Yard Building

With the pandemic still in full lockdown mode, I finally got the time to build a small yard and retire a small temporary yard I had built years ago.  The new yard is 10 feet long and sits on two modules which are joined together.

As I was planning my new yard, which was to be situated at the end of the layout, I wanted to include some sort of yard office, as well as a freight shed that had been removed from a different part of the layout. Looking at some photos, I realized that I had enough room to make a fairly complete scene by using the Mechanical Building at Englehart as an example. The other side of the track would house my freight shed.

Drone view courtesy Mike Robin

South side of Bldg; scale house in right foreground

South side of Bldg

North and east walls of the Bldg

The build started with a general Pikestuff building kit, with a few extra side panels added and cut down in height to make a lower roofline. Unfortunately I only had photos of 3 sides of the building, and the pandemic cancelled two trips I had planned to get the info. So the west wall is a complete guess.

One detail that I noticed going back through several years of photos was that the roof and building sides have two different shades of blue, as well as downspout configurations. Perhaps due to a building expansion? Matching the weathering condition and color was a real challenge and although not a true match, the result is pleasing to my eye. Maybe I'll try to alter it at some later date.

One of the challenges was to match the various windows and their position on the wall without any true measurements.  Cutting the doors and windows would turn out to be fairly time consuming, as the Pikestuff panels are fairly thick plastic and required a steady hand and many knife blades to cut them all.

The challenge now is to complete the scene in the background by adding all of the details that you see in the upper photo.  I just finished building the small building directly behind the main structure, as well as removed the trucks from an old Athearn 40 foot ONR boxcar which has been parked in the weeds.

The gravel type pavement was created by pouring tile grout to the consistency of a slushy and then drawing it relatively flat and level across the area.   I plan to weather some of the gravel area with pan pastels to give it more of a well worn look.  Now I just have to find or build the suitable ONR service vehicle(s) to park outside of the building.