Background building to rail served

What started out to be a background building to fill an empty space morphed itself into a rail served industry with just the addition of a loading ramp. Here’s how it went.

I had a factory kit that I had glued the front and back walls together to create  one long wall that had 2 loading doors at each end. I just never liked the way it really looked and decided to finish it and just place it in the background. When I studied it closer I thought I could cover the walls with something flat and photo laminate brick walls and loading doors onto the surface.

Once that was done, I needed to create a complete scene and that’s better done on the workbench. I cut a base from a plastic snipe sign to fit the space nice and snug. Spray painted it brown and let it dry. Then I used full strength white glue spread evenly over the two green areas and sprinkled various colors of turf, grass and clump foliage over the glue. I laid out some green areas on either side of the driveway to give it a bit of color. I also used some foliage material on the side wall to simulate vines growing up the side of the building.

Once that had dried overnight it was time to mix some materials together to make the gravel parking area. Three ingredients came to mind. Black cinders.

Buff fine ballast.

And finally high Desert earth.

Mix them together real good and you get a nice gravel.

I coated the entire gravel lot with full strength white glue then used a sieve to spread the gravel evenly over the glue. Let that dry overnight.

Now here’s where the building went from background to rail served. I was able to build a simple ramp in front that could handle one car. I imagine a truck could be backed up to the lot side of the ramp and a forklift could then go from the railcar to the truck to load or unload. A truck could also be backed up to the loading doors.

The only thing left is to add a tall fence trackside to keep any errant truck driver from backing up too far. And it will also cover the ugly edge of the base. Plus a few trucks, forklift, couple of workers etc.

That’s the latest project. Hope you like it.