Structure - Agway (blue building)

This building was actually started before I had even considered working towards my MMR Structures certificate. However, after drawing up the plans I put in an order for the styrene siding and Rix Products doors and they took forever to get to me. During the delay period, my brain started thinking about other projects and this was set aside until now. However, it is strictly for my layout and not for my MMR certificate as it is much too simplistic.

The next building I decided to work on which is part of the Agway complex is what I am calling the "blue building" for obvious reasons. I would guess that it was used to load trucks with grain or other supplies by having them drive in under the cover of the roof. In the picture below it is the leftmost building. It sticks out towards the tracks nearly as much as the Quonset hut though the trees in the picture don't show this. It didn't look to be a difficult scratchbuilding project, though likely there is already something in the Pikestuff catalog that matched it. 

The side that faces the tracks shows clear evidence the sheathing panels came in pieces which were patched up on the wall. Not the weathering along the joints, and perhaps evidence of a previous loading ramp and doorway in the middle. A human door on the right and a vent at the top complete the look. 

The side facing the aisle has a lot more personality to it, but unfortunately it too will be truncated by the aisle itself and I will only model it as a plain wall. I wonder if that bay window on the left side is where some office is located and the workers wanted to see out into the world?

The side of the building facing away from the Quonset hut has several truck loading doors along the side, and they aren't all the same height.

Note that they also added several human doors too. I wonder if sub-interior walls made it necessary for multiple exit doors within so short a length of wall?

See how these two end truck doors are different? No idea why. Perhaps they got a deal on odd-sized doors. I count four different door types and sizes within a span of about 80 feet!

There is also a gravel roadway here which will be a nice change of pace from modeling pavement and concrete. 

The side that faced the Quonset hut was just a plain wall. I mean really, what would the purpose be of putting doors on this side (or maybe that ran out after putting so many on the other side)?

This project started off with a drawing. I didn't have to compress it much, but I did shorten its length by about half. To model the various sizes of roll-up doors and I ordered an assortment from Pikestuff without really knowing what I would need.

The board and batten siding that was used for my O&W station was actually stuff I purchased for this structure, and I had to plan my cuts for both projects carefully.

The end facing the tracks had a doorway opening cut out and a Pikestuff ventilator casting (#1009) installed. The door is from Walthers and has the mounting flange on the backside, so I used that on this wall where a slightly gap in the door frame wouldn't be seen. It came out perfect though.

I thought that the styrene would be the right length for the walls, but the battens run the short dimension of the styrene sheet and I had to combine two pieces side by side to get the right length. I guess that is the smart way to do it, because if you can't hide a seam in board and batten siding you aren't trying hard enough.

The doorways were cut out and the doors installed. I used a Pikestuff people door on the side where it would be visible as it had a frame on the outside which hid any cutting gaps.

The interior was braced with 1/4" square styrene strips. 

Since I only bought one sheet of the board and batten siding, to get enough length for the roof panels I had to combine five different pieces. 

The underside of the roof was braced as well to prevent sagging.

One of the roof pieces has a seam that I couldn't avoid without buying a brand new sheet. This corner of the building is farthest from the aisle and will be difficult to see.

The smoke vents started off as tubing glued to thin styrene, trimmed, and sanded round. A smaller diameter styrene rod was glued inside it, and it was trimmed to length and glued into the roof.

To paint the model, I used Tamiya "French Blue" (ST-10). Tamiya is a Japanese company, and the Japanese have the saying "Fukai shiko" (meaning "deep thinking") which is what occurs when I build models. For example, I had to use blue making tape to hide the parts of the building that were to stay white, and then sprayed the remainder of the white plastic to turn it blue. Blue keeps white white.

After that cured, I taped off the blue with the blue tape and sprayed everything that was already white with a nice, even coat of white. At this point, my mind was blowing up because blue was keeping blue blue and white was making white white.

The two doors were supposed to stay gray. In some pictures they looked dark gray and in others light gray. I started off by painting one dark gray, but it didn't look right so I painted light gray over it and it ended up a mottled, medium gray. Perfect. The other one on the end was done light gray.

Surprisingly, the prototype building's paint was holding up well when I recently photographed it again, though the end facing the tracks had a lot of peeling and wearing of the blue paint. The other three sides are still in decent shape, and I assume that they looked even better in 1984. As a result, I didn't try to weather this thing to death. I noted various shades of black, brown and gray coloring patterns (and even some yellowish ones on the trackside end) which I replicated with oil paint lightly applied with toothpicks. 

Then I brushed down lightly with mineral spirits. The roof received washes that amounted to whatever was left in the brush after running it through some cleaner. 

The end facing the tracks looks much worse than the other three sides, and overall I am happy with the result. I do wish that there were some buildings on my layout that weren't cut off by the aisle, but when you commit to benchwork only 24" deep these compromises have to be made. There is still only more building that is part of the Agway complex to fabricate, and then I can install them all on my layout.