I need a building with an opening wide enough for two tracks. I guess I’m going to have to scratch-build something because I can’t find an appropriate kit. The tracks will be used to hold 50’ boxcars with the tracks close enough to allow a steel plate to be placed from the door of one boxcar to the door of a parallel boxcar. This close spacing doesn’t allow room for a column between the tracks.
So, if you have any photos of actual, real-life buildings like this, would you post them here? If you’ve built something like this, would you post some photos here please?
Or if you can give me a link to a location on Google/Bing maps with a good street-view, that would work too.
My RR era is 1958, so modern buildings aren’t much help, I’d like something that belongs in 1958.
Just build the thing!! You already have a very clear picture in your mind of what you want. The only thing that a picture might add is details.
I love scratchbuilding, and I have built many structures based on the picture in my mind. They all turned out pretty well IMHO, although I am considering doing a couple of them over because I didn’t get the foundations quite right the first time.
Trust yourself! You will do good, and if you aren’t happy with the first attempt, your experience will allow you to get it more than right the second time around!
For starters, you could not have picked a worse title to this thread. I thought that it was going to be a motivational thread. How about something like, Need a Building With a 2-Track Entry.
Anyhow, how about the Walthers Cornerstone George Roberts Printing Company? Out of the box, it provides a 1-track building entry/exit. But with a little sawing and hacking, you can remove the adjacent pillar and first floor brick wall to open up the building to allow a second track.
Another possibility is the Walthers Cornerstone Hardwood Furniture Company. Same sawing/hacking approach as the Walthers Cornerstone George Roberts Printing Company.
I like the suggestions from Dave and Rich. Kit-bash or scratch.
Walthers Cornerstone and some of the European makers have plenty of structures to base your building on. The Cornerstone buildings are particularly adaptable to kit-bashing.
I was in a quandry about building a “US Mail Postal Annex” near my Union Station. I came up with the idea to elevate the structure above the trackwork. This gave me the option of laying track in whatever configuration that suited me and allowed the viewer to see what was going on under there.
Because I wanted platforms between the tracks for mail-handling trucks I didn’t mind having columns underneath. You could just as easily pair the track without columns.
Alternately, you could scratch-build a foundation or ground floor floor with the double-track wide opening using DPM modular bits and setting an appropriately-sized building on top of that.
Rich is right…a lot of Walthers’ larger structures could be easily modified to create the set-up that you require.
I didn’t need a two-track opening, but combined two Walthers “American Hardware” structures into a larger building with a covered loading area…
Ed’s scratchbuilt solution for his situation is both prototypical and elegantly done.
Walthers has a wide variety of building options. I’m surprised they didn’t have what you wanted. Before ordering stuff, do you have a part of the country you’re modeling? What is the building designed for? Plenty, plenty here kitbash entirely from mixing multiple structures.
Amazed at the finished products from some my esteemed colleauges.
What you describe resembles how many freight houses were designed and built. But even some of those had separate doors for the two tracks, even with the tracks that close. Kitbashing is one possibility. Another is seeing what could be done with the Design Preservation Models “modular” pieces (or if you can find a supply, the old Walthers modular system).
City classics has a limited modular system. Pikestuff does as well. There is a relatively new one out of germany called Auhagen. Very complete system like dpm. The architecture details will work with US buildings.
I have seen freight houses and industrial customers in the South with two parallel tracks underneath an awning, but not going in through the same roll-up door in the side of a building. That would be a huge roll-up door.
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Would putting the tracks under an open sided awning work?
After re-reading your post, I’m not convinced that there’s insufficient room for columns between the tracks.
You’re using 50’ boxcars, and I’m assuming that each track will hold an equal number of such cars. Using Evergreen’s 1/4" H-columns, which scale-out to 1’9"x1’9", they’d support several storeys-worth of structure above this particular area where the tracks are located, which means that the plates used between adjacent cars wouldn’t need to be a great deal longer than that to span the gaps.
Your minimum track clearance, assuming the interior tracks aren’t curved, would be somewhat greater than 10’6", which is the measured width, over the metal grabirons on one side and the cast-on ladder on the opposite side, of this modified Athearn Blue Box 50’ boxcar, …
(Disregard the fact that it’s a doubledoor car, as I don’t have a singledoor 50’er.)
I see no reason for not using columns between the adjacent tracks, or not also using them between two adjacent and suitably-sized doors.
I’d space the interior columns at roughly 25’ intervals, starting at whatever point from the building’s doors that would leave a cut of cars on each track where the columns are not in the way of the door openings.
All you need to do to get started is to select a suitable looking structure, and modify it accordingly. Just those from Walthers give you a pretty-broad selection.
I’m guessing that your purpose for this building is as
Shorpy.com has vintage photos. Most are older than 1950’s but they were shot with high resolution 8x10 view cameras. A lot of big American cities had devastating fires around the early 1900’s and buildings that replaced them lasted until urban renewal came along in the 1960’s
Rich, Thanks for the suggestions. I checked out both of them and I don’t think either one is right for what I want. I studied them as-is and as parts and pieces for kit bashing. Thanks again, Jeff
Kevin, Thanks for the thought you’ve given my situation. No, I really don’t want an open-air unloading dock. See my reply to Doctor Wayne below for more information. Thanks, Jeff
Doctor Wayne, Thanks for following up on my request for help. Your information about setting an H-column between the tracks to support the structure above the opening dovetails nicely with Kevin’s observation above that each track would have its own door but a door big enough to span two tracks is probably not realistic. Many years ago in Owings Mills, MD, there was the Maryland Cup Company. I drove by there many times and took a few pictures but access and photo angles were difficult. I thought it was an interesting industry because it required 3 different car types. 100T covered hoppers with plastic pellets. The LOs were just parked alongside a blank wall and the pellets were sucked inside by a vacuum hose. Along the mainline was a siding where tank cars filled with wax were parked. The tank cars were double-hulled to allow steam to be pumped in when the weather was cold and the wax was solid. The wax was pumped out and stored in nearby tanks. 50’ boxcars were loaded and unloaded inside a warehouse-type building. I figure they brought in paper for the cups, cartons to ship out the cups and maybe dyes to color the cups. Since paper is being unloaded, I don’t want an open-air loading dock. So, this what I’m trying to replicate - but in limited space. So, the warehouse sits on a corner of the layout with the production facility just ‘off the layout’. I’d like to bring in 6 50’ boxcars, 3 on each track. One long wall will be layout fascia but one long wall will be visible. Thanks to suggestions from others, I’ve found a single-track, arched entrance by DPM. I think I can cut away the left side of one entrance, the right side of another and the arch of both. With your idea of an H-column, I could support a beam above the two altered entrances. This might work. Then it’s a matter of choosing DPM wall sections for the1 or 2 stories above the entrance and the long warehouse wall. Many thanks, Doctor Wayne, you’ve been a great help. Jeff
True, this is a contemporary building but I’ve seen older structures similarly outfitted. I seem to recall seeing a building or two on New York Central’s High-Line where the opening spanned two tracks.
Look at the structure on page three (St. John’s Park Terminal) here:
The beginning scenes of this video have some decent views of some of the buildings with multiple-track openings. Not all were sidings, of course, but there may be some inspiration here.
Thanks, Ed. That picture is an example of what I was hoping to find, although that one is a bit too new for me. There must be others out there. Interesting video on the High Line, too Thanks, Jeff
I acknowledge the modern era for that particular building. I only posted it to show that there are actually two-track span openings in buildings.
This was pretty much why I pointed out the West Side Line. These buildings were designed in 1929 and built in '30 and '31. They seem to have two-track — perhaps some even a bit wider — openings.
This view is of the Manhattan Refrigerating Co. and beyond is the Bell Telephone Laboratories building.
St. John’s Park freight terminal with a NYC tri-power locomotive switching cars. Note two-track openings. I can not say for sure if all, some, or none of these openings have doors.
