Elmer Lane 19 - Foreman's Office

DB marches onwards (as Bill Heslop would say, "You can't stop progress!"):

My next project was the Depot Foreman's office, conveniently labelled '16' in this crop of a picture by Ian Coates in the Steam Inclined book:

In later years, by the time the DJs arrived, the office had received a much bigger lean-to to the right (the side facing the railcar shed) replacing what I assume was a covered entrance door and loo in the little lean-to.

The prototype is somewhat odd-looking in the location of the entrance doors (which seem quite low) vs the windows (which look placed quite high in the walls). I wonder if you came in the entrance doors at a low level, hung up your wet lammy coat, and then stepped up into the main office. Either that or those doors are not for tall people (or the windows are). Anyway, be that as it may...

While in Christchurch the other day, I spied these etched N scale window frames from Ratio/Peco and wondered if they might be useful.

Today what is left of the Evergreen styrene clapboard siding was again wheeled out. It's probably a little coarse/overscale for this building, but it looks the part. Some sides were cut out, .040x.040 square rod used in the 'corners', and a few of the Ratio window frames modified to look a bit more like the prototype by removing some inner frame bits. Those white rods will go on the edges of the ends:

The window frames were glued in place, and the long sides, including the more visible one with its little lean-to, were made up out of offcut bits:

Test fit on site (more on this in a moment):

Painted:

Roofed, with some lovely real Swiss aluminium that I purchased in Wellington or Sydney in the mid-90s and have never used much of:

Underneath the roof peak and trough are some styrene reinforcements, and along the roof peak is a .040 circular rod that the roof sheets were butted up to at the apex.

A chimney with three pots was added on top of the roof and a flagpole at the north end, as these are visible in the Ian Coates pic. I wonder if I can find a tiny NZ flag...

And then installation on site... During the test fit earlier, I thought the whole office looked a bit 'short', but this was not helped by the tracks being about 5mm taller than the scenery base level here. So I added the brown underbits that the prototype had, made from .060 thick styrene, and also raised the wooden base it would sit on by about 2.5 mm. Ballast was then used to raise the 'ground level' around the building.

It looks pretty nice. Unfortunately it is nicer than the chunky railcar shed in front of it. Again, note the odd low doors vs the windows. The 'loo' in the little lean too at this end has whitewashed glass and even an etched fan in the top-left pane! Not that anyone will ever see it unfortunately! You might just make it out in the 4th pic of this post, as the long side walls are being assembled.

The next job will probably be to build some of the small rooms, stores and bike sheds around this office (14,17 & 18 in the top pic above).

Elmer Lane 18 - Railcar shed.

DB 'builds' upon the previous entries:

Next up for tackling was the railcar shed. This would have been built around 1940 or so for the Vulcans and survived until quite recently I believe. 

A crop from a Hugh Bennett pic and a review of Retrolens aerials was done a few months ago. Prominent are the five distinctive fan/stacks on the roof, the skylights, and the lean-to. On the side which faces the Hokitika line, there are five side windows. The end faces seem covered in corrugated. Maybe the whole building is. 

This looked to be about "one metric Waihao Forks" big after placing that goods shed on my tracks. I decided to make it a smidge longer and to lower the pitch of the roof. 

The ends were made from corrugated leftovers from Waihao Forks. The doors being cleverly arranged so the corrugated sides face the audience (Hoki line) and the flat sides face the back. A little detail was quickly added to the doors with some strip styrene from my library of such stuff. It didn't take long and makes the building look a lot fancier than it is. I'll probably follow the same idea for the roundhouse doors.

A slosh of paint and its testing time:

I made the long side out of clapboard, also ex Waihao Forks. I'm not sure if the original had wood or tin on the sides, but there wasn't enough tin to spare anyway. Mine has 4 windows instead of 5, as the building is a little shorter. The windows were made like those for the storage shed, but without the black backing so you can see inside.  The back wall was made from plain styrene and a lean-to added. 

Note that I did an Evan and installed that wall upside down.....  Lower window sills were hastily re-added (visible in the pics at the bottom of this post). 

Like the storage shed, the roof was that imitation Malthoid card. Skylight holes were cut out, the edges blackened, and more roundhouse leftovers installed.

I'm not crazy how these look. Having them 'inset' looks a bit odd, so I'm glad I didn't do this with the roundhouse. Also going in are the roof van/vent/stacks. Made from some Dollar Store wood sticks and some plastic I had knocking about. 

Plastic capped:

And placed on the roof:

Obviously I built these while not looking at the top picture, as these are waaaaay too big. I have a terrible habit of researching these things... and the building them without my computer being nearby....

A few sticks of wood (below) will hold the building in place, but allow removal for track leaning and possible future lighting:

The next day, the big vents were lopped off their stalks and some smaller ones installed. Still oversize, but better than before:

The roof has been weathered, and scenery is quickly advancing down each side of the railcar shed and its tracks. The Hoki line has also been glued down:

Elmer Lane 17 - scenery unfolding

 DB says:

A basic scenery layer has continued to invade Elmer Lane.  But before ballast could hit the roundhouse tracks, they needed to be wired up and a few joints soldered. I've now wired 9 of the 15 roundhouse tracks, heading clockwise from the one next to the boiler house. This includes the tracks opposite the four arrival tracks on the other side and the two little stubs by the foreman's office if that makes sense. 

This is ugly, but it works, most of the mess is is hidden by the roundhouse, and its so much easier than drilling individual droppers down to below. I'll paint the wires the same Harvard Grey as the floor. I've also fixed up those two little stub tracks over beside the office that I'd inadvertently only wired up one rail on.

There was a plan to have on-off switches allowing power into two clumps of three tracks each for the remaining six stalls. This would enable three or six tracks to be electrically isolated - to display non-DCC locos, or even to give DCC locos a rest 'off-the-grid'. I'm not sure I have the energy to do this but we shall see. I might just leave a few completely dead. I will at least power the track inside the end 'wall of windows' as things will look pretty good going into that stall visible through the end wall. 

Another thing we noticed on the modelling day was that on the real Elmer Lane, the sleepers aren't really visible, there are ballast fines everywhere. Here the sleepers stand out, being dark black. 

I tempered this slightly by putting a wash of light grey+brown over them and think this looks a little better. The yard will also be weathered once the ballasting is completed.

Having a bunch of ballast between the rails can get messy in the flangeways, and the few tracks I have here with plenty of ballast on the outer sides and little in the middle look odd, so I'll probably keep the main approach tracks looking tidy as in the pic above.

Ballast has spread far and wide and some green is going down:

Although this isn't a 'countryside' module, there is a little green about, beside the Hoki line, around the back of the roundhouse, and in a few spots in the depot itself. Some low-relief 3d greenery and maybe even some static grass will make an appearance. I think the little hut visible at the end of one of the wee stub tracks was a RhysCasting. It was once on my Moana module.

I even discovered a well-traveled mini-cabbage tree from Moana in a box of scenery bits, so it has been installed too.

Here it and the hut as they were on Moana:

And now further west along the rails at Elmer Lane:

A pile of lighting-up wood was started on one of the stub tracks, made from offcuts of that basswood. Some had grey on one side, some black, so that gives a little variety through the pile. Its been added too since.

Then some soldering of fishplates enabled the strips of 'concrete' to be laid between the tracks and ballast laid:

And some overall views as ballasting has progressed and some of these locos have seen the forst sun in many a year.