Those of you who have been in model railroading for “several seasons” may recall the old maintenance shed building made by Revell in HO scale. The same building was later offered by AHM and by Con-Cor. Bob Brown discussed these old kits in his column for Narrow Gauge and Shortline Gazette in the Nov/Dec 2008 and Jan/Feb 2009 issues. The structure was very typical of many lineside buildings.
That old Revell maintenance shed was one of the first buildings on my model railroad “several seasons” ago. I recall that it had been assembled with altogether too much tube glue. That old building is long gone, but when I wanted to build a handcar shed for my 1:20.3 Seashore, Horry And Georgetown (SHAG RR) here in North Myrtle Beach, I was inspired by the memory of that building.
I scratchbuilt my handcar shed, using some “board and batten” wood milled from cedar which had been purchased several years ago at the East Coast Large Scale Train Show (York, PA). The roof is actual weathered tin roofing from a collapsed peach-packing shed down here in the Carolinas. Nothing looks quite like weathered tin more than weathered tin, and with some careful file work on the edges to remove any sharp burrs, I have been able to work with it relatively easily.
In the photo, the watertower is from a kit by Garden Texture. The caboose is the Hobart Estates caboose kit from Hartford Products. I do still need to add a potbellied stove to the back corner of the shed, so that the section gang will be able to ward off the morning chill and brew a cup of coffee.
Bill