I am building a lumber yard on my HO layout and need your advice.
This is the lumber shed and I need to put in the lumber racks and lumber. I was thinking of using scale basswood for the racks, but not sure about building the stacks of lumber to go inside. Should they be full length or could I get by with making just the ends and somehow making it look like there is a building full of lumber. Your comments please. Mike
A lot of that depends on how the structure is to be viewed. Will it be viewed head on, or from an angle? Overhead, or more eye level? Is it a foreground structure, or background? Will there be anything to block some of the view, like a tree or something?
Also, a structure with that much weight on the second level would probably have a couple of vertical supports across the front, but I could be wrong about that. Otherwise, it looks very good.
Yes, there will be at least 2 uprights supporting the front of the building, and no there are no trees in the plan and it will be in the front of the layout viewed both srtaight on and more so diaginal, (as in the Pic) I just hate to build scale lumber stacks if I do not have to. Any good ideas on building stacks of lumber? I plan to have some on some flatcars as well. Thanks, Mike
Mike, on mine, I used the atlas shed, so the racks came with it.You could use wood or even styrene, when painted , it;ll look fine. For lumber, I used some atlas’s that came with it, and some nj international lumber I found at a train show. I cut thin, .010 inch card stockto scale 4x8 foot sheets and glue together to form plywood stacks. Then just paint top one wood color and color ends and sides with sharpies,black, red, etc, to look like lumber. If veiwed directly inside you’ll want lumber to appear full size.You can cut short pieces and glue and stack, then glue full boards on top row. This lumber is stored outdoors so it will be mostly framing lumber, finished lumber and millwork, sheetrock and such is usually stored indoors with some what better climate control.You can build your racks length wise, at 10 or 12 feet and store lumber directly from railcars to shed with a fork truck, you’ll have less racks that way. Mike
A building of this size for the lumber would definately have verticle bracing every 10 scale feet or so. Lumber is heavy ya know…[:P] When I made some stacks of lumber for the area near my Roundhouse, I made it hollow in the inside but solid on top and on the ends. This way I used only about half the scale lumber. Try some techniques out and see what works best. I would think you would want the top and front of the lumber stacks to look real but the rest wouldn’t really matter.
