I´m building my modern era H0 layout and want to put a warehouse and cool storage. My project is to scratchbuild the industries and I´m looking for pictures or plans of these structures. Do you know where to search?. This is my first scratchbuilding project so hints and tips are welcome.
If you have a manufacturer, building, area, region, location, etc, you could go take pictures yourself and use those for your project. If you know where one of these facilities is located, you might be able to use Google Earth for 3 dimensional views (without even leaving your home).
A simple internet search, using what ever service you like to use, will reveal lots of pictures. I worked on 2 such facilities, while employed by the company I retired from. They were your basic plain buildings, built from precast concrete panels. They usually had some type of decorative band, or feature on part of the precast wall panels to break up the “plain-ness” of a concrete building, and then painted with contrasting colors. One side of the building would be set up with numerous truck docks, and the other side, or an end of the building was for rail car, depending on how the building was positioned. The only windows were on the offices, usually on a corner of the building, or as a separate addition.
Both docks, rail and truck, were located in a cool storage area, where the temp was a constant 40 degrees, F. From there, you could get into the freezer area, with automatic opening and closing insulated doors between the two areas, and to allow forklifts to move in and out with out stopping. The freezer storage areas were kept at a constant 0 degrees F.
I could get into a lot more detail on different operations and parts of the building, but that really doesn’t matter for modeling such a structure. As seen from the outside, these are just “big box”, “plain-jane” buildings with a lot of truck docks, and a few rail car docks. What is a little different than normal, on one of the buildings we added on to, there was a rail dock that would hold 4 cars, that was inside of the building. This area was not heated, or cooled, and the loads were quickly moved from the rail car to an adjacent cool storage area, and then into the freezer, if needed. I never got to see any switching operations, as we were on the opposite end, always busy pouring floors. I did take a quick visit during a lunch break one day, just to see it.
Have fun ! I really like scatch / kitbashing buildings, and all of the bui
Soller,
I would like to suggest an area in Georgia. Just off I-85 South of Gainesville. On the west side of highway 11 near Pendergrass. This is a big chicken raising - processing area and there are several rail served cold storage places visible from the road.
Hope this helps,
Bob
I’ve seen several such in various places.
Back in the day you might have had a gothic brick structure with the water cooling tower on the roof, along with the ammonia compressor… The few that survive have long since had that equipment replaced with more modern refrigeration plants. A little inventiveness with old-style factory or warehouse kit components from Walthers and others should yield a believable kitbash.
For more recent (since concrete tilt-up) construction, a reasonable equivalent can be made from foamboard, or even cut down cereal boxes, painted white or ‘cement’ and decorated with some modern doors and (a few) windows. Locally, such buildings have cornices, door reinforcing beams and vertical bump-outs (concrete columns with curtain walls between?) which can be modeled with styrene strip. These are frequently painted in a bright color - blue, medium green, dusty rose - and all the buildings in the industrial park will share the same paint scheme and ‘look.’
The big things (literally) are the HVAC boxes on the roof - one for an ordinary warehouse, two or more for a cold storage facility.
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
By cool storage, I assume you’re looking for a food distribution center. The pics below show one. Both of the large buildings are part of the company. They both have rail service. The one with the white roof is made of brick. The one at upper right could be made using Evergreen Scale Models board & batten siding.
Steve S
Go to US Cold Storage’s website, look up their facilities using Bing Maps or Google Maps and Google Street View. Don’t forget the refrigeration equipment on the cold storage.