Boxing on:Hutt one, Hutt two, Hutt three

(well, don't say I didn't warn anyone..MD)
(DB belatedly finishes this off: )

I've always thought a workshops scene to be a nice diorama for displaying your rolling stock, so as one example let me present the exterior of Hutt Shops in a boxfile:

The scene is 'boxed in' if you will on three sides - by workshops buildings on each side, and a fence/backdrop behind. The join is masked by a track running in front of the fence that you can store locos, wagons, a craven steam crane or whatever. If you have any old loco tops you could rust them up or even partially dismember them and have your own rotten row.

OK, I know I have some pictures of Hutt buildings somewhere, but not handy... Luckily a trawl through the blog revealed this:

OK, technically that one of DFT 7008 was taken at Hillside by someone, but it illustrates the general concept...

Ah, here's some of the Hutt Traverser, stolen from the interweb. I'd model the doors as rollerdoors with plastic roofing material that could slide up in plastruct channels so you could have any of the doors open or closed. Alternatively you could hinge them properly.

(Stolen from www.valleysignals.org.nz)

(Stolen from the bettertransport.org.nz forum)

The truly masochistic could have a nice model of yellow TR56 shuffling things around in a style similar to some of those cute wee UK exhibition layouts except here the focal point is the normally-hidden traverser, and the stuff that is normally modelled is offstage.

Or is it...

Another approach, slightly more interesting, and one that I've thought about for a long time, is to actually model inside one of the big assembly halls. I've always thought this would make an impressive small diorama to show locos in, or you could connect it to the above traverser concept and have an operating inside/outside workshops layout made up of two boxes.

This second concept goes a little something like this:
Your models are in the bays , surrounded by spare parts, workstations, benches, screened-off welding areas, a freshly overhauled prime mover ready to be installed, those elevated walkways and so forth.

I'd want to build a dummy loco that either has some side doors open or hood sections removed to show the bits and pieces that make locos move.

Mr McNaught did a nice pictorial of DX5477 being refurbished in the Railfan a few years back that would give you plenty of ideas for this, as would the articles that showed the DCs being 'created' in Australia and part 2 of the DSC article that showed them being assembled in NZ. For those with steamier tastes, The Real Mr Dandruff published some pictures recently of workshop interiors, and I'm sure you will have seen pics of Jas being assembled at Hillside. Evan posted an excellent Hutt visit report in here earlier too if you missed it with loads of pictures for inspiration, including the one of the DFT above.

As an added bonus, you could temporarily stick a fuel tank under a loco top and have it hooked up on the overhead traveling crane which could be motorised with slow gearing for the enjoyment of young and old.

I'd consider putting a roof on the thing too and lighting the interior (forcing viewers to peer into the depths and leading the eye on a path of discovery from detail to detail).

In the best traditions of not biting off more than you can choo-choo, the modules could be built quite quickly in a basic fashion - the blue walls with windows and roller doors etc, and then be detailed quite extensively over time. Later you could expand this into quite an extensive workshops layout by adding additional mini-modules containing the load-testing shed, the paint shop, the big blue wall that they always pose locos for photos in front of, the gutted DSC that they test refurbished motors in, the former stack of BR cars and (mainly Australian) locos awaiting overhaul or scrapping, even the old passenger stop on the way to Gracefield, which is, of course, another story!

And don't think you're stuck with Kiwirail DXs either...I took a picture of a pair of Q wagons here in 1990 while there were a bunch of southerners in town:

And to close, yet another interesting sidebar