot of these types of coal dealers were in urban areas. But that is not to say it's not possible.
2) HQ for some sort of transshipment. There is a place in Montreal that is near the VIA tracks, and it is headquartered in an old brick building. The site itself has a siding running along one side through an open "quonset" for covered unloading. They use a front-end loader with a coupler welded to the bucket to move the cars. They seem to have everything in their yard, from intermodal containers to bulk unloading and even some boxcars.
3) Local distributor for GERN
. If you've read up on the GERN threads here, you'll know you can make it anything you want, so the sky's the limit in this case. Any era cars, doing anything you like can be justified.4) Car repair/rebuild shop. Since it is just of the main, perhaps it has become a place to park one or two cars "out back" for more extensive repairs that cannot be completed on a RIP track. A building that size could house the offices, washrooms, change rooms, breakrooms and a small shop that would be required. There is probably enough room in the former coal yard to house a few steel buildings to store spare parts.
5) As suggested above ^^^ maybe the building has simply become something that is not rail served. You could take out the turnout/switch, but leave the tracks buried in dirt and debris out back of the offices. Or maybe the whole thing has been abandoned.
Hope that helps.
Andrew
