While searching for a suitable cement plant/transfer facility, I have been thinking about scratchbuilding my own unloading shed for covered hopper cars. I have reviewed the kits available and may not have the space for such a large kit (Medusa Cement) as far as footprint size goes. Firstly, any idea what such a shed would be made out of (corrugated metal, clapboard, etc)? Any suggestions on where to begin and what to do and how? I've built my share of kits but not from scratch. HO scale.
Corrugated metal is most likely, although concrete block is possible for a concrete products plant.
Evergreen corrugated sheet is the easiest. You could also build it out of sheet styrene card or wood and cover with some sort of siding material. For the true scratchbuilt feeling you could buy a sheet of Evergreen corrugated material, then tape a sheet of smooth finish paper to it (tape along the edge parallel with the corrugations) then starting from the tape, working away, scribe down the corrucations with a ball point pent or scribe to make your own currugated siding. You can do every corrugation or skip corrugations to make more modern siding. Cut to length, attach with spray adhesive or a non-water base adhesive.
Just using Evergreen siding is way easier.
Dave H. Painted side goes up. My website : wnbranch.com
Couple things I would add to dehusman's comment;
1) Make a paper/cardboard mockup and test fit it before cutting styrene sheet. Those special Evergreen siding sheets can get expensive if you make a wrong cut.
2)start with a simple square shape and take your time getting edges straight and square. This will make assembly much easier.
3) Cut as much detail into each wall before assembly.
4) Add internal structure to each corner and wall. If you have open doors, this will enhance realism as well as structural integrity.
Modeling whatever I can make out of that stash of kits that takes up half my apartment's spare bedroom.
Don't ignore the concrete block that Pikestuff offers
https://rixproducts.com/product-category/pikestuff-ho/concrete-block-walls/
Also Pikestuff has the steel building "prefab" looking material that I would think a modern era shed would be made of. Note that there are two pages to look at here:
https://rixproducts.com/product-category/pikestuff-ho/pikestuff_parts/
Dave Nelson
let me ask is this just storage where product is off loaded in to trucks right from rail car or into a holding area?
brakeman618 While searching for a suitable cement plant/transfer facility, I have been thinking about scratchbuilding my own unloading shed for covered hopper cars. I have reviewed the kits available and may not have the space for such a large kit (Medusa Cement) as far as footprint size goes.
While searching for a suitable cement plant/transfer facility, I have been thinking about scratchbuilding my own unloading shed for covered hopper cars. I have reviewed the kits available and may not have the space for such a large kit (Medusa Cement) as far as footprint size goes.
Have you thought about kit bashing? If I like a kit but it doesn’t fit, I make it fit. The leftovers go to another kit bashing project. I have made some structures from scratch but if you can stand on someone else’s shoulders do it.
How they want you to make it:
How I made it:
And here are the left overs:
I did what Bundy suggest, I made cardboard mock-ups, once satisfied with the design and shape, I strenghend it, and covered it with modular building compoments from Walthers and Pike Stuff. Both of these are buildt this way.
The mill building as a lot of Walthers parts, including the mill house. I used the wall sections to make a 3 sided mill house, and the tanks are all made from plastic pipe. I still have the 6 silo peices the came with the Walthers grain mill kit. The tanks on the plastics plant also uses PVC piping, and the misc. piping and railings are scratch built using sprues, as piping, and brass and wire as the railings on top of the tanks. I can make kit parts go along way. Mike
The mill building as a lot of Walthers parts, including the mill house. I used the wall sections to make a 3 sided mill house, and the tanks are all made from plastic pipe. I still have the 6 silo peices the came with the Walthers grain mill kit. The tanks on the plastics plant also uses PVC piping, and the misc. piping and railings are scratch built using sprues, as piping, and brass and wire as the railings on top of the tanks.
I can make kit parts go along way.
Mike
My You Tube
brakeman618Firstly, any idea what such a shed would be made out of (corrugated metal, clapboard, etc)?
If you are modelling an earlier era that might limit your choice of siding a bit, i.e. board and batton, concrete block or corrugated steel. If you are modelling a more modern era you have lots of choices. If the structure is supposed to be a newer building then the Pikestuff panels would be a good choice, but if the building is older then just about anything that resembles industrial siding will work.
As for materials, personally I favour styrene. It is easy to work with and the end results usually look pretty good. Evergreen has several different siding patterns in styrene that would suit your purpose. The Pikestuff panels are really good for a modern building.
http://www.evergreenscalemodels.com/Sheets.htm
I don't use card stock. It was a great material before styrene came along but IMHO it is outdated. It requires more work to achieve the same thing as styrene and it is less stable. I can hear the screams from those who would disagree as I type this, and certainly there have been some nice cardstock based structures shown in previous posts. I'm not saying that those who use card stock are wrong. Cudos to their skills. I just don't like it.
I do use wood where the material totally suits the structure but I don't think that is necessarily the case with your project.
Dave
I'm just a dude with a bad back having a lot of fun with model trains, and finally building a layout!
This would be from rail to storage. I dont have the room on the layout or dont want to overwhelm the rest so the main facility will be in the aisle.
All good advice. Thanks for sharing and the pictures. I'm trying for something simple first and have some cereal boxes lying around that will serve as a mockup before the cutting of the styrene.
Hello all,
Just to throw the proverbial spanner in the works…
Have you considered kit-bashing for your project?
You mentioned that you have built several kits, and there might be a kit that fits your needs but not the space.
On my pike, the command station booster sits in the center of a loop of track with spurs (I have no under layout access).
I bought a Walthers kit that I though would cover the booster. When I did the test fit I found out that the kit was too small.
From there I bought a second, identical kit, and am in the process of combining the two to create the building that will fit my needs.
The kit-bash option will let you build the structure you need and give you the experience of scratch-bulding you want.
And…it might give you some "spare parts" to experiment with scratch building- -the best of both worlds!
Hope this helps.
"Uhh...I didn’t know it was 'impossible' I just made it work...sorry"
I made an office bldg. to go along with the warehouse kit. Some of the tools needed are:
The building itself was made using "For Sale" signs from Wal-mart. It's a LOT cheaper than commercial styrene modeling sheets. For corrugated or patterned sheets, the commercial styrene is a lot easier to use than to try adding thin strips to model this pattern.
The openings for the door and windows are drawn and the corners are cut with the 90° punch. The rest of the openings are cut with the scale and Exacto knife. Make several light passes. This prevents the blade from "walking". Cut the openings slightly undersize, then finish file to fit. There are doors, windows, etc. commercially available from several companies. The square styrene strips are using for internal bracing.
I print out window treatments on my inkjet printer and scale them down to size. Print them on glossy photo paper; the images comes out crisper than printing them on regular printer paper. Seal the images with Dull-Cote. You can tape them inside the windows or glue them in with plain white glue.
Marlon
See pictures of the Clinton-Golden Valley RR
Even if there was a kit available, or an easy kit-bash, this sounds like the perfect project for someone's first scratch building attempt: the building would be non decorative, utilitarian, not lots of windows or doors, simple if not drab painting.
Learning to work with styrene beyond what kits call for can be fun. It remains an amazing product - and I am old enough to remember when many modelers really resented it and resisted using it because of the strong bias against plastics of any sort at the time. It took a guy named Al Armitage and his articles in MR to rub folks' noses in the potential that they were overlooking. His early styrene modeling remains impressive even today.
Another vendor for corrugated siding is JTT Microscale, offering styrene siding, roofing, and planking, as well as trees, landscaping materials, figures, automobiles, and more. Two 7.5 x 12 x .02" thick sheets of corrugated siding are $5.95. That compares favorably with Evergreen.
http://www.jttmicroscale.com/
Clickable link.
Fred:
Do you know if both sides of the corrugated siding sheets are patterned or is one side smooth like the Evergreen stuff?
Thanks
I have used thick aluminum foil instead of paper. Actually, I never used paper like that, and I might try it sometime. The foil gives the advantage of distressing the edges so the individual sheets are easily seen, but not grossly out of place. I use to make them by rubbing the foil over a comb's teeth since Evergreen didn't have their corrugated metal sheets back then. A disadvantage is that the foil can bend easily, marring the sheet before you apply it to the building subsurface. Just another thought on scratch building corrugated metal sheets.