OK, so first off, I have put the Fuel Depot in place - this is part of the Walthers kit. I have added a few signs plus some oil drums. I am going to add two petrol pumps. This will also be where the S&NE diesels refuel but that is to come. The fence behind, as mentioned before, is scratch built from coffee shop stirrers. My NWSL Chopper does a great job of cutting these things to size. The next bit to go in is the gates to the railroad yard. These will be open and you can see the road going away.
Next off, I have put the "General Manufacturing" industry in place. This is a Carolina Craftsman Kit - Grizz's Hidden Gems which I have adapted by building a new base. The base is two layers of 5mm foam board covered with stone effect styrene card and decking made from the above mentioned stirrers. Again, I have made up the signage. This was a slightly tricky kit as it was laser cut but came with lots of stripwood for the bracing etc. It ended up looking OK.
I am now getting on with the lumber yard. I am making this from scratch (apart from the crane, which comes from a Wills kit). The pile of logs in the background is a flat car load that is there temporarily.
The yard, in theory, receives uncut tree trunks and converts them into coarse cut lumber. To achieve this it needs the crane for loading/unloading and a saw to cut the timber. I found an image that I liked on the internet. (c) https://www.dreamstime.com
This seems to me to have all the attributes I need. A small installation, constructed of wood and an easily modelled saw. I decided that it could be built using my stirrers. It is going together very nicely at the moment. First off, I cut the back planks. I then used the jig that I made for the railroad yard fence to put together short sections - held together using masking tape. (You can see some of the sections in the back of the image below)
The cross braces had some double sided tape applied and then the short upright sections were attached. Following that, the roof and its bracing were attached. The roof is just some basswood that I had lying around.
Next, I had to make the concrete base. This was made from DAS air dry clay. Whilst it was setting, I inserted some cocktail sticks into the clay to make the holes ready for the main uprights.
Having got all that in place, I layered the roof with strips of printer paper to represent tar paper weatherproofing. This is what it finally looked like:
A spray of Vallejo Model Air wood finished off the top part and a coat of Vallejo mid-grey covered the concrete base. I made a small table saw to look roughly like the one in the photo. This was made from bits of plastic card and strip wood - mostly held together by doble sided tape.
Once everything was in place, this is what it looks like. I am quite pleased. It was well worth the effort and I am thrilled to be bac scratch-building again after many years.
You can see that the back fence is now in place along with the gates. Not being sure quite how to handle the signage on the gates (and having search the internet for examples) I went for: "Sunset Rail Yard - No entry unless on business - By Order". That might be a bit too British but without more information, I looks OK to me. Also, there is only on US citizen that is ever going to see this in the flesh and he won't mind!
At the same time as getting all of this done, I have completed the Blair Line "Greene's Feed and Seed". This was a great kit and a pleasure to make. I liked it so much that I have ordered three more kits directly from them. They are charging me just $9.99 for shipping from the US so they are great people in my book. I liked the way the kit went together and I also liked it that you got "stuff" to place around. I haven't started scenicking this end of the layout yet so it looks a bit bare.
Don't you just love all those posters! I have to admit that the back side of the building is bare of all these as I have loaded the side we can see.
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