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).