Minneapolis Fork. Part 7. The first structure.

 I imagine that after a week of daily posts, followed by a week of silence. Some of you are thinking that the project has been consigned to the dustbin and I’ve moved onto something else. Not so. By necessity things have moved somewhat slowly this week. So here’s how far I’ve got with a model of my favourite warehouse wall.

Firstly there were problems with the material. I am a confirmed user of Elmers foam core board for my buildings, (and some baseboards). However, of late it seems to have disappeared off the shelves of some of my favourite hobby stores, to be replaced by an inferior product. Warped and badly cut to size, I was having doubts about the buildings for the layout.

The warped product

After some thought I decided to carry on with caution and make extra efforts to brace the material. 

Extra bracing all round.

It seems better, though I may still have to add another brace after all the glues have set.

All the openings were located and sized by counting the blocks in the photographs. O scale concrete block (Plastruct ref. PS-1067 91621), and corrugated siding (PS-25 91520) were used. Though the siding caused my some worries. Take a look at the two ends of a sheet of the styrene. 

The top photo shows one end of the sheet and the bottom, the other end of the same sheet. I’m not sure why they should be so different. But I really had to keep an eye on these corrugations as I cut the sheets to size on my building

After a week of careful work and leaving things much longer for the glue to set than I’m used to. I have a pretty good structure that really looks like the prototype. The disappointment is that I can’t fit the external escape stair in. But never mind, eh? We can’t have everything.

So far, so good. Very happy with the way it looks

A closer view. Everything looking good so far.

The door will need framing in, and I have suggested the roll up doors by using O scale corrugated sheet. I’ll see if I can get some HO scale when reproducing the doors properly. I may even make them openable by some method or other, just to see if people are paying attention at shows. 

As I look at it more, I do think it needs an office extension at the right hand side. Otherwise a successful weeks work.