I’m thinking about adding a peach packing house to my N Scale layout since peaches were (and still are) a major industry in this part of South Carolina and the railroads played a major role. My idea was to use American Model Builders Transfer Building as the basis for the model. The problem is I can’t seem to find any decent photos of an older packing house. Do you guys have any suggestions? Any always greatly appreciated.
Here’s one in Georgia that’s railserved and surrounded by orchards that’d be cool to model.
Here’s a more modern one in SC, with a bunch of slides of surrounding landscape.
Here’s a shot of an older one in Fort Valley, GA. (scroll down)
Robert Bowdidge has a nice packing building on his SP Vasona Branch (in HO). It’s San Jose, CA, but maybe will give you some ideas.
And this would make a great 1950’s billboard 
The Library of Congress also has an enormous archive of old photos.
Hope this helps.
I recall a Peach shed just passed Jonesville on Hwy 9 where the old Lockhart branch separated from the SR, though it’s been a long time and may be gone now. I think the road was called Peach Shed or something like that.
Also I came across this site while searching for information on cotton mills. It has some pictures of peach industry around Spartanburg. http://www.hubcityrailroadmuseum.org/hubcityrailroadmuseum/Welcome.html
I also remember mama’s peach cobbler made with fresh Carolina peaches. Nothing like those sorry excuses for a peach we find today in the grocery store.
Remember that the design of the packing house / packing shed depends a lot on what’s being packed there. If it’s handling straight vegetables that are going from the field straight into the refrigerator cars, it might be just a platform with a shed roof. If fresh fruit is being graded and packed, then there may be room for extra machinery and a bit of room for boxes and occasional storage. Pears would have been near a cold storage warehouse so the fruit could be kept until needed. For dried fruit packing houses in California, the packing house included grading machinery as well as space for storage of the year’s crop; the dried fruit was packed and shipped only as the crop sold over the year.
If the peaches in South Carolina were mostly being sold for fresh fruit, I’d guess the packing sheds would be closer to the minimal side - lots of loading dock, some room for machinery and storage, but still pretty unassuming. One possible source for inspiration are some of the older packing sheds around California’s Central Valley. James Lancaster’s Packing Houses of Central and Northern California web site ought to give you lots of ideas:
http://scph002.home.netcom.com/cncph.html
His collection of Southern California photos may also be interesting, but I suspect the citrus packing houses might be more permanent because of the longer fruit season.
Hope this helps,
Robert
It’s funny you should mention the Hub City Railroad Museum, since I volunteer there. In fact, that’s where I go the idea to add a packing house to my layout.
I’m afraid the citrus sheds of California have a different configuration than the old peach sheds in SC. The Cambell shed comes closest since many were little more than a platform with a roof over it. However the roof line was different. I’m sorry that I don’t know the proper terms, but the roof was more of a clerestory style – high center section with half walls and then two wings dropping dow from both sides. The packing equipment was open air with loads from the field coming in one side and the other often on a rail spur. Since there was no air conditioning in the sheds, it must have been a pretty hot, sweaty job with a lot of flys, wasps and bees buzzing around the fruit.
Funny how we never take photographs of the common place, until one day it’s not there and we miss it.
As Robert mentioned, James Lancaster’s website www.coastdaylight.com has alot of info in it. I’ve been using this website so much I ended up bookmarking it. I’m working on modeling a small So-Cal farm town in N scale as well and the photos in the website are great. For the most part though, packing sheds in California were really buildings with walls and a roof, not so not many built with just a roof and supports. When I was a kid growing up in So-Cal (Littlerock, CA) in the 70’s, I worked at a pear packing shed that was just a roof and supports, and yes a few walls (mostly for cold storage). The building was approximately 80’ x 40’. I’d like to build a N scale model of that sometime. Anyway, take a look at the website above, hope it gives you some great ideas.
By the way, when I was doing some research on packing houses in Orange County, CA (by Disneyland) I found that 5 acres of orange trees filled up roughly one freight car. It kind of gives you a idea how immense the orchards were back then that would have filled the hundred car freight trains that were headed out of California, and how little acreage there is now.
Regards,
Jeff B
I just built a corrugated Sacramento Northern fruit shed that once stood at Libfarms, Ca. It was a lot of work. I can’t figure out how to load images from my cell phone. It had four loading doors for forty foot boxcars. Search “Peach Crate Labels” and you often can find original crate labels from your area to make stacks of crates. If you can email on this site justingrowe at yahoo dot com, I can send pics.
I’m not sure about the local architecture in South Carolina. However, I live in the midst of a fruit growing area (Shenandoah/Cumberland Valleys), and the packing houses I have seen tend to be single story.